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Curtains, bedsheets and towels online: describe the fabric so the buyer is not surprised
How to write GSM, thread count, shrinkage and wash care in plain words for curtains, bedsheets and towels sold online, with the close-up photographs that answer what a buyer cannot feel.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
- What do the numbers mean to the buyer?
- Thread count is where honest sellers lose
- Wash one before you write a word about care
- Photographs that do the feeling for them
- For example: a Panipat curtain seller and the "too short" complaints
- Two guide pages, and the first line of one
- Run the wash test on one lot
"The sheet felt thinner than it looked." "The curtain stops a foot above the floor." "The towel left fluff all over me." Few of these complaints say the product was faulty. They say it was not what the buyer pictured. Selling home textiles online means describing fabric the way the buyer will meet it at home: its weight and feel, the first wash, and how it hangs. Give the number and the plain words side by side, then prove it with a close-up photograph.
What do the numbers mean to the buyer?
Sellers list GSM, thread count and sizes because the trade runs on them. Buyers read them as answers to other questions. Keep the number, then add the sentence the buyer was looking for.
| On the label | What the buyer is really asking | Write it like this |
|---|---|---|
| Towel GSM | Will it feel thick, and will it dry on my balcony in the rains? | "Heavy and plush; give it a full day to dry in humid weather" |
| Thread count | Will it feel soft or crisp, and will it pill? | Name the weave: "percale, cool and crisp" or "sateen, smooth with a slight sheen" |
| Fabric content | Is it really cotton? | The blend exactly as the label states, and nothing more |
| Curtain fabric | Will it stop the morning sun? | "Sheer: daytime privacy, lets light in" or "Blackout lined: keeps a bedroom dim after sunrise" |
| Curtain length | Will it reach the floor? | Finished length from the top of the eyelet to the hem, in feet and in cm |
| Bedsheet size | Will it tuck in on my mattress? | Sheet size, the mattress it fits, and the depth a fitted sheet covers |
| Wash care | Will it shrink or bleed? | What happened when you washed one yourself |
Thread count is where honest sellers lose
Thread count is the number buyers have learned to compare, and it is the easiest one to inflate. Some sellers count each ply of a twisted yarn as a separate thread, and a modest sheet then carries a big figure the buyer finds out about on the first night.
Do not answer with a bigger number. List the count you can stand behind, then spend your words on the weave and the feel. Where a marketplace makes you fill the field, fill it honestly and let the close-up photograph argue for you.
Wash one before you write a word about care
Cotton shrinks, and new dark colours can release dye in the first few washes. Both become returns only when the buyer was not told.
So test it yourself. Take one bedsheet, one towel and one curtain panel from each lot and measure them. Wash them in a home machine, dry them on a line, measure again, and note the colour of the rinse water. Then write what happened: "Shrinks a little in length after the first hot wash, so we cut it long." In an illustrative test, a 90-inch sheet comes out 2 inches shorter after the first hot wash, and the rinse water turns pale pink on the first dark-colour wash. Those two lines belong on the listing. Write "pre-shrunk" only if your own test shows it.
Put wash care on the first screen of the listing, as an instruction a busy person will follow: "First wash alone, in cold water. Dry in shade."
Photographs that do the feeling for them
A buyer cannot rub the fabric between finger and thumb, so the photographs have to. Put a one-rupee coin beside the weave, and the size of the threads is obvious without a single adjective. For curtains, hold a panel against a sunny window, half sheer and half lined, and let the buyer see how much light each lets through. Towels need two shots. One shows the loops from the side, the other a folded towel on a kitchen scale with the reading in view.
Shoot colour in daylight beside a window, name the shade plainly ("dusty pink, not baby pink"), and say on the listing if shades vary between dye lots.
For example: a Panipat curtain seller and the "too short" complaints
Imagine a home furnishing maker in Panipat that sells eyelet curtains on its own website and on a marketplace. Its listing reads "Door curtain, 7 feet, set of 2", beside a photograph of a wide living-room window.
Two complaints keep arriving. Some buyers find the curtain stops short of the floor, because the 7 feet was the cut length before the eyelet header was folded. Others hang one set across a wide window and find both panels stretched flat, with no folds at all.
The maker did not change the stitching. It changed the size line. The listing now gives the finished length from the top of the eyelet to the hem, and the width of each panel. One line tells the buyer to measure the rod, not the window, and to choose panels that together run one and a half to two times its width. A photograph shows the same window hung flat and folded. Now some buyers send a photo of their rod with a tape across it before ordering. In this illustration, "too short" complaints fall from about one in ten orders to a handful a month, while width complaints take longer to go.
Two guide pages, and the first line of one
The questions behind the table belong on guide pages on your own site, one question each, titled the way a buyer would type it:
- "How long should my curtains be? Measuring a rod for eyelet curtains"
- "What does GSM mean on a towel, and which weight dries on a balcony?"
Each page answers its question in the first two sentences, then explains. The curtain guide, for instance, opens like this: "Measure from the top of the rod to where you want the hem: the floor, or just above it. That is your finished length; then measure the rod's width and double it for soft folds."
An answer that short is the kind a search engine or an AI assistant can quote.
Run the wash test on one lot
Pick one lot from the godown and run the wash test: one sheet, one towel, one curtain panel, measured before and after. Write what happened into the care line of every listing from that lot. Then write the curtain guide, because "will it reach the floor?" is the question with a number for an answer. Home textiles are one of the trades on our e-commerce sales and marketing page; the guide pages are search engine optimisation work, and tell us what you need if you want a hand with them.
