Laundry symbols around the world

The symbols on a tag depend on where the garment was made for. Here is how the US, ISO, Korean, and Japanese systems say the same five things.

If you are holding a tag from a garment bought abroad — or a Korean or Japanese brand bought at home — and the marks don't match the chart you looked up, nothing is wrong with either one. The shapes are shared. The way heat and gentleness get written inside them is not.

The five shapes are the same everywhere

Every care labeling system in use — the American one, the international one, Korea's, Japan's — is built on the same five outlines. Learn the shapes once and you can read a tag in any of them.

Tub

washing in water

washtub
Triangle

bleach

open triangle
Square

drying

square with a circle
Iron

ironing

iron
Circle

the professional cleaner

open circle

What differs between systems is the fine print inside the shapes: whether the tub says its temperature in dots or in numbers, how many heat levels the dryer square knows about, which extra marks exist at all, and whether words are printed alongside.

US tags: heat as dots

American care labels follow the FTC's Care Labeling Rule, 16 CFR 423, which requires care instructions in words. Since July 1, 1997 the rule has also let makers print the ASTM symbol set instead of those words — the section is 423.8(g), and the symbol guide it names is ASTM D5489. That is why a US tag can be all pictures, all sentences, or both at once.

In that set, heat is dots. One dot in the tub, two dots, three — more dots, hotter water. The same dot scale runs through the dryer square and the iron. A minimum American laundering instruction is four symbols in order: washing, bleaching, drying, ironing.

ISO tags: heat as a number in the tub

Europe and most of the rest of the world label to ISO 3758. Same five shapes, one big difference: the washtub carries the maximum temperature as a plain Celsius number — 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 95 — usually without the degree mark printed beside it. A tub with “40” in it and a tub with two dots in it are the same instruction.

ISO 3758 has been through several editions; the current one was published in December 2023 and reshaped a few marks (hand wash, do not wash, do not bleach, do not iron) to match the versions already in use across Europe. None of that changes how you read a tub with a number in it.

Dots, numbers, and the dial in front of you

The same thermometer, written two ways. Every value is a ceiling — washing colder than the tag asks is always allowed.
US tag (dots)	ISO tag (°C)	What it allows	At the machine
One dot	30	Up to 30°C, about 85°F	The cold setting on a US dial; the 30 program on a European one.
Two dots	40	Up to 40°C, about 105°F	Warm. The everyday European wash, and the busiest number on foreign tags.
Three dots	50	Up to 50°C, about 120°F	Hot on a US dial. Many machines jump straight from 40 to 60.
Four dots	60	Up to 60°C, 140°F	The 60 program — bedding, towels, and workwear territory.
Five dots	70	Up to 70°C, 160°F	Past what most home machines offer; a commercial-laundry allowance.
Six dots	95	Up to 95°C, 200°F	Near-boiling. You will meet this on hospital linens, not on clothing.

US tags almost never print more than three dots, and European tags rarely print 70 or 95 on clothing. Both ends of the scale exist for linens and workwear. The wash temperature page covers the dots on their own.

Where the two systems genuinely disagree

The bars point the same way, with different names. On a US tag one bar under the tub is the permanent press cycle and two bars are gentle. On an ISO tag one bar is called a mild process and two bars a very mild one. Different vocabulary, same direction of travel: more bars, less machine.
The dryer square has three heat levels in the US and two under ISO. The American chart runs no heat, low, medium, high. ISO recognizes two tumble temperatures — one dot for the lower one, two dots for the higher. A three-dot dryer square is an American mark; if you never see one on a European tag, that is why.
The iron dots agree. One dot low, two dots medium, three dots high means the same thing on both kinds of tag. This is the one family you can read across systems without thinking about it.
Some marks exist on only one side. Do not wring — the twisted shape with an X — is part of the American chart and is not one of the ISO marks. The natural-drying marks differ in their details too: the American chart puts two diagonal lines in the corner for “dry in the shade,” ISO uses one.

About the marks on this page. The care symbols printed on European labels are managed by GINETEX, which holds trademark rights over its symbol set in much of Europe and licenses their use. Every mark on WashCodes is drawn here from scratch as a plain geometric set of our own — shapes that show the idea, not anyone's artwork. That is also why the foreign variants on this page are described in words instead of drawn.

Korean laundry symbols (KS K 0021)

Korea kept its own system. Japan moved its labels onto the international set in 2016; Korea's standards body decided the familiar marks were worth keeping. The reasoning it gave the Korean press was plain enough — the KS marks had been in front of Korean shoppers since 1972, and industry appetite for a change was small.

The standard is KS K 0021, 섬유 제품의 취급에 관한 표시 기호 및 그 표시 방법 — symbols for showing how to handle textile products. Korea's national standards record lists no matching international standard against it, which is the plainest confirmation there is that a Korean tag is not just an ISO tag in Korean.

Three things a Korean tag does differently:

Words come with the pictures. Korean labels commonly print small Hangul beside or beneath the marks rather than letting the shapes stand alone. 물세탁 heads the home washing section — literally water washing; 손세탁 is hand wash; 약 means gentle; and 중성 asks for a neutral detergent rather than an ordinary one.
The tub carries a number. Korean charts print the temperature into the washtub the way ISO does — 30, 40, 60, 95 — and read it the same way, as the most the fabric was tested for. Combinations are normal: 약 40℃ is gentle at 40 or cooler, 약 30℃ 중성 is gentle at 30 or cooler with a neutral detergent.
The rest is recognizable. Triangle for bleach, iron for ironing, circle for the professional cleaner, square for drying — the same five shapes, with Korean words beside them.

Honest limit: KS K 0021 is a paid standard and this page doesn't reproduce it. Everything above is what Korea's public standards record, the Korean press, and Korean consumer charts agree on. If a Korean tag shows a mark described nowhere here, treat it the way you would any unfamiliar mark — take the most careful reading available, and let the tag have the last word.

Japanese laundry symbols (JIS L 0001)

Japan switched, and the date is worth knowing: December 1, 2016. Before it, Japanese garments ran on JIS L 0217 — twenty-two marks, several of them with Japanese words printed right into the symbol: ドライ on the dry-clean circle, エンソサラシ for chlorine bleach, 弱 for a gentle wash, and 手洗イ for hand wash. On that date the Household Goods Quality Labeling regulation moved to JIS L 0001, built on ISO 3758, and the set grew from 22 marks to 41. The Japanese wording came off the symbols; words are now allowed only to add to what a symbol already says.

Japan revised again in 2024: JIS L 0001:2024 was published on August 20, 2024 to line up with the 2023 edition of ISO 3758, with a year of grace — garments carrying the previous marks could still be sold through August 19, 2025.

So a Japanese garment bought new reads like a European one: a number in the tub, bars for gentleness, dots in the dryer square and the iron. A Japanese garment that predates December 2016 — thrifted, vintage, handed down — may still carry the old set. If you find kanji or katakana printed inside a care mark, you are holding a pre-2016 Japanese tag, and those words are the instruction.

One thing the Japanese changeover made explicit, and it holds for every system on this page: the marks state a maximum, not a recommendation. A tub reading 40 means 40°C is as hot as that fabric was tested for. Same or gentler is always within the tag.

At the machine: reading a foreign tag

Dots and numbers are one thermometer. Two dots and a 40 want the same water. If your machine is marked in dial names and the tag is marked in numbers, the table above is the whole translation.
Bars always mean gentler. Whatever the standard calls them, a bar under a shape asks the machine to work the garment less. Two bars ask for less again.
The dryer is where you should be most careful. Heat levels don't line up one-for-one between the systems, and heat is the setting that shrinks things. When a foreign dryer mark is ambiguous, run cooler than you think it means, or hang it up.
When the tag and a chart disagree, believe the tag. A chart describes a standard; the tag was written for the fabric in your hands. Take the cooler, gentler reading of the two — that direction is never the expensive mistake.

Holding a tag with several marks on it? Tap what you can see into the decoder and it will read them together, carefully.

Sources

Every claim above was checked against at least two of these before it was written. Where the sources didn't agree, the page says so instead of picking a winner.