Resources · Choosing Uniforms
A uniform is the one thing you buy and then hand to everybody who wears it. Care is the part of the decision made by everyone and agreed by no one.
1,000+
Healthcare organisations
60,000+
Garments supplied
40+
Years experience
95%+
Client reorder rate
Everyone’s decision
Somebody chooses the garments. Somebody approves the colour. Somebody signs off the branding. Then the range goes out to the team and how it is looked after becomes a private matter for each person wearing it.
That is how one uniform range quietly becomes several. Not because the garments differ, but because the routines behind them do — and after enough washes the difference is visible from across a waiting room.
What is assumed
The instructions come with the garment, so the reasoning goes, everybody will follow them. Almost nobody reads them, and almost nobody has ever been asked to.
What happens instead
Whatever they already do with the rest of their washing gets applied to the uniform, and the range starts drifting apart from the first week.
The authority
Every garment arrives with care instructions specific to it. They are the authority on how that item should be handled, and they are the only care guidance that is genuinely about the garment in front of you.
This guide does not replace them, and it deliberately does not quote settings. What is right for one garment is wrong for another, and it shifts with the fabric, the construction, the colour and any branding applied to it. The label accounts for all of that. A rule of thumb does not.
What a guide can usefully do is the part the label cannot: say who is responsible, name what actually causes the damage, and get a whole team following the same routine.
Where the label and a habit disagree, the label wins.
It was written for that specific garment. The routine that works on everything else in the wash was not, and it is the more likely of the two to be wrong.
The real causes
Garments rarely give up for the reason people assume. Most of the damage comes from ordinary handling repeated hundreds of times, not from one dramatic incident.
None of those are difficult to avoid. They persist because nobody has ever been asked to avoid them.
Across its life
The same garment does not need the same handling on day one, in an ordinary week, and once it has started to look tired. Issuing all of that as a single instruction is why care guidance gets skimmed and then ignored.
Read the care instructions before the garment goes into rotation rather than after the first wash — while anything not right is still simple to resolve.
Wash to the instructions on that garment, keep loads sensible so items can move, and separate anything heavily soiled.
Stitched thread rather than print. It handles ordinary laundering, but not heat applied straight to it or dragging against zips.
Deal with marks while they are fresh and follow that garment’s instructions. More permanent damage is done in the attempt to fix something than in the incident.
Every garment reaches a point that care cannot recover. What matters is that somebody notices and it gets replaced.
A year apart, cared for to the same standard.
Learned the hard way
Not hypotheticals. These are the reasons a range starts looking inconsistent long before the garments are actually finished.
The garments arrived with nothing beyond the label, so everyone invented a routine and no two matched.
Care guidance was written, filed, and never reached the people actually doing the washing.
A single instruction issued across a range whose items are constructed quite differently.
The most recoverable moment is the first few minutes, and it is the one most reliably missed.
The hottest setting applied as a default, including straight over branding.
No route to flag a garment that has had it, so it stays in service and quietly sets the standard.
Worth writing down
A care standard is a short document, not a policy exercise. It exists so that a new starter and a long-serving staff member are doing the same thing with the same garment.
Issue it with the uniform rather than after it.
Care guidance handed over with the garments gets followed. The same guidance circulated months later gets filed.
Where we come in
Tell us the roles the range has to cover and how the garments will actually be laundered, and we will work through the options that suit it. Where branding is involved, nothing goes into production until the embroidery setup has been approved.
Garment care
Follow the care instructions supplied with the garments. They are specific to that item and account for the fabric, the construction and any branding applied to it, which is why we don’t publish one rule intended to cover a whole range.
Because correct handling differs from garment to garment, and a general figure would be wrong for some of them. The label on the item is the authority, and it is what we would point you back to every time. What this page can add is everything the label cannot say.
Sensible care rather than special care. Embroidery is stitched thread, so it handles ordinary laundering — but it does not respond well to heat applied straight to it, or to being caught against zips and fastenings in an overloaded machine.
It depends far more on how the garment is used and looked after than on the garment itself. One worn daily in a physical role and one worn twice a week at a reception desk will not reach the same point at the same time, so the useful measure is whether it still looks right — not how old it is.
Yes, and it is the most common arrangement. It works best where staff have actually been given the care guidance rather than left to work it out, because home routines vary far more than most organisations expect.
Deal with it while it is fresh, and follow the instructions for that garment rather than a general remedy. More permanent damage is done by an aggressive attempt to remove something than by the mark itself.
It helps, particularly across multiple sites. Keep it short, issue it with the uniform rather than months afterwards, and make sure it says who to tell when a garment needs replacing. That last line is the one most standards leave out.
Worth deciding explicitly. In most organisations the individual launders while the organisation sets the standard, supplies the guidance and handles replacement. Where none of that is written down it defaults to whoever happens to care most, which is not a system.
Avery is cut for a contemporary, slightly tapered fit that flatters without restricting movement. Prefer a relaxed fit or planning to layer? Size up.
| Model — Women's | 5'7", wearing size S |
| Model — Men's | 6'1", wearing size L |
| Fit | True to size, tapered body |
| Length | Hip-length, V-neckline |
| Chest (CM) | Body Length | Sleeve | |
|---|---|---|---|
| XXS | 81–86 | 58 | 30.5 |
| XS | 86–91 | 60 | 31.5 |
| S | 91–97 | 62 | 32.5 |
| M | 97–102 | 64 | 33.5 |
| L | 102–107 | 66 | 34.5 |
| XL | 107–114 | 68 | 35.5 |
| 2XL | 114–122 | 70 | 36.5 |
| 3XL | 122–132 | 72 | 37.5 |
| 4XL | 132–142 | 74 | 38.5 |
