Importing home textiles from China: thread counts, shrinkage and the claims you can defend

Home textiles look like the gentlest category on the list — no electronics, no moving parts, no toy-safety regime. What it has instead is marketing language with legal weight. Thread count, "100% cotton", "hotel quality", organic claims: every phrase on the packaging is either testable or indefensible, and the market-surveillance authorities that police fibre labels read bedding packaging for sport. The buyer's job is to sell nothing the lab cannot confirm.

Where home textiles classify

The category's home heading is HS 6302 — bed linen, table linen, toilet and kitchen linen: sheets, duvet covers, pillowcases, tablecloths, towels. The classification method applies with textile-specific twists:

• Knitted or woven matters here too — the apparel split (knits like HS 6109 versus the woven headings) reaches into linen, with knitted and woven articles subdividing differently.
• Fibre rules the subdivision. Cotton, synthetic and blends classify apart, so the fibre composition is a tariff input, not just a label line.
• Filled articles are different animals. Duvets, comforters and pillows — anything stuffed — classify away from flat linen, and the filling material raises its own questions.
• Curtains, cushion covers and throws sit in neighbouring headings; a "bedding set" that mixes flat linen with a filled comforter is the set-versus-pieces question again, and your broker should rule on it before the bundle is priced.

Claims that must survive a lab

This category's compliance file is mostly about what the label and listing say:

• Fibre content — regulated wording in most destinations, testable to the percentage, and the top source of textile-label enforcement. The spec, the test report and the label must agree.
• Thread count — countable under standard methods, and counted differently by honest and dishonest mills (plied yarns being the classic inflation trick). Specify the counting method in the order, or do not print the number.
• Organic and specialty claims — organic cotton, bamboo-derived fibres and similar carry certification schemes with chain-of-custody paperwork, and several markets regulate what "bamboo" may even be called when it is processed viscose. If the certificate chain does not reach your specific order, the claim does not either.
• Flammability — nightwear-adjacent and some furnishing textiles face flammability rules in several destinations; which rules apply is a destination question per the clearance guide.

The pattern is the kitchenware discipline transplanted: the claim decides the test, the test report names the factory and the order, and the paperwork is collected before the deposit.

Shrinkage, colourfastness and the physics of returns

Two numbers generate most home-textile returns, and both are contract terms if you make them so:

• Dimensional stability — cotton shrinks when washed; the question is how much and whether the cut compensated for it. Agree the maximum shrinkage and the wash method it is measured under, and size the cut accordingly — a fitted sheet that fits before the first wash is not a fitted sheet.
• Colourfastness — to washing, to rubbing, to light. Dark and saturated colours on bedding meet white washing machines in the customer's home; the inspection should include fastness checks against the agreed grades, and the report should show them.

Add the quiet ones: seam strength on fitted-sheet corners, zipper quality on duvet covers per the bags hardware lesson, and smell — finishing chemicals that survive packing will greet the customer at the unboxing.

The money: weight, compression and sets

Textiles compress, which makes this one of the categories where packing choices visibly move freight: vacuum-packing changes carton counts, but over-compression creases sateen weaves into a returns problem. Price both packing options. Then run each SKU through the landed-cost structure in the calculator — duty on the confirmed code per your broker, freight per the packing method, testing and inspection as line items — and compare on the per-set landed figure, with the set-versus-pieces classification settled first.

Labelling rules, flammability scope and duty treatment vary by destination and by the article's exact construction — treat this as the question list and confirm specifics with your customs broker before production. To begin, describe the article — fibre, construction, filled or flat, the claims you want to print, destination — and get the likely headings and the testing checklist in one brief.