why do some towels and hand towels, need to be washed multiple times before they actually absorb water and dry you off properly?

Question

This is happens to me a lot, when I get new towels or hand towels. It seems they need to be “broken in” for lack of a better word, before they actually dry you off.

In: 4

Answer 1

Most likely the towels have been treated with a fabric softener or other form of static charge prevention. Fabric softener is actually a soap which prevents towels from absorbing liquids as well, so using fabric softeners and other static prevention chemicals actually decreases the absorbance of fabrics