Wash temperature dots
The dots inside the washtub are a thermometer: more dots, hotter water — and the number is always a ceiling, never a requirement.
Machine wash cold: Machine wash cold — water up to 30°C, about 85°F.
Machine wash warm: Machine wash warm — water up to 40°C, about 105°F.
Machine wash hot: Machine wash hot — water up to 50°C, about 120°F.
Machine wash, 60°C: Machine wash up to 60°C (140°F) — a heavy-duty setting mostly seen on bedding, towels, and workwear.
Machine wash, 70°C: Machine wash up to 70°C (160°F) — a sanitizing-level wash, rare on home garment tags.
Machine wash, 95°C: Machine wash up to 95°C (200°F) — near-boiling, reserved for things like hospital linens.
The dot scale
One dot is cold, up to 30°C (about 85°F) — the everyday setting for anything with bright color or stretch. Two dots is warm, 40°C (about 105°F). Three dots is hot, 50°C (about 120°F). The scale keeps going where home tags rarely follow: four dots at 60°C for bedding, towels, and workwear, five at 70°C, and six at 95°C — near boiling, the territory of hospital linens.
US tags almost never print more than three dots. If you meet four or more, the message is simply that the fabric can take everything your machine offers.
Dots or numbers — same thermometer
Tags made for Europe and much of the world print the temperature straight into the tub as a number: 30, 40, 60. A tub with “30” in it and a tub with one dot are the same instruction. If your closet mixes both styles, you are not misreading anything — the systems differ, the meaning doesn’t.
Colder is always allowed
Every dot count is a maximum. Washing a three-dot shirt in cold water is always within the tag; washing a one-dot sweater in hot water is where things shrink, bleed, and lose their stretch. When two garments in one load disagree, wash to the colder tag.
Related
Reading a whole tag, not one symbol? Tap everything you see into the decoder — it gives the careful combined plan.