The Complete Guide to Caring for Alpaca Wool Products

May 25, 2026

Alpaca is not difficult to look after, but it is unforgiving of two specific things: heat and agitation. Get those right and a garment will last years. Get them wrong once and you can felt something permanently in a single wash. This is everything we tell customers who ask.

Washing

Hand washing is the safest method and takes about ten minutes of actual attention.

Fill a basin with cool to lukewarm water — under 30°C, or comfortable on the inside of your wrist. Add a small amount of wool-safe detergent and swirl it through before the garment goes in. Never use ordinary laundry powder or anything labelled biological: those contain protease enzymes that digest protein, and alpaca is protein. They will eat the fibre.

Submerge the garment and leave it. Ten to twenty minutes is plenty. Do not rub, wring, twist or scrub. Felting happens when heat, moisture and agitation combine to lock the fibre scales together, and it cannot be undone — a felted jumper is a smaller, stiffer jumper forever. Squeeze gently if you must, then rinse in water at the same temperature as the wash. A sudden temperature change is itself a form of shock, so keep the rinse water level with the wash water.

To get the water out, press the garment against the side of the basin, then lay it flat on a towel, roll the towel up like a swiss roll and press. Do not wring it out.

Machine washing: only if the care label specifically permits it, only on a genuine wool cycle with a cold wash and the lowest spin available, and ideally inside a mesh laundry bag. Our socks are more forgiving than knitwear here, but the label is the authority, not this article.

How often: less than you think. Alpaca knitwear does not need washing after every wear. Airing a garment overnight between wears deals with most of what a wash would, and every wash is a small amount of wear. Like all natural fibres, alpaca tends to hold less odour than polyester does, so a hat or jumper can go a good while between washes. Spot clean small marks rather than washing the whole thing.

Drying

Always dry flat. Alpaca has less crimp and less memory than sheep's wool, which means it does not spring back into shape as readily — hang a wet alpaca jumper on a line or a hanger and the weight of the water will pull it long, and it will stay that way.

Lay the garment on a dry towel or a flat drying rack, out of direct sunlight and away from heaters, radiators and hot cars. While it is still damp, reshape it: square up the shoulders, pat the body back to its proper width, straighten the cuffs and hem, and match sleeve to sleeve. This is the moment where shape is decided, and it takes thirty seconds.

Turn the garment over once it is partly dry so the underside airs. Alpaca has a moisture regain of around 8 percent against roughly 16 percent for sheep's wool, so it takes up less water and dries faster than a comparable merino piece — but thick knitwear still wants a full day or two. Make sure it is completely dry before it goes away, because damp storage invites mould and moths both.

Never tumble dry. A tumble dryer is heat plus agitation, which is the exact recipe for felting.

Storage and moths

Fold alpaca, never hang it. Hanging stretches shoulders and pulls the body out of shape over months. Store folded in a cool, dry, dark place.

Moths are the real enemy of a stored alpaca wardrobe, and the important thing to understand is that clothes moths lay in dark, undisturbed places and their larvae feed on protein fibres — with a particular appetite for anything carrying traces of sweat, skin or food. So the single most effective anti-moth measure is simple: wash or air everything before it goes away for the season. Storing a garment dirty is an invitation.

Beyond that, use sealed containers or zip bags for long storage rather than open shelves, add cedar or lavender if you like (they help, they are not a guarantee, and cedar needs sanding occasionally to keep working), avoid naphthalene mothballs on anything you intend to wear, and take stored knitwear out two or three times over winter to shake it and look at it. Damage found early is a repair; damage found in September is a bin.

Pilling — why it happens and what to do

Pills are small balls of tangled fibre that form where a garment rubs against itself or against something else — under the arms, along the sides, at the cuffs, where a bag strap sits. They are caused by shorter fibre ends working loose from the yarn and rolling up under friction.

Some early pilling on a new garment is normal and is not a fault. It is the short fibres that were always going to come out coming out. It settles down after the first few wears and washes, and a garment that has been de-pilled once or twice usually stops doing it much.

How to deal with it:

A wool comb or sweater comb is the gentlest option and our default recommendation. Lay the garment flat, hold the fabric taut with one hand, and draw the comb in one direction only with light pressure.
A battery fabric shaver is faster and good for large flat areas. Keep the garment flat and taut, keep the head moving, and go lightly — pressing hard into a knit can cut the yarn and make a hole.
A pumice-style sweater stone works but is aggressive; use it on hardwearing pieces, not fine knits.
Never use a razor blade or scissors on a knit. One slip and you have cut a stitch, which will run.

De-pill before washing rather than after, and be sensible about frequency — every removal takes a little fibre with it.

When to dry clean

Rarely, but sometimes it is the right call: structured or tailored pieces with linings and shoulder padding, anything with a dry-clean-only label, and any large stain — oil, wine, ink — that you do not want to make permanent by attacking it yourself at home. Ask for wool-appropriate cleaning and tell the cleaner what the fibre is. For everything else, hand washing is gentler and cheaper than dry cleaning.

Reviving a flattened garment

Knitwear that has been folded in a drawer all summer often comes out looking compressed and lifeless. It usually just needs moisture and air, not a wash.

Hang it in the bathroom while you shower, or in a shaded, breezy spot outside for a few hours — the steam or the humidity relaxes the fibre and the crushed areas open up on their own. A very light mist of water followed by drying flat and reshaping does the same job. If you need to press, use a steam iron on the wool setting held above the fabric, never resting on it, and never press a cable or a rib flat or you will kill the texture that makes it. A proper wash, dried flat and reshaped while damp, is the full reset when airing alone is not enough.

Socks specifically

Socks live a harder life than knitwear and the rules bend a little. Turn them inside out before washing — most of the wear and the grit is on the inside. Wash cool with a wool-safe detergent, in a mesh bag if they are going in the machine, and check the care label. Do not use fabric softener on any wool sock: it coats the fibre and flattens the loft that makes the sock comfortable in the first place.

Dry socks flat, or over a rack — do not peg them by the cuff, which stretches the elastic. Never tumble dry them, which is how good socks end up child-sized.

Rotate your pairs rather than wearing the same one repeatedly, and give each pair a day off between wears. It sounds fussy and it roughly doubles the life of a sock drawer. If you want more heavy-wear pairs in rotation, The Sock Drawer Reset is three pairs in three weights at $119, which is $15 less than buying them apart.

Finally, mend early. A thin patch at the heel takes five minutes to darn. A hole takes considerably longer and never looks as good.

Where our fibre comes from

Our fleece, yarn and carded bumps are grown on our own herd at Mulgoa in western Sydney, shorn here and sold undyed. We can tell you which animal grew it and what it tested at. The knitwear and socks we sell are made in Peru and Australia and we always tell you which — we do not blur the two.