The Best Bath Towel

The humble bath towel is easy to overlook. A good one will dry you off and be forgotten till tomorrow. A great one is luxurious, a cozy bright spot in an otherwise mundane routine. We’ve researched hundreds of towels and tested dozens, and we’ve recommended the Frontgate Resort Cotton Bath Towel since 2017 because it’s the softest, warmest, and most durable we’ve found. If plush terry isn’t for you, we also have other options.

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We use each towel after showering, assess how well it dries, how soft or rough it feels, and how it covers different-sized bodies.

We wash and dry all towels for a first time, check for shrinkage or fraying, and then wash again 4 more times throughout testing.

Towels are anything but standard, which is why we actually measure every towel we test.

Our pick

Frontgate Resort Cotton Bath Towel

Thick and luxurious

This is the softest towel we’ve ever tested. It feels like a plush towel from a luxury hotel and comes in a wider variety of colors than any other we’ve found.

Buying Options

$42

* from

Frontgate

*At the time of publishing, the price was $40 .

The Frontgate Resort Cotton Bath Towel is the softest, warmest, and most comfortable plush towel we’ve tried. Thicker than our other picks, it feels luxe and substantial, like a high-quality hotel towel. With each wash it felt fuller and plusher, and after four years of use it’s held up better than any other towel we’ve tested. It comes in a wide range of rich colors—more choices than any pick. Also available in a bath-sheet size, the Frontgate coordinates with a range of matching accessories, including bath rugs and washcloths. If a plush, luxurious towel is what you want, this is a great one.

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The Riley Spa Bath Towel costs about a third more than the Frontgate, but if you like thinner terry towels with more texture, this one is our favorite. The Riley’s terry loops are well defined and loosely woven, so you feel each individual loop move across your skin. (It’s not scratchy, though; it’s more like a gentle massage.) It dries faster than the Frontgate, and its modern design—rounded edges, terry across the entire surface, and a loop to hang it on your bathroom hook—feels unfussy but chic. The Riley comes in eight colors, and like our other picks, it’s Oeko-Tex certified and available in a bath-sheet size.

Also great

The Onsen Bath Towel

Quick-drying lattice

This textured towel is lighter, drapes better, and dries faster than any terry towel we tried. It looks luxurious but unfussy, and costs a third of the price of similar lattice-weave towels.

Buying Options

$100

from

Huckberry

For a more minimal, upscale look, or if you want a truly quick-drying towel, we recommend The Onsen Bath Towel. This towel is made with a lattice weave (sometimes called a waffle or honeycomb weave), which feels more drapey and thinner than terry. Made of American-grown Supima cotton, the Onsen is relatively expensive, but it costs a fraction of the price of similar lattice towels imported from Japan. It’s also softer and smoother. Compared with the dozen or so hours it took our terry picks to dry in our 2018 tests, the Onsen was bone dry after about five hours. But keep in mind that if you prefer plush terry, you may not like the more textured feel of the Onsen.