How to clean wool hats from the thrift store

While I’ve never really identified as a hat person, I’ve taken to hats this year, incorporating them into outfits beyond my backyard gardening getups. Throughout this past summer, I alternated between a navy Cal cap and a bow-embellished straw hat to keep cool beneath the oppressive San Joaquin Valley summer sun. 

With time, I grew accustomed to completing my outfits with hats and have been ruminating over how to style fall looks with hats. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing a baseball cap or straw hat during cooler weather, it’s objectively much cuter to wear beanies, felt caps, and wool cloche hats with sweaters and coats. 

I don’t really love modern hat offerings, but I adore vintage headwear. A few weekends ago, I picked up three wool hats at a local vintage shop for about $4 a pop. I ended up listing a pearl-embellished Chico’s beret on my eBay shop and keeping a navy Nordstrom Italian wool cloche hat and red unbranded beret for myself. The question that kept haunting me, though, was how do you clean thrifted hats? Though they’re very chic, vintage hats can definitely smell funky and be a tapestry of germs. 

What are the different ways to clean a wool hat?

When it comes to cleaning hats, the traditional course of action would be just to brush away fuzz and spot clean noticeable stains. Some people also freeze their wool hats to kill odor-causing bacteria or spritz the lining with vodka.

I wanted to give my hats a good deep clean since who knows where they’ve been before reaching the thrift store! So, how can you clean wool hats from the thrift store? You can play it safe and spot clean, like I mentioned above. You can also go the opposite route and toss your hat in the washer, but I don’t recommend doing this because it can ruin the shape and color of your hat. 

Opting for a middle ground, I gently hand washed my thrifted hats after quarantining them for a few weeks. Here’s what I did. 

NOTE: Some hats call specifically for dry cleaning or spot cleaning, so I would read the manufacturer’s label if you really don’t want to risk destroying your hat!

Remove fuzz and debris from the wool hat with a lint roller.

Before washing my hats, I removed little bits of lint from them — I didn’t want to deal with trying to remove the tiny pieces of fuzz after I soaked my hats. You can use a lint roller or tape. I had an adhesive lint roller and used that. 

Mix together a tablespoon of Woolite with a gallon of lukewarm water.

I mixed the solution together until I got some bubbles going. I used the hypoallergenic Extra Delicates Woolite from Target, but any gentle cleanser should do. 

Soak the hat in the cleaning solution.

If you want to be extra careful, you can simply dip a rag into the cleaning solution and spot clean any noticeable stains. I really wanted to give my hats a good deep clean, though, so I dunked them into the solution for a few minutes (some blogs recommend up to half an hour). I was very lucky because they did not shrink! You might want to test a tiny patch on your hat first, just to see if any discoloration or shrinking occurs. 

If you’re washing multiple wool hats, I recommend cleaning them separately if they’re in different colors. One of my hats was dark blue and the other was bright tomato red, so there was no way I was going to wash them together.

If you have any stains, you can use a felt hat brush to lift them off during this step. However, I recommend buying hats in already good condition so that you don’t have to expend too much effort cleaning them! 

After soaking the hats in the Woolite solution, I rinsed off excess suds underneath cold water. 

Gently pat off the excess water with a dark rag or towel and allow the hat to dry.

I recommend using a dark towel since some of the dye might bleed onto it. A plush towel with a high pile will absorb more water, but you can go with a rougher, thinner terry material if that’s what you have on hand. 

After washing my hats, I set them on a plastic bag and let them air dry for about a day, keeping them away from direct sunlight to prevent fading. Before setting out my hats to dry, I also reshaped them a bit. When they were fully dry, I ran my lint roller on my hats again to remove any fuzz or dust that might have settled on them. 

I think these tips work best if you’re wondering how to clean a wool beret, but I did find that they worked well for my more structured wool cloche hat. If you’ve always wanted to thrift cool vintage hats but were too afraid to deal with cleaning them, I hope these instructions ease some of that anxiety!

Also, do you like how my hat matches with my blouse?