You don’t need to wash Engel products before wearing them for the first time. After the knitting process, all fabrics are washed to rinse out any excess dye residues, in the first place, and secondly to remove knitting oils and dirt.

Engel recommend that you wash their wool and wool/silk fabrics as little as possible. Wool regenerates in oxygen-rich air of its own accord and so it can also just be well-aired.

Wool Fleece
Only hand-wash fleece, even if the brand label suggest machine washing. Please look below for hand-washing advice on how to wash your fleece.

Wool & Wool/Silk
Washing by hand is recommended or possibly machine washing if you trust your machine to keep the same wash and rinse temperature throughout. In any case, you should use a wool detergent because these do not contain any enzymes (protease) and are pH-neutral. This is essential for your washing machine’s wool programme. However, a gentle baby shampoo can also sometimes be a good substitute when it comes to a quick hand-wash.

Leggings
Engel recommends hand washing. We do wash our wool in the machine on a cold deliciate/wool wash with very little spinning. The key is to keep the temperature the same and to pull the leggings back into shape when they come out of the wash, otherwise the legs will become shorter. Don't wring them, just pull each leg to stretch the fibres and prevent shrinking. For more on care please look at the care section!

Hand-washing
Briefly swirl around a little in plenty of luke-warm water, squeezing gently, using a mild detergent specially designed for wool, then rinse in water of the same temperature. Do not put in the tumble drier or on radiators as this will make the wool hard, brittle and felted. We recommend squeezing (not wringing) the products in a towel after rinsing, pulling them into shape while wet and drying them flat.

DO NOT: Rub, wring out or spin, expose to changes in temperature (first warm water then cold, or vice versa). Do not soak.

Machine-washing
Only if your machine has previously been tested to handle natural, untreated wools.

Select the Wool Wash/Hand Wash programme. “Cold” or max. 30 °C in the machine. This will keep your wool garments soft, elastic and absorbent. With machine-washing too, it is very important that the temperature is the same for both washing and rinsing and that you check that a low spin speed is either part of the programme or can be set manually – max. 400-500 rpm. You should also use a wool-wash detergent for machine-washing, as silk and wool are protein fibres which should basically be cared for with products in the slightly acid pH range (below 7 pH value). These products do not remove the natural oil and protect the fibres at the same time.