shirts 3-5: trousers 7-10: suits 12-18: coats 12-20
Advanced options
"Dry clean only" on the label often means "we didn't test it for washing", not "washing destroys it": plain-weave wool, silk and viscose frequently survive careful cold hand-washing or a wool cycle in a mesh bag (test-patch first, air dry flat): structured garments are the real dry-clean cases: suits, tailored coats, anything with canvassing, shoulder pads or linings that shrink at different rates. The suit trick: you rarely need the CLEAN: you need the press: brushing + airing + a GBP 3-5 press-only service keeps a suit crisp for months between actual cleans (over-cleaning ages cloth faster than wearing it).
What The Dry Cleaning Calculator Works Out
- Annual spend: items per month x average price x 12. UK prices run about GBP 3 to GBP 5 for a laundered shirt, GBP 7 to GBP 10 for trousers, GBP 12 to GBP 18 for a two-piece suit and up to GBP 20 for a coat, so four items a month at a GBP 9 average is over GBP 400 a year.
- What actually needs it: structured tailoring (suits, blazers, tailored coats with canvassing, shoulder pads and mixed-shrinkage linings), pleated and interfaced pieces, heavy embellishment and anything vintage. Knitwear, plain silk and viscose usually survive a cold hand wash or a mesh-bagged wool cycle, and down jackets are better washed and tumbled with tennis balls because solvent strips their loft.
- Cutting the bill: press-only services for suits between genuine cleans, a clothes brush and overnight airing after each wear, spot-cleaning small marks, and loyalty or bulk rates from about five items. Halving frequency through care beats hunting cheaper cleaners and suits the cloth.
- Shirt service price (advanced): what your cleaner charges per laundered shirt (GBP 3 to GBP 5). The shirt card shows the yearly cost of outsourced ironing, which is defensible as a time purchase and should be costed as one.
- Items that only need a press (advanced): how many of your monthly items are crumpled rather than dirty. Swapping a GBP 12 to GBP 18 suit clean for a GBP 3 to GBP 5 press is the biggest single saving on the page, and over-cleaning ages cloth faster than wearing it.
- Items you could wash at home (advanced): the knitwear, silk and viscose basics whose "dry clean only" label means "we did not test washing" rather than "washing destroys it". Test-patch first and dry flat.
- Loyalty or bulk discount (advanced): the percentage off your cleaner gives for volume or a loyalty card, applied to the cleaning spend.
- Collection and delivery (advanced): app-based collection services add a convenience margin per order; the charge x orders per month x 12 is added to the all-in figure. Independent cleaners frequently undercut supermarket counters and apps alike.
- All-in, saving and optimised spend (advanced): the full yearly bill with discount and delivery, the saving from moving items to pressing and home washing, and what the bill would be after those changes.