How To Find A Good Dry Cleaner

Hand pressing a bespoke linen jacket - the best dry cleaners press by hand: it takes more time but gives the best result!

Do you struggle to find a great dry cleaner? ⁉️

I am constantly asked for dry cleaner recommendations and I even I find it hard to recommend any one dry cleaner in particular. 🤷‍♂️

Even my local, who I thought were great, managed to slip up big time and shrink a dozen of my brand new shirts. 😳

I had given explicit instructions to wash and iron them at 30 degrees or less. When I picked them up and went to wear one, I swear I couldn’t even do the buttons up. Thinking I couldn’t have put that much weight on in a short time, I tried the rest and sure enough they’d been shrunk a whole size down.

When I went to confront the cleaner he said he followed the label instructions and washed them at 40. I told him to read the label back to me. “30” he said.

I was so angry 😡. He offered nothing by way of an apology or recompense. I have had so many clients experience similar.

So how can you spot a good cleaner from a not-so-good one? Here are 5 tips on selecting you next dry cleaner:

✅ Make sure they are doing everything on site, not sending away. So many cleaners in this country send your clothes to some central location where they are cleaned en masse rather than getting the individual attention they need

✅ For shirts and other more delicate items, make sure they wash and iron. If your cleaner says “no we just dry clean everything” then they are not the cleaner for you

✅ Test them out on a small order first before giving large quantities. Do this over a number of weeks and slowly ramp up the quantities as your confidence in them grows

✅ Find out if they have insurance and what their policy is in the event of your clothes getting ruined or lost. Even if you trust your cleaner one thing you can always guarantee is there’ll be a problem at some point. Which is fine we are all human but you don’t want to be left out of pocket!

✅ If your suit/jacket/trousers aren’t smelly or dirty and just need a good press, ask your cleaner if they do hand pressing only. There is no need to dry clean a garment if it just needs a freshen up! If your cleaner says “no we just dry clean it” then don’t give it to them. Because it’ll end up in a white van at the end of the day, carted off to some mass dry cleaning facility somewhere.

For now I’ve gone back to washing and ironing myself. Thankfully I can use the hand pressing machine at my workroom (see the image for one of our client’s linen jackets being beautifully hand pressed to perfection!) 👌

But I’ll be interviewing my next cleaner super carefully using the tips above. 👆

Have you had a similar experience? Do you have a local cleaner who you wouldn’t hesitate to recommend?

Tell me in the comments below! 👇