Personal study from memory: I have t-shirts that have always been washer/dryer treated. Depending on the quality of fabric most have fallen apart in a few to 10 yrs, though I do have like 4 that are 30 yrs old
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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I don't have a study, but the tumbling and rubbing wears on clothes, compared to hanging to dry.
Some good shirts you will notice the collar seams and other edges start to wear.
In some cases like jeans and cotton cashual henley style shirts this gives a softening effect.
it is a huge difference between losing the longevity by a 1% and 30%.
Even if it's only a couple percentage pts, it doesn't seem hard to imagine how that could quickly add up over a few washes. You're asking for research, but I'm curious what the actual situation is that you're dealing with. Is it a case for example of having very little convenient area in which to hang clothes to dry?
Btw, there are no-heat spin dryers, hand-cranked wringers, and other alternative devices to help dry clothes as quickly as possible, without heat...
Currently we dry clothes in our wardrobe. We got rid of the dryer and decided to adapt our wardrobe to accommodate drying our clothes. So now we just hang them wet in our wardrobe. I am interested to know how much we extend the lifespan of our clothes by doing this instead
Your wardrobe, eh? Something like this, maybe?
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nordkisa-open-wardrobe-with-sliding-door-bamboo-00439468/
Anyway, GPT5.2 had some interesting things to say, with citations:
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6984f12432ac81919662025a7302e0d6
This isn't scientific, but was recently listening to a podcast where they interviewed someone (18 minutes in) who does laundry for the Nets basketball team, and he said that the dryer basically bakes in any sweat or blood or stains which don't get washed off before. I'm not sure how this affects longevity of the fabric, but from a usability standpoint, if your clothes are permanently stained, you probably will stop wearing them.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15440478.2025.2549597
somewhat close (they basically measure shedding, although mainly about speed of drum importance (seems like both fixed fast rotation or very slow are better), but it doesn't seem there is dramatic increase over cycles (the first is the worst, evidently, see fig 5), but they don't do 100 cycles, you cna search around in theirs citations for more prolly.