How to Fold a Dress Shirt for Travel

There’s nothing worse than reaching a destination only to find your dress shirts an unwearable mess of wrinkles. While most hotels do offer an in-house iron, it’s still a pain having to painstakingly fix shirts that were perfectly crisp and crease-free before they entered your luggage.

Lucky for you, there is a way how you can prepare your dress shirts for travel: by folding them the smart way.

In this article, we’ll run you through how to properly fold a dress shirt.

1. Button it up

Wrangling an unbuttoned dress shirt is a pain at the best of times, but particularly when you’re trying to fold one evenly. The first step in how to effectively fold a dress shirt for travel is simply by buttoning it up. Don’t get lazy and only do a few buttons, either. For this method to work, your shirt should be fully buttoned from hem to collar.

2. Lay it out properly

When prepping your dress shirt for folding, ensure you’re laying it out nice and flat. A clear bench or even the floor will do nicely. If you try folding your dress shirt on an uneven surface like your bed or couch you won’t achieve the right results.

3. Fold the arms

Now that your dress shirt is prepped and ready to fold, it’s time to dive in. It’s recommended you start with the arms of the shirt. Focusing on one sleeve first, fold your shirt along the crease where the shoulder meets the rest of the fabric. Be sure to keep the sleeve nice and straight to avoid any excess creasing.

Your fold should result in your sleeve resting diagonally across the back of the shirt. From there, fold the sleeve at the elbow so that the cuff of the shirt is pointing toward the collar.

Repeat with the other sleeve.

4. Fold the sides

Your next step on how to fold your dress shirt is to take in the sides so that it’s the right size for packing. Taking your rectangular-shaped folded shirt, fold each side of it towards the center – where your shoulder blades would be if you were actually wearing the shirt.

5. Fold up in thirds

The final step is to fold your dress shirt into a square. How you’ll do this is to fold your dress shirt from the hem up, sectioning it into thirds. This means you’ll fold the material up twice from the bottom of your shirt. Make sure to smooth your shirt out as you perform this step. Any stray wrinkles should be worked out before you fold.

Store your clothes correctly

Now you know how to fold your dress shirts for travel, what about once you reach your destination? It can be tempting to leave your shirts folded once you settle in, but this would be a mistake. The longer they stay folded, the more obvious the folds will be when worn.

Instead, ensure you take your shirts out and hang them up at your destination. This will ensure any stray wrinkles won’t set in for the long haul and keep your shirts looking their best.

Should you fold or roll your clothes for travel?

This is an age-old debate that doesn’t look likely to die any time soon! Should you fold or roll your clothes for travel? The answer really depends on the clothes you’re packing.

Rolling clothes does save you space and makes it easier to pick clothes out of a bag at a glance. However, rolling clothes likely to crease or wrinkle will give you a heck of a hard time. When packing things like dress shirts, for instance, you should always opt for folding over rolling. Folding will keep your shirts neater and crisper throughout your travels, ensuring you don’t have to pull out the hotel iron once you reach your destination.

If, however, you’re packing more casual shirts and other materials, rolling might be the best course of action for you.

Folding dress shirts needn’t be a headache

Folding a dress shirt can be a bit tricky, but it’s not impossible. With the right technique, your dress shirts will travel just as well as you do, reaching your destination wrinkle-free and ready to wear.

Now you know how to fold a dress shirt for travel.