The lay flat to dry symbol
One horizontal line inside the drying square means this garment dries lying down — the only position that saves a knit’s shape.
Dry flat: Lay it flat on a towel or rack to dry.
What it looks like
A square with a single horizontal line across the middle: a garment lying flat, seen from the side. Tags and charts call it two things — “dry flat” and “lay flat to dry” — and they are the same instruction, not two levels of it. You will meet it on sweaters and knitwear, on wool and cashmere, on loose-knit cotton, and on anything that holds a lot of water for its size.
Why hanging is the mistake
A wet sweater can hold a couple of pounds of water, and every ounce of it pulls downward. On a line or a hanger, the fabric stretches at the shoulders and down the body, and a knit has no spring to pull itself back — it dries longer, wider at the hem, and with two small points where the hanger sat. Laid flat, the same weight is spread across the whole garment and nothing is pulled anywhere.
How to dry something flat
Roll the garment up in a dry towel first and press — never twist — to take out the free water. Then lay it on a fresh dry towel or a mesh drying rack and push it gently back into its own shape: sleeves straight, body squared up, hem even. Swap the towel and turn the garment once it stops feeling cold to the back of your hand.
A rack with air moving underneath roughly halves the time. A towel on the floor works but can take a full day, and a thick sweater left damp that long can pick up a smell you then have to wash out again.
If the tag only says dry flat
Read it as the ceiling of what the garment tolerates: no dryer, not even on air, and no hanger or radiator to speed things up. Drying flat is slow, and the slowness is the point — the shape it takes on the first day is the shape you keep.
Questions people actually ask
Is “dry flat” the same as “lay flat to dry”?
Yes — one symbol, one instruction, two ways of writing it. The square with a horizontal line through the middle means the garment dries lying on a towel or a rack rather than hanging from anything.
Related
Reading a whole tag, not one symbol? Tap everything you see into the decoder — it gives the careful combined plan.