Sun drying of clothes is the most traditional way to dry your laundry, though in many countries sun drying is not the most common way to serve this job. Usually, this trend can be noticed in European and western countries; it is usually due to their cold weather.

In countries like India people usually dry clothes under the sun or in shade but for the last 1 decade, we can notice a slight shift in this trend. As commercial laundry service started coming up and people lack time to do their laundry, the use of machine drying (tumble drying) has come into play.

But the question is though sun drying is traditional but is it good also. What are the advantages and disadvantages of it? Should we look for a future without sun drying?

Life of Garments

Before putting the garment inside a drier or going for a commercial laundry service, check the instruction tag of the garment. There you will see many symbols having a different meaning, read the text next to it and only opt for drier if the garment is compatible with it. If we see it according to the Indian context most of the clothes which we wear are not compatible with tumble drying, it’s mainly because in India there is still no culture of heat drying of garments. Now take into account the variety of clothes in a load, commercial Laundromats can’t afford to run each piece in a different cycle according to the guided temperature. So usually if the load consist of 10 pieces and 5 of them are compatible for 40-degree heat, 2 are for 60 degrees and 3 are not compatible for heat drying then he will run all of them in one cycle which can be fine only for one type of garment but will destroy the life of other garments. With time one will notice thinning of cloth, folded area of collars of the shirt getting torn, etc. Especially woolen clothes which are not compatible with heat drying at all and have chances to catch fire or get shrink during the heating process are a major concern.

However all the garments are compatible with sun drying and shade drying, hence sun drying is best for the life of garments. Especially for Indians who can afford sunlight.

Good for Health

According to the study, sun drying helps as one of the best ways to destroy germs. When clothes are dried under the sun, the sun acts as a “natural sanitizer”. It kills the bacterial and reduces their reproduction rate.

Fast

Sun-drying or shade drying needs time, first, you have to hang the clothes then it may take hours to dry depending on the weather conditions. However, if you don’t have time, the dryer is the most convenient option. You just need to put your wet laundry inside and let it dry for an hour meanwhile do whatever you want and receive them dry when you return. For people who don’t have time dryer works best.

Cost

Since you don’t have to buy a drier and spend money on electric bills and its maintenance, sun drying is the cheapest of all. At the same time, it reduces our dependence on electricity.

Weather Dependence

Sun drying of clothes is obviously weather dependent. If you don’t have sun or its raining you will be in trouble. That’s one of the biggest reasons for the success of driers in European countries as compared to Asian countries.

In short, we can conclude that sun drying is cheap at the same time healthy for you and for cloth. However, if you are looking for something fast and independent of weather then dryer is most suitable. So in the Indian context, we don’t see a future without sun drying, though machine drying can still exist the percentage will be less.