How To Fold Dress Shirts And Pack Them Properly

How To Fold A Dress Shirt And Pack It Properly

In con­tin­u­ing our series on car­ing for your dress shirts, we’d like to pro­vide some guid­ance on stor­ing your shirts prop­er­ly. Clos­ets can get crammed quick­ly so prop­er stor­age will keep them look­ing good and extend the life of your favorite gar­ments.

How­ev­er, know­ing what to store where, and when, is impor­tant and that’s par­tic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to dress shirts.

Properly folding dress shirts starts with care and attention.

Your beau­ti­ful dress shirts deserve a lit­tle care and atten­tion. A good shirt cre­ates a good impres­sion, so you don’t want yours to look creased and wrin­kled.

Hang­ing is one of the most pop­u­lar meth­ods of stor­age and it works well — pro­vid­ed you have enough space.

Many choose to fold dress shirts and store them in draw­ers or on shelves and this method of stor­age is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful if you have dress shirts in var­i­ous fab­rics for sum­mer and win­ter.

It’s also impor­tant to know how to prop­er­ly fold a dress shirt if you’re trav­el­ing — so we’ve cre­at­ed this easy-to-fol­low guide.

Clos­et goals. Lots of space to either keep your shirts fold­ed away or hung on a rack.

Tips to fold a dress shirt properly.

If you have your dress shirts cleaned by a pro­fes­sion­al laun­dry ser­vice they will come back neat­ly fold­ed. We’re going to show you how to fold like a laun­dry ser­vice and we’ll even give you a few stor­age tips.

A short pic­to­r­i­al essay on fold­ing a shirt.

Preparation is key when folding dress shirts.

First of all, find a good flat sur­face where you have plen­ty of space to fold. A bed or a flat sur­face is ide­al as you want a nice firm base where you can smooth the fab­ric eas­i­ly.

Choose a wide work sur­face with enough space to lay your shirt flat and ensure that it’s clean and dry before you start. If you don’t have a suit­able sur­face, a clean tow­el on the floor will work as a last resort.

A flat sur­face works best when lay­ing out your shirts, and fold­ing them. A bed works equal­ly as well.

Folding shirts properly step one — Button up.

Now, take your fresh­ly laun­dered shirt and ensure that all but­tons, includ­ing the ones on the sleeves and any col­lar but­tons, are fas­tened. This helps to keep folds crisp and pre­cise and reduces wrin­kling and creas­ing. But­ton up the top and bot­tom but­tons, with just a few in between.

Folding shirts properly step two — Flatten out.

Give your shirt a shake to loosen any creas­es and lay it with the but­tons fac­ing down on your cho­sen flat sur­face. Now smooth the fab­ric so that it looks neat and fresh.

Using a sol­id wood­en block or even a mag­a­zine works real­ly well to help get the per­fect fold. Ide­al­ly, some­thing in an A4 size (or buy­ing this) will do the trick and can eas­i­ly be lift­ed out once you’ve com­plet­ed the fold.

With enough prac­tice, you even­tu­al­ly won’t need to use any assis­tance when fold­ing.

Folding shirts properly step three — Start at the right side of the shirt.

Take the right arm and fold it straight across the back of your dress shirt. The cuff should end up at the seam of the left shoul­der. Repeat this step with the left arm and then smooth out any tiny wrin­kles.

Folding your shirts step 4 — The big fold.

Hold­ing the sleeve and shirt togeth­er, fold the right side of your dress shirt into the cen­ter. Repeat with the left side of the shirt. If you’re fold­ing a shirt with a back pleat, aim for the pleat. If not, aim for a spot at the cen­ter of the col­lar.

If you’ve done this cor­rect­ly, you should see a kind of ‘v’ shape on the back of the shirt. Now, pull the tail and shoul­der apart firm­ly to remove any wrin­kles from the sides of the shirt.

The typ­i­cal arrange­ment of stacked and fold­ed shirts in a menswear shop. Source: Turn­bull & Ass­er

The final step — Achieving a perfect finish on the folded shirt.

If you want a longer fold on your shirt, you can bring the tail of the shirt up to the col­lar. Or, for a short­er fold, sim­ply fold in half length­wise.

A nice and neat fin­ish.

And finally…getting that perfectly folded dress shirt.

Now you’re ready to place your fold­ed dress shirt on your shelf or in a draw­er. Stack dress shirts neat­ly on top of each oth­er. It’s best to keep stacks short; too much weight press­ing down can cause creas­ing.

If you’re stor­ing shirts on a shelf, you can add a shelf divider to ensure that your stack of shirts doesn’t top­ple over. Be sure to allow a lit­tle space for ven­ti­la­tion.

Here’s a short video from our friends at T.M. Lewin per­fect­ly visu­al­iz­ing the steps we’ve men­tioned above.