Catch it while it’s fresh if you can. Figure out what kind of makeup it is, work some dish soap (or makeup remover, for waterproof stuff) into the mark, then wash the towel warm. The one thing to avoid is the dryer. Keep the towel out of it until the stain is gone, or you may be stuck with it.

We sell wholesale towels and washcloths to hotels, salons and spas, and makeup is one of the stains their laundry staff ask us about most. What works for them works at home too.

How to Remove Makeup Stains From Towels

These steps handle most makeup on bath towels, hand towels and washcloths. Mascara, foundation and lipstick each have their own quirks, which are covered further down.

1. Get the excess off first. A butter knife or an old spoon will scrape away anything thick or crusted. Powder is the exception: shake it off while the towel is still dry, since a splash of water turns it into paste. If the makeup is still wet, blot it with a paper towel. Rubbing just pushes it deeper.
2. Work out what you’re dealing with. Anything creamy or oily (most foundation, concealer, lipstick) needs dish soap. Waterproof and long-wear products need makeup remover before the soap. Plain powder usually comes out with laundry detergent.
3. Pre-treat the stain. About a teaspoon of grease-cutting dish soap is plenty. Rub it in with your fingertips or an old soft toothbrush, then leave it for 10 to 15 minutes. Don’t let it dry out on the fabric, so add a few drops of water if you need to. For waterproof makeup, dab on micellar water or an oil-based remover and wait five minutes before the soap goes on.
4. Flip the towel and rinse from the back. Running warm water through the back of the fabric pushes the makeup out the same way it went in. Rinse from the front and you’re driving it further into the loops.
5. Wash it on the warmest setting the care label allows, with other towels. Then, before it goes anywhere near a dryer, take it to a window and look. Wet cotton hides faint marks, so if you honestly can’t tell, hang it up and check again once it’s dry.

Why so much fuss over a smudge? Makeup is made to last all day on skin. The pigment sits in oils, waxes and silicones that water mostly slides off, which is why rinsing a foundation smear under the tap tends to turn a small smear into a big, pale one. To remove makeup from towels, you have to get the oil out first. The wash can do the rest.

How to Remove Set-In Makeup Stains

Found a stain that’s already been washed, or worse, dried? It’s usually still fixable. It just takes patience instead of 15 minutes.

Scrape off anything crusted on top, then work dish soap into the stain and leave it for half an hour (makeup remover first if the product was waterproof). After that comes the part that does most of the work, which is a long soak. Stir a capful of liquid laundry detergent into roughly two gallons of hot water, push the towel under and leave it overnight, up to about eight hours. The strong detergent solution has time to get into the fibers and dissolve the oil that’s still holding the color. For white or colorfast towels, you can soak in oxygen bleach instead, mixed the way the package says.

Really stubborn, greasy marks sometimes need a dry-cleaning spot solvent like Carbona or K2r before the soak. Open a window and follow the label.

Wash warm, air dry, check. It’s normal to go through this two or three times with a heat-set stain. If the third round changes nothing, that stain probably isn’t going anywhere. The towel still makes a perfectly good cleaning rag. Blood, rust and hair dye need different methods, which are in our guide on how to remove stains from towels.

When the stain isn’t makeup

Sometimes a spot won’t budge because it was never makeup in the first place.

Pale or orange spots on a colored towel are almost always benzoyl peroxide, the active ingredient in a lot of acne washes and creams. It bleaches the dye right out of the cotton, so there’s nothing left to wash out. We go into this more in what are bleach-resistant towels. Yellow or orange marks on white towels are a different story. Those tend to be sunscreen reacting with minerals in the water, or with chlorine bleach. Leave the chlorine alone and try a fabric-safe rust remover. Our post on what causes towels to change color lists a few more culprits, and self-tanner gets its own walkthrough in how to get spray tan off salon towels.

How to Get Makeup Out of White Towels

White towels are unforgiving. Every trace of foundation shows. On the plus side, white cotton can put up with harsher treatment than colored towels, which gives you more options. To remove makeup stains from white towels, go in this order and stop once the stain’s gone:

1. Dish soap or liquid detergent, to get the oil out
2. Makeup remover, micellar water or rubbing alcohol for waterproof and long-wear formulas
3. 3% hydrogen peroxide, or a soak in oxygen bleach, for the faint shadow that’s often left behind
4. Chlorine bleach, and only if the care label allows it

Hydrogen peroxide (the ordinary brown drugstore bottle) is good at that last ghost of color. Dab it on, wait 10 to 15 minutes, wash. It won’t touch oil, though, so it only helps once the soap has done its part. People also swear by baking soda pastes. When those work, it’s really the dish soap and peroxide mixed into them doing the job.

For keeping whites bright more generally, see how to keep white towels white.

Does Bleach Remove Makeup Stains?

Partly, and that’s the problem. Chlorine bleach can fade the color of a makeup stain, but the oil underneath stays put. Bleach too early and you can end up with a clean-looking towel with a patch that slowly goes gray or yellow as the leftover oil collects dirt. At home, save chlorine bleach for the very end, on white cotton that’s labeled bleach-safe, after the dish soap has done its job.

Commercial laundries are a different situation. Many hotels and spas bleach their white towels as a matter of routine, and bleach deals with makeup pigment just fine as long as someone degreases the stains before the load goes in. White cotton can be washed at 160 to 180°F in that kind of program.

Colored towels are where bleach causes trouble, since it strips out the dye along with the stain. Salons and spas that want dark towels and still need to bleach them usually switch to bleach-resistant towels. They’re dyed to keep their color through repeated bleach washes, which should run cooler, around 120 to 150°F.

Safety note: Never mix chlorine bleach with vinegar, ammonia, rubbing alcohol or any other cleaner, because some combinations release toxic gases. Hydrogen peroxide and vinegar shouldn’t be mixed either. If you’ve already used alcohol or peroxide on a stain, rinse the towel well before it goes into a bleach load.

How to Remove Different Types of Makeup From Towels

The way you get makeup out of towels is roughly the same for every stain, but what you start with depends on what’s holding the color in place.

Makeup type	Examples	What holds it	Start with
Powder	Pressed powder, blush, eyeshadow, bronzer	Loose pigment	Shake it off dry, then detergent
Water-based or oil-free	Many liquid foundations, tinted moisturizer	Pigment in a light film	Liquid laundry detergent
Cream or oil-based	Cream foundation, concealer, cream blush	Oils	Grease-cutting dish soap
Wax-based	Lipstick, lip balm, pencil liners	Waxes and dense pigment	Scrape, then dish soap or rubbing alcohol
Long-wear or waterproof	Waterproof mascara, long-wear foundation, liquid lipstick	Film-formers and silicones	Makeup remover or micellar water, then dish soap

How to Get Mascara Out of Towels

Mascara is built to survive tears, sweat and humid weather. The pigment is nearly black, and it’s held in waxes and film-formers that shrug off water. That’s why those gray streaks on a white washcloth barely change under the tap.

To remove mascara stains from towels, start by blotting gently. Rubbing smears the pigment into a much bigger gray patch. Then dab on micellar water or an oil-based makeup remover and give it about five minutes to break down the film. Dish soap goes on next, then a rinse from the back and a warm wash. If there’s still a faint shadow afterward, try working an enzyme laundry detergent into the spot and leaving it for 15 minutes or so. Expect waterproof mascara to take two rounds. Gel and kohl eyeliner behave the same way.

How to Get Foundation Out of Towels

No other makeup varies as much as foundation, so check the bottle before you start. Powder foundation should be shaken off while the towel is dry, and any leftover tint treated with detergent. Oil-free liquids usually come out with liquid detergent. A dab of plain shaving foam works too, since it’s basically whipped soap (use foam, not gel). Cream and oil-based foundations need grease-cutting dish soap. Long-wear formulas need makeup remover first.

A faint beige ring after the wash is leftover oil, not pigment. One more round of dish soap usually clears it.

How to Get Foundation Out of White Towels

White towels add one extra problem: the tan shadow left behind after the oil is gone. So work in two stages. First get the oil out with dish soap, twice if it was a heavy, oil-based formula. Then go after the color with 3% hydrogen peroxide, or soak the towel in oxygen bleach for a few hours.

Watch out for foundations with SPF. Some sunscreen ingredients turn yellow or orange when they meet chlorine bleach, so stick with an oxygen soak for tinted sunscreen and SPF foundation.

How to Get Lipstick Out of Towels

Lipstick is basically colored wax. Warm water softens the wax and spreads the color, so take off as much as you can while it’s still solid. Lift it away with a dull knife, scooping rather than dragging so the color doesn’t spread through the pile. Work dish soap into what’s left and leave it for 10 to 15 minutes. If there’s still some red or pink, dab on rubbing alcohol with a cotton ball and blot with a clean cloth as it lifts. Try the alcohol on a corner first if the towel is colored.

Liquid lipstick is a long-wear product, so treat it like waterproof mascara and start with makeup remover. You’ll probably come across the old hairspray trick. It worked better when hairsprays had more alcohol in them. A lot of today’s formulas add resins that can leave a sticky film, and rubbing alcohol does the job without that.

How to Get Makeup Out of Washcloths

Washcloths and face towels end up with more makeup on them than anything else, because taking makeup off is what they’re for. Clean them the same way as bath towels and keep them out of the dryer until the marks are gone.

Their size is actually an advantage. Toss makeup washcloths into their own bin as they’re used, pre-treat the whole batch at once and wash them together. Just don’t let a damp pile sit around for days. The stains set, and the cloths start to smell.

If you’re buying washcloths for makeup removal, color is the main decision. White shows every smudge but handles hot washes and bleach. Dark ones, like charcoal gray or black, keep mascara and eyeliner out of sight. Bleach-resistant washcloths let you have color and still bleach them. Our wholesale washcloth towels come in all three, sold by the dozen.

How to Prevent Makeup Stains on Towels

At home, a few small habits prevent most of it:

• Take your makeup off with cleanser or remover before you reach for a towel.
• Pat your face dry instead of scrubbing.
• Keep two or three dark washcloths just for makeup.
• Treat any stain the same day.

Hotels, salons and spas deal with this on a bigger scale, and the simplest fix is keeping makeup off white towels in the first place. A lot of hotels now leave a dark washcloth in each bathroom, often with a little tag saying it’s for makeup. Salons and spas can assign one towel color to facial work, so staff know which towels need pre-treating. Where towels get bleached, bleach-resistant washcloths and hand towels keep their color.

Some properties charge guests for stained towels instead. One Mile at a Time reported one hotel’s $20 to $50 per-towel fee, and a $150-per-towel makeup fee drew criticism online. A dark makeup cloth costs much less than a disputed charge. Whatever you choose, keep enough spare stock that stained towels can be pulled without running short. Many hotels keep three sets per room: one in use, one in the laundry and one on the shelf.

FAQ

How do you remove makeup stains from white towels?

Dish soap first, to get the oil out. After that, hydrogen peroxide or an oxygen bleach soak takes care of the leftover color. Chlorine bleach is a last resort.

Does bleach remove makeup stains? 

It fades them but leaves the oil behind, so degrease first.

How do you get makeup out of washcloths? 

Treat them like any towel, with dish soap, a rinse from the back and a warm wash. It’s easiest to do them in batches.

How do you remove set-in makeup stains?

Treat the stain again with dish soap, then soak the towel overnight in hot water with a capful of detergent. On whites, oxygen bleach works for the soak. Give it two or three rounds before you give up on it.

How do you get lipstick out of towels? 

Scrape off the wax, use dish soap, and finish with rubbing alcohol if any color is left.

How do you get mascara out of towels? 

Makeup remover or micellar water first to break down the film, then dish soap and a warm wash. Waterproof mascara usually needs a second go.

How do you get foundation out of towels? 

That depends on the formula. Detergent works for powder and oil-free foundation, dish soap for oil-based, and remover first for long-wear.

How do you get foundation out of white towels? 

Two stages: dish soap for the oil, then peroxide or oxygen bleach for the tint. Skip chlorine if the foundation has SPF.

Can makeup stains become permanent? 

Yes, usually after a hot dryer cycle. Even then, a lot of them lift with repeated soaks. Benzoyl peroxide spots are different, because the dye itself is gone.

Should you wash makeup-stained towels in hot or cold water? 

Warm to hot, within the label. Makeup is oily, and oil comes out better in warm water. Cold water is the rule for blood and other protein stains, not makeup.