Bamboo - just how soft is it?

You know that favorite cotton tshirt of yours you have had for years and put through hundreds of washings to get it as soft as it is? Bamboo tshirts are that soft right from the start without a single washing. We encourage you to read our blog post with scientific test results showing how bamboo outdoes cotton when it comes to fabric hand (softness).

For this question, it would be appropriate to broach the “mechanical” vs “chemical” production methods as discussed in the eco-friendly section. After talking to our supplier who is a textile guru and a walking encyclopedia on the textile industry, he tells me that at the time of this writing, the methods used for the mechanical processing of bamboo, will yield a finished product that is not particularly appealing. The reason being is that when this method is employed, the finished bamboo fabric is just not very soft to the touch. It is day and night when the two finished products are compared. The mechanical method produces a surface that I believe he described as “scratchy” and just not appealing at all.

I would venture to say that this combined with the fact that the mechanical method is very labor intensive and thus costly, explains why we don’t have, ex; bamboo sheets and bamboo baby blankets available in bamboo made from the mechanical method here in the United States.

So, what about the bamboo products that we do have available here in the U.S.? Is it really ‘all that’ when it comes to “softness?” What we can tell you is that we personally have compared side by side, viscose from bamboo and Egyptian cotton in bedding products and the bamboo sheets were clearly the most comfortable. In fact, they were softer to the touch than high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. Additionally, the consensus among people who have tried bamboo shirts, bamboo sheets and other bamboo products, has been, “it’s much softer than my other t-shirts” or “ these are now my favorite sheets, I can’t believe how soft they are.” This is what people are saying.

Bottom line: Aside from the scientific test results showing how bamboo outdoes cotton, we only have our testimony and the opinions of others who have tried viscose from bamboo fabrics. But what we do know is once you try our products you too will agree. And, we welcome all of you to read and write product reviews on our store so others can share in your wisdom.

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