How to Clean a Felt Hat Without Ruining It

A good felt hat is a blocked piece of wool or fur felt holding a shape it was steamed into. Everything about cleaning one follows from that: heat and moisture make it movable, and movement is exactly what you are trying to avoid.

The routine: brush it

Ninety per cent of hat cleaning is brushing, and doing it regularly means nothing else is ever needed.

1. Use a soft-bristled hat brush. A clothes brush works; a stiff brush will pull the nap.
2. Brush anticlockwise, and only in that direction. Back-and-forth strokes rough up the surface and leave it looking tired.
3. Start at the left of the crown and work all the way round, then the brim, back to front.
4. For a light-coloured hat, brush after every few wears. For a dark one, whenever it looks dusty.

A lint roller lifts hair and fluff that a brush pushes around, and is worth keeping with the hat.

Marks and scuffs: a rubber sponge

A hat cleaning sponge — a soft rubber block, sold for exactly this — lifts surface grime that brushing leaves behind. Rub gently in one direction, then brush the hat afterwards to settle the nap.

A clean pencil eraser does the same job on a small scuff, and is what most people already have.

Grease and sweat marks

These are the two stains that actually matter, and both respond to absorption rather than washing.

1. Cover the mark generously with cornflour, talc or fuller's earth.
2. Leave it several hours, or overnight. The powder draws the oil out of the felt.
3. Brush it away thoroughly.
4. Repeat. Two or three cycles often lift a mark that looked permanent.

Only if that fails, try a barely damp cloth with the smallest amount of wool wash, worked in a tight circle and blotted immediately. Test it inside the crown first, where nobody will see the result.

The sweatband

The leather or grosgrain band inside is where a hat actually gets dirty. Fold it down and wipe with a cloth dampened with warm water and a drop of mild soap, then dry it thoroughly before folding it back.

Doing this every few months does more for a hat's life than anything else on this page.

Rain

Wool felt copes with rain perfectly well — that is what it was invented for. What matters is the drying:

• Shake the water off and blot with a towel. Do not rub.
• Turn the sweatband down so it dries too.
• Stand the hat on its crown, or on a form, away from radiators and direct sun. Heat shrinks felt and hardens it.
• Once dry, brush it and steam out any distortion.

Steaming out dents

Steam is the one tool that genuinely reshapes felt. Hold the hat in the steam from a kettle for a few seconds — long enough for the felt to feel relaxed and slightly damp, not soaked — then push the dent out with your fingers from inside and hold the shape until it cools.

Work in short bursts. Over-steaming softens the stiffener in the felt and a hat that has been drenched in steam repeatedly loses its crispness for good.

The same principle is what shapes a hat in the first place, which is described in wet felting a hat.

What not to do

• Do not wash or soak it. A submerged hat shrinks and will not come back.
• Do not put it in a washing machine or a dryer. That is how you deliberately felt things.
• Do not use solvents casually. They can strip colour out of dyed felt in seconds.
• Do not hang it on a peg by the brim. It stretches the crown out of round. Store it upside down on its crown, or on a hat stand.
• Do not leave it in a hot car. Heat plus a compressed shape equals a permanently distorted hat.

When to hand it over

A hatter can clean, reblock, re-stiffen and re-bind a hat for a fraction of the price of a good replacement, and it is worth it for anything with sentimental or real value. Anything involving a large stain on a pale hat, or a crown that has lost its shape entirely, is their job rather than yours.