Discoloured Towels, Pillow Cases and Sheets

Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum

Help Support Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Happy Harpie

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
85
Reaction score
2
Greetings all;
Hope everyone survived the 4th July weekend. Has anyone ever had their towels, pillow cases and sheets discoloured due to make-up or facial cream, etc that a guest uses. This has happened last year and again twice in two weeks. It gets rather expensive, as you can' t reuse them for guests. Do you tell the guest or just let it slide? I am putting a excerpt in our welcome book in each room, but that doesn't mean everyone will read it. Any idea what ingredient(s) are causing the discolouration?
Thanks
 
Just do a search on discolored towels and you will find the info. We seem to discuss this alot :) Part of doing business even though it is disrespectul of other people's property.
They stay, they pay, they go away.
 
We don't charge guests for these problems but they do annoy us. Self-tanners, acne meds, those will both discolor towels & sheets. We had a family here who used our 'throw away' facecloths and it's a good thing, because we had to throw them away- ALL of the color was gone in big blotches from the facecloths.
 
We haven't been open long, but have managed to already have a set of towels ruined. The guest decided she needed to touch up her hair color using our white towels. I would have found this more annoying I suppose if it weren't for the fact they were here for one night...to celebrate their anniversary. I don't think my DH would have appreciated that.
Anyway, we have decided next time we buy towels, we're not buying such nice ones. We found MUCH less expensive towels that get nice and fluffy. Do they last as long as the expensive ones? No, but that doesn't matter if the expensive ones have to be taken out of service for stains long before they would wear out otherwise.
 
i actually had some 'wrecked towels' in a big basket in the upstairs hall with a sign on them ... wrecked towels. as i checked in guests i'd show them the basket and tell them if they had things on them that were concerned might stain the towels, to please feel free to use some of those towels. bicycle grease, hair color, skin tint/tanner/bronzer, skin preparations ... folks did use them. they were very nice towels except for these stains on them. sometimes they were just little splotches of dark or a line of missing color like bleach stains ... and i could not put them in the guest rooms.
although one nice elderly man went and got some of the wrecked towels to use for himself, rather than the 'too nice towels' in his room. cute.
i also had dark washcloths (makeup towels) and makeup remover pads in the bathrooms ...
people were really very good about using these things and it cut way down on the staining of the nice towels sets.
the only issue was i'd find that some guests would wipe the toothpaste from their mouths with the towel. it didn't stain them but it bothered me.
as for stains on sheets ... i don't know what you can do. i didn't have any 'wrecked sheets' i wanted to make up a nce, fresh bed with. those i used myself.
 
Back
Top