How To Clean A Straw Hat – Easy Methods To Follow

It is quite a challenging task to search for a suitable straw hat, simply because there are a lot of options for the best straw hats out there for you to choose from. And I am sure that when you finally invest in a stylish and high quality straw hat, you might want it to last as long as possible.

If you don’t treat your straw hat with proper care, it might deteriorate and deform quickly, making it look less stylish and trendy. Therefore, after you buy a hat, it is very important to know how to care and wash your straw hat properly. Learning about these will help your straw hat always look nice and new.

What can you do to make your straw hat become more durable?

How you use your straw hat and handle it when you take it on and off your hat plays a key role in determining the durability of your hat. In addition, you should know about the right and most proper way to store your hat. You can look for further information on caring for your straw hat as well as other types of hats here https://thebesthat.com/tips-on-taking-good-care-of-your-hat/.

Besides handling the hat with the best care you can provide, it is important that you clean your straw hat on a regular basis. When you use your straw hat for quite a while, dirt and debris as well as sweat and stains will be stuck on your hat, making it look not as good as it used to be. In addition, the material of your straw hat will be affected when dirt and salt and further absorb into the hat.

How can you clean the straw hat?

When you know about the importance of cleaning a straw hat, you might want to do it right away. It is not so difficult to clean this type of hat, luckily. Other types of materials such as wool blend and felt are much harder to clean.

However, if you have never cleaned your straw hat before, it might be confused as you might not know where to start. Read the tips below to see what you need to do in order to clean your straw hat.

Here are things that you will need in order to clean your straw hat:

• Some white cleaning cloths. You should use white cloths only. If you use colored clothes, the color from these cloths might transfer to your straw hat.
• Mild detergent
• Some chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide and talcum powder
• Soft bristled brush
• Water
• A coffee mug or a hat block for you to place your hat on and wait for it to dry naturally.

Tips on cleaning your straw hat

1. How should you clean your straw hat

Most of the straw hats couldn’t be washed in the washing machine. Therefore, you should all wash your straw hats by hand with cool water.

In addition, before you attempt to do anything with your straw hat including washing or ironing, you should read the instruction labels that come along with the hat for more information on the best ways to treat your straw hat as well as some things you shouldn’t do unless you want to destroy your precious straw hat. You can find these labels easily as they are attached to the inner side of your straw hat.

A straw hat is very vulnerable towards heat and water. When a straw hat is very wet, it will shrink and deform. So make sure you don’t get your straw hat too wet during the process of cleaning it.

2. How to clean your straw hat

Before you wash your straw hat, remove any detail or décor including band, ribbon and flower which is attached to the hat. This will make it easier for you to clean your straw hat. However, some of the décors are glued or interwoven into the hat- in this case; you should leave the décor there and wash the hat along with the décor feature as well.

Then you should use a soft bristled brush to brush the hat to get rid of the dirt and debris. You can brush from the top of the crown to the brim. Make sure you brush as much gently as possible.

After that, you can prepare a bowl of water and hydrogen peroxide. Use a brush or a clean cloth to dip into the mixture. You can also pour the mixture into a spray,

Brush the straw hat or rub the dampen cloth onto the hat. You should apply the mixture to a small area first to see if there is anything bad that happens to the hat. When everything is ok, you can proceed to brush or rub the entire hat gently.

Then you can dip your straw hat into a bowl of cool water and take it out quickly. Use a clean dry cloth to blot off excess detergent and water. You should not rinse the hat with a lot of water to prevent the hat from shrinking.

Place the straw hat onto a coffee mud or a hat block and let it sit there for several hours for the hat to dry out. You can place the hat in a windy area. However, you should let it stay away from the direct sunlight as the harmful sun rays can deteriorate the quality of the hat and make it shrink.

3. How to remove stains

In order to remove stains from your straw hat, you can dampen a white clean cloth with water. Then apply some amount of mild detergent onto the cloth. Rub the stains on your straw hat quickly but gently until the stains is removed.

Before you apply the cloth onto the hat, you can try to rub a small area of the hat with the detergent to see if the detergent causes any negative impact on the straw hat (such as shrinking or discoloring).

• If the stains are stubborn, you can use talcum powder instead of the mild detergent. Just sprinkle a small amount of the powder onto the stain and wait for the powder to penetrate deeply into the material of the hat for 1 to 2 hours. Then brush off the powder and blot it with a moist clean cloth.
• In case these stains are sweat stains, you can use a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide remove these stains. Use a small soft bristled brush and dip it into the mixture before bringing it to scrub on these sweat stains. Then wait for these areas to dry out.
• And if these stains are scuffs, you can use a gum eraser to rub onto the spots for several times before the scuffs come off.

After that, you can use a dry cloth and blot the stained spot until there is no detergent left. You can also wash the detergent out with water but don’t over-wet the hat. Dry the hat with a clean cloth immediately.

4. How to iron your straw hat

When creases and marks appears on your straw hat, you can use an iron to flat these out. First, make sure that your straw hat can be ironed by looking at the instruction labels attached to the hat.

Take note of the level of temperature at which your straw hat can be ironed.

To play it safe, you should always set the temperature setting of the iron to be at the lowest level. Higher heat can destroy and burn your hat easily, even if when your hat is made with a high quality material.

When you iron, remember to use your finger to straighten the straw threads and guide them to their original shape and place.

5. Don’t forget to clean the extras

As I mention above, if you can take of the extras that are attached to the hat, you should do it and wash them separately. You can dust off the ribbon or other details on your straw hat before hand washing it.

You can also spot clean the extras of your straw hat with a clean wet cloth.

If there is mark or wrinkle on the hatband or ribbon, you can iron them. Once again, read the instruction label to see whether you can iron these extras and at which temperature could you iron them.

As you can see, a straw hat doesn’t require a lot of time and effort to be taken care of. However, it does still need some certain degrees of attention in order to always look nice and maintain the best condition. I hope with all of the tips above, you are no longer confused where to start to clean your straw hat and hence, will successfully take care of your straw hat.

By Mike | Published: May 2, 2017