I’ve been a “throw everything in and wash on cold” person forever, but I started to notice certain things such as towels that typically require hot or warm water didn’t feel right anymore. Once I switched back they came out feeling soft and fluffy as usual. Why does it matter?
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A machine washer salesperson told me that your sweat attaches to the clothes at your body temperature (your clothes are a bit cooler than your internal body temp, but they’d get fairly close).
Like imagine your armpits, they’d be close to the ~37-38 degrees C of your body.
So, they argued that you want to at least match the temperature at which those stains were set in. So a wash at 40 degrees C makes some intutive sense.
[This is not quite an explanation, like *why* do you need to match the temperature that the stain was set? Is that true? What is the chemistry of that? But it does at least feel like it makes sense.]
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Aside from that, generally, most things dissolve more easily at high temperatures (gasses don’t, but gasses are not attached to your clothes).
So if there is any grease or oil or stain, most of the time warm water will dissolve it better. It may also dissolve the detergent better.
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