How to buy home textiles: the 16 steps

How to buy home textiles, step by step

Bed linen, towels, quilts, curtains, cushions and rugs are bought differently from clothing, and the difference catches people out. The quantity that clears a dye lot, not the quantity you can sell, is what decides whether a mill will run your colour at all. This guide walks a home textile order in sixteen steps, starting at the shelf price and working backwards to the carton, and it says plainly at each step which numbers you set and which the mill sets. Written for a brand or a buyer placing a first order, not for somebody who already knows the trade.

This is not the garment process with the words changed. Four of the sixteen steps have no garment equivalent at all. The size grid, because a king bed is a different size in every market and getting it wrong makes stock unsellable rather than merely disappointing. The filling, because a quilt is a shell and a fill bought separately and priced separately. The dye lot, because it, and not a sewing line, sets your minimum and sets it per colour. And the retail pack, because home textiles are sold unopened off a shelf, so the box is designed and approved like the product inside it.

The one thing to take away if you read nothing else. The duty on a bedroom set is not one rate. A filled quilt enters Britain at 2.00%. The cover that goes over it enters at 12.00%, in the same carton, on the same invoice, both rates read 1 September 2026. Nothing in a garment order behaves like this, and it is decided long before you ship, at step 8.

The words a supplier will use at you, and what each one costs you 16 terms

A home textile price is decided almost entirely by the cloth and the finishing, and the words that describe both are the ones most often used loosely in a quotation. Thread count is the worst offender in the whole trade. Understanding these before you compare two quotes is what stops you buying the cheaper number rather than the better product.

Thread count: The number of yarns in a square inch of cloth, ends plus picks. It is the most quoted and least reliable figure in home textiles, because a two ply yarn can be counted as one thread or as two, which turns the same sheet into a 200 or a 400 depending only on who is writing the label. Ask for the construction instead: warp count, weft count, ends per inch and picks per inch. Those four numbers cannot be inflated, and from them the thread count is arithmetic.
Yarn count and ply: How fine the yarn is, and whether one strand or two are twisted together. Finer yarn gives a lighter, smoother, more expensive cloth at the same construction, and a single ply 40s sheet and a two ply 40s sheet are entirely different products at entirely different prices. This is the line that decides the hand of a sheet, far more than the thread count printed on the pack.
GSM, grams per square metre: The weight of a square metre of the finished cloth. For towels it is the single most useful quality number there is, because a towel is sold by feel and feel is mostly weight. For sheeting it is the honest cross check on a thread count claim: a construction and a GSM have to agree with each other, and when they do not, one of them is wrong.
Percale and sateen: The two standard sheeting weaves. Percale is a plain one over one weave, matt, crisp and cool, and it is the more forgiving of the two in wash. Sateen floats several yarns over one, which gives the sheen and the slippery hand, costs more yarn, and snags more easily. This is a construction difference rather than a quality ranking, and it belongs in the specification because customers return the one they did not expect.
Combed, carded and compact: Three levels of yarn preparation. Carded is the ordinary route. Combing removes the short fibres, which costs waste and money and gives a smoother, stronger, less hairy yarn that pills less. Compact spinning goes further again. A quotation that does not say which one it is has left out a real cost, and the difference is visible in the cloth after ten washes rather than on day one.
Terry construction and pile ratio: A towel is a ground cloth with loops standing off it. The pile ratio is how much yarn goes into those loops against the ground, and with the GSM it decides absorbency, drying speed and price. Loop length and whether the towel is single or double sided are the other two levers. A heavy towel with a short pile and a light towel with a long pile feel completely different at the same weight.
Zero twist and low twist: Pile yarn with little or no twist in it, which makes a towel feel much softer and absorb faster because the fibres are open. It also sheds more, wears faster and costs more to spin and to weave. It is a genuine product choice for a premium line and a genuine mistake for a hotel or a value line, and it must be decided before the yarn is bought rather than at sampling.
Fill power and fill weight: The two numbers on a quilt or a duvet, and they are not the same thing. Fill weight is how many grams of filling are inside. Fill power is how much space a given weight of down occupies, so it measures the quality of the filling rather than the quantity. A high fill weight of poor filling is heavy and flat; a lower fill weight at high fill power is light and warm and dearer. A synthetic filling is quoted by weight and by fibre type instead.
Shell fabric and downproof finish: The cloth that holds the filling in. On a down or feather product it must be woven tightly enough that the filling does not work its way through, which is a construction and a calendering question rather than a wish. Down leaking through the shell is the single most common complaint on filled bedding, and it is designed in or out at the shell stage, not fixed later.
Reactive, pigment and disperse printing: How the colour is put on. Reactive dye bonds chemically to cotton, gives the best wash fastness and the softest hand, and costs the most. Pigment printing sits the colour on the surface with a binder: cheap, quick, bright, and it stiffens the hand and rubs off over time. Disperse is for polyester. Which one you are getting changes the price, the hand and how the product looks after a year, so it belongs in the specification in those words.
Lab dip, strike off and the dye lot: The colour approval chain. A lab dip is a small swatch of your shade for approval; a strike off is a sample of the actual print. The dye lot is the batch that gets dyed together, and everything in one lot matches while two lots never match exactly. The minimum per colour is set by the size of that lot, which is why a home textile minimum is quoted per colour and is far higher than a sewing line minimum.
Shrinkage and the wash allowance: Cotton sheeting and terry both shrink, and the mill cuts the cloth oversize to land on your finished size after the first wash. Whether your size chart is a before wash or an after wash measurement is therefore a real question with a real answer, and it must be written down. Getting it wrong means a fitted sheet that will not go over the mattress, which is not a complaint, it is a return.
Colour fastness: How well the colour survives washing, rubbing and light, each tested and graded separately on a scale where higher is better. Rubbing fastness, also called crocking, is the one that matters most on a dark sheet or a printed cushion, because it is the colour coming off onto something else. The grades required belong in your order, along with the laboratory that will test them.
The size grid and pocket depth: Bed sizes differ by market and the names do not travel: a king in the United States, in Britain and in Europe are three different beds. Pocket depth is how deep a fitted sheet is cut to go over the mattress, and mattresses have got deeper over the years. This is the largest single cause of unsellable home textile stock, and it is prevented by sending the mill a size grid in centimetres with the tolerance on each measurement.
The retail pack: Home textiles are usually sold on a shelf, unopened, out of a printed box, a PVC pouch or a header carded sleeve. The pack is designed, costed, sampled and approved like the product itself, and it carries the barcode, the fibre content, the care symbols and the size. It is a real line in the price rather than a rounding item, and a pack that is wrong stops the goods at your own warehouse.
Certificates and destination rules: Fibre content and care labelling are legal requirements in the country you sell into, not factory paperwork, and they are yours as the importer. Filled bedding and anything sold for a child carry extra rules in several markets, and those are the ones that stop a shipment. Product certificates such as an approved textile safety scheme are commercial reassurance and a customer expectation rather than a substitute for the destination rules. Find out which rules apply from the regulator in your selling market before the specification is signed.

What to put on the order for home textiles

Every line below is one you can be given a straight answer on. A supplier who will not put one of them in writing is telling you something, and it is usually the most useful thing you will learn in the negotiation.

The construction in full: warp count, weft count, ends and picks per inch, ply, and the finished GSM. Not a thread count on its own.
The yarn preparation, said in words: carded, combed or compact.
The weave or the terry construction, with pile ratio and loop length for towels, and fill weight and filling type for quilts.
A size grid in centimetres with a tolerance on every measurement, and whether those are before wash or after wash figures.
The print or dye route and the shade reference, with lab dips and a strike off approved before bulk.
The colour fastness grades required, the tests, the laboratory and who pays for it.
The full retail pack: box or pouch, artwork, barcode, fibre content, care symbols and the size marking.
The carton specification and the pieces per carton, because on home textiles the carton is most of your freight cost.
The inspection standard, the acceptable quality level, and who carries out the final inspection.

Thread count, GSM, fill power and the fastness grades are all measured to published test methods, and a laboratory report against a named method is the only thing that settles a dispute about any of them. The descriptions above are standard trade practice compiled for orientation; the figures that bind are the ones written into your own specification and contract.

These are standard trade definitions and typical published ranges, compiled by VeriMills for orientation. They are not a specification, they do not replace a test report, and where a figure here differs from your contract, your contract is the one that binds.

The sixteen steps

Open the step you are standing on

Each step is a short page of its own: what it needs, the detail, the outside sources and the tools for that step, with the next step one tap away at the foot.

After the steps

Also in this guide, on the specification step:

Home textile trade terms

The words a home textile costing conversation turns on, in one line each.

Common home textile trade terms, one line each.
Term	What it means
Thread count	Ends plus picks in a square inch of cloth. Inflated more often than any other number in home textiles, because a two ply yarn can be counted once or twice. Ask for ends, picks and the two yarn counts instead.
GSM	Grams per square metre of finished cloth. The honest cross check on a thread count, and on a towel it is the single most useful quality number there is.
GLM	Grams per linear metre. The same weight expressed down the roll rather than per square metre, so it changes when the width changes. Two mills quoting one in GSM and one in GLM are not comparable until the width is known.
Percale	A plain one over one sheeting weave. Matt, crisp, cool, and the more forgiving of the two standard weaves in wash.
Sateen	A sheeting weave that floats several yarns over one, which gives the sheen and the smooth hand. Uses more yarn, costs more, and snags more easily.
Terry	The towel construction: a ground cloth with loops standing off it. Pile ratio, loop length and whether it is one sided or two decide how it feels and what it costs.
Fill power	How much space a fixed weight of down occupies. It measures the quality of the filling rather than the amount, so it is not interchangeable with fill weight.
Fill weight	The grams of filling actually inside the quilt. The quantity number, quoted alongside fill power for down and alongside the fibre type for a synthetic.
Pick density	Picks per inch, the weft half of a construction. Raising it makes the cloth denser, heavier, slower on the loom and dearer, and it is where a cheap sheet is usually thinned.
Lab dip	A small swatch dyed to your shade for approval before bulk dyeing. A strike off is the same thing for a print.
Dye lot	The batch dyed together. Everything in one lot matches and two lots never match exactly, which is why the minimum is quoted per colour.
Greige	Woven cloth before dyeing, printing or finishing. It is booked on the loom months before your artwork is final, and that booking, not the artwork, sets your delivery date.

Every word on this site, not only these, is in the glossary.

What we cannot tell you

What a mill will charge you. There is no published price for a made to order home textile, and there cannot be: it is decided by your construction, your colours, your quantity and the week you ask. Anyone showing you one is showing you an average of something else.
The minimum, the lead time, the sample charge or the payment terms. All four belong to the individual mill and all four move. We put each mill's own four into the quote you receive rather than publishing an average that would be wrong for your order in a way you could not detect.
Your final duty. The rates here are base rates read from the published schedules on 1 September 2026 and stamped with the code they were read at. Additional duties can sit above them and preferences below them, and both change without notice. A customs broker gives you the all in figure; this page gives you the shape.
Whether your goods meet the law of the market you sell into. Labelling, flammability and childrens rules are set by the regulator in the selling country, they differ by product, and only they can answer it. We can tell you which questions to ask and when to ask them, which is at step 10 and not at step 16.
What the trade figures are not. The numbers on the numbers page are United States import statistics for 2025, covering 39 product lines. They are customs averages of whole shipments, not price lists, the weights behind them are estimated by the source, and they say nothing at all about Europe or the Gulf. Every caveat is written on the page itself rather than in a footnote.

Questions

Common questions

What is a dye lot minimum, and why does it beat my order size?

A dyeing machine has a size, and the mill will not run it half empty for one customer. So the smallest run is set by that machine and by the colour, not by how many pieces you want to sell. Two colours means two lots. This is a common reason a home textile enquiry gets a no, and it is worth checking before you design the range.

Send your home textile brief

Does a higher thread count mean better bed linen?

Not on its own, and past a point it stops meaning anything at all. The yarn, the weave and the finishing decide how the cloth feels and how it survives washing. A number printed on a pack is a marketing figure before it is a quality figure, and the guide shows you what to specify instead.

The trade words, defined

What testing will my buyer or my market demand?

It depends on the market and on the product, and the two do not overlap neatly. Flammability, colour fastness, dimensional change after washing and the chemical restrictions are the usual four. The tests step in this guide lists what each market asks for, and the rules are worth reading yourself rather than taking a mill's word for.

Tests and the rules you must meet

Should I buy sheet sets or single pieces?

Sets are easier to sell and harder to make, because every piece in the set has to come out of the same dye lot to match. Pieces give you flexibility and a lower entry quantity. Decide it before you brief a mill, because switching later means requoting the whole range.

The home textile desk

Buying home textiles