The Best Travel Towels

We’ve all been there: packing our bag, only to find one item that's taking up half of the space in our carry-on. The main culprit? That big fluffy cotton towel. But don't worry - there's no need to go without a towel altogether. In the spirit of pack hacking, we’re here to tell you how to choose the best travel towel for your journey.

Want a hint? Choose a linen travel towel.

Contents

What are Linen Travel Towels?

As a fabric, linen has been around for tens of thousands of years. It’s made from the woven fibres of the flax plant, and despite being tricky to manufacture, it’s prized for its absorption, its lightness, and its ability to dry quickly. Think those all sound like good qualities to have in a towel? Well you’d be right!

Linen travel towels offer everything you’d find in a conventional towel, but they're lighter, cooler, and softer.

What are the Benefits of a Linen travel towel?

Travel towels can be made from all kinds of materials – cotton, plastic microfibres, linen, and more. For us, linen is the best choice - and not just because it's lighter.

Here are the main reasons why a linen travel towel is the best choice for your trip:

Linen is over 30% stronger than cotton, and can outlast it by years. Forget about just being a travel towel, it might be the last towel you ever need.

Linen is far more absorbent than cotton - it can absorb 20% of its weight in water before it’ll even feel damp, and far more before it’ll be fully saturated.

Linen is one of the quickest drying materials available. While other towels might need to be hung up to dry, your linen travel towel will be dry again after just a few minutes in the sun.

Linen is naturally antibacterial and will inhibit growth of microbes, so it’ll smell fresh for longer – perfect for those long trips where you won’t have access to a washing machine.

Because linen towels are so light, you can pack a larger towel and still save space. That means your towel can be big enough to double as a beach towel, a sarong and a blanket, as well as your standard towel.

Packing a lighter towel means you can fit everything into your carry on, and avoid excessive luggage fees (not to mention long airport delays). We’re biased, but we think our Storr Carry on backpack is a great choice to liberate you from hold luggage.

Linen, like the waxed canvas we use in our waxed canvas bags, will get better with age. It gets softer, more luxurious, and more personal with every use. Never had a towel that you actually loved before? Now is the time!

Linen vs. Synthetic Fibres

Most common travel towels are made from synethetic microfibres. Even if you’re not trying to live a plastic free lifestyle, or cut down on your plastic consumption, linen travel towels offer numerous benefits over their plastic counterparts:

Synthetic travel towels are made from microplastics. The very same microplastics that make their way into the water supply, and pollute the oceans. While we can’t prove it, we’re pretty sure David Attenborough would rather you used a linen travel towel.

Our linen travel towel uses fewer chemicals and less water for manufacturing, meaning it has a smaller carbon footprint.

Our linen travel towel is 100% biodegradeable.

In the unlikely event you’re ever done with your towel, they’re easily repurposed – you can turn old towels into dishcloths, blankets, or throws.

The Trakke Linen Travel Towel

You can probably tell from the guide above that we’re pretty big fans of linen travel towels – we’ve been using them for years. The perfect linen travel towel has always eluded us, though – whether it was the linen, the lack of a hanging loop, the size, or the finish. So, in true Trakke fashion, when we couldn’t find it, we thought “why don’t we try to make it ourselves?”. And so the Trakke linen travel towel was born.

We’ve researched every last detail, to make a simple item better than you thought it could be – the perfect thickness of fabric, the softest and most absorbent linen fibres, a complete lack of bleaching agents and chemicals, and that quintessential Trakke approach to craftsmanship and finishing.

Packing light is normally about making compromises.

Not this time.