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Finding bath towels is one of those weirdly difficult tasks you don’t realize will be a pain until you’re forced to choose between two seemingly identical options. One will simply move water from one part of your body to another. The other will absorb and remove that water with ease. How do you choose the latter and stay far far away from the former? Easy—follow this guide to the best bath towels on Amazon.
Like shopping for the finest bed sheets, you don't have to go far to find buttery soft bath towels, and Amazon's exactly the place to pick up some fresh ones. With Amazon Prime Day on the horizon on July 16 and 17, you can ensure everyone in the house is swaddled only in the finest terry, waffled linen, or Turkish cotton. Keep scrolling for our top picks.
The Best Towels on Amazon, at a Glance:
Look, we won't lie to you. Picking a towel on Amazon that feels like it belongs in a hotel spa isn't always easy. There are heaps of bad products that aren't worth hanging next to the sink, much less for everyday use on your sensitive, wet skin. Even still, we've managed to find some absorbent bath towels on the Zon, which means you’re not required to make sacrifices for free or speedy shipping.
- The Best Towels on Amazon: Brooklinen Super-Plush Bath Towels, $89
- The Best Ribbed Towels: Cozy Earth Ribbed Bath Sheets, $140
- The Best Towels Under $50 on Amazon: Amazon Aware 100% Organic Plush Towel Set, $42
- The Best Waffle Towels: Cozy Earth Waffle Bath Towels, $96
- The Best Thin Towels: Brooklinen Classic Turkish Cotton Bath Sheets, $95
- The Best Beach Towels on Amazon: Ben Kaufman 100% Cotton Velour Towels, $42
- The Best Towels for Color Options: White Classic Luxury Bath Towels, $50
- The Best Bath Towel Set: NY Loft 100% Cotton Bath Towel, 4-Pack, $90
- The Best Patterned Bath Towels: Marimekko Kaksi Raitaa Terry Cotton Bath Towel, $62
The Best Towels on Amazon: Brooklinen Super-Plush Bath Towels
Brooklinen's Super-Plush Towels are the best towels in the world right now, full stop. The good-for-you news is that, much like a whole bunch of breakout direct-to-consumer brands that built their name on selling, um, direct to consumers, Brooklinen's pivoted to offering its stuff on Amazon. (See also: Our Place, Harry's, and TUSHY.) Multiple GQ editors have tried these super-absorbent towels, and until you take the plunge, you won't understand what you're missing. They're ridiculously thick, large bath towels. They’re oh-so-fluffy, yet they dry surprisingly quickly, considering how plush they are. Bottom line: If you've got the money, just buy them already.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “Instant love: After our first use we LOVED these towels! They're super soft and absorb water instantly. I now appreciate the thinness too, since they dry quickly overnight and aren't damp in the mornings.”
The Best Ribbed Towels: Cozy Earth Ribbed Bath Sheets
Cozy Earth makes luxury textiles and bathrobes using soft and durable fabrics, and the company's plush towels are a favorite among GQ editors. On Amazon specifically, the company sells ribbed towels with an impressive GSM of 800 (with 400 to 600 in the “average” range). Ribbed towels dry quickly without sacrificing comfort or absorbency, and they're a good in-between option if you're trying to optimize how quickly a towel dries your body and dries itself. While we've linked to Cozy Earth's oversized bath sheets, these towels are also available in traditional sizes.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “Best towels ever! We bought these because they are an 'Oprah pick.' We love them! They are super soft and absorbent. They are also nice and big.”
The Best Towels Under $50 on Amazon: Amazon Aware 100% Organic Plush Towel Set
We can't imagine that Amazon the company has been good for the Earth on the consumerism front, but we can tell you that the company's house brand, Amazon Aware, uses Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) fabric in these plush bath towels. This organic towel set comes with soft towels, washcloths, and hand towels, all for less than $50.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “Fluffy: These feel fluffy and soft. The tags are huge and not easy to cut off without seeing some of it. They are absorbent, but not as much as I’d like. I find new fluffy towels are just like that. Color is nice.”
The Best Waffle Bath Towels: Cozy Earth Waffle Bath Towels
These are the most unique bath towels on the list, and that’s because, at first touch, they’ll feel completely like throw blankets. That’s because they have a super thick waffle pattern that almost resembles the material that makes up thermals but maintains a buttery softness. They still have a 600 GSM, which means they’re super absorbent and don’t sacrifice any of the actual function for their cozy form. They are machine-washable and can be thrown in the dryer on low. They would look stunning, folded or rolled, and displayed on your bathroom shelf.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: "The Cozy Earth wash cloths are superb—the waffle texture on one side and soft terry on the other provide two options in one. Excellent quality!"
The Best Thin Bath Towels: Brooklinen Classic Turkish Cotton Bath Sheets
They may be thin, but they’re no less mighty. This towel set from Brooklinen is made of 100% cotton and still has a 550 GSM that is sure to be as absorbent as it is light. They’re also a larger size that will feel accommodating while still drying quickly due to their relative thinness. They can also be returned or exchanged any time within their first year of use, so feel free to give them a try with no strings attached.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: "These towels are luxurious, soft and very absorbent.
They do not need fabric softeners."
The Best Towels with Colorful Options: White Classic Luxury Cotton Bath Towels
White Classic
Luxury Cotton Bath Towels
- Oversized design so that you can fully wrap yourself in them when you get out of the shower
- Cost-effective option for those looking for a few towels at once
- Plenty of colors to choose from
- Reviewers report that they unravel after a few washes
- Reviewers say they don't dry as quickly as other options
If you're outfitting your whole home or guest bathrooms with new towels, then you'll want to find ones that offer a good cost-to-comfort ratio, which explains why these Turkish cotton towels have some 11,000-plus mostly enthusiastic reviews. And even though the hegemony of millennial gray bathrooms has most of us living a monochromatic bathroom existence, we do appreciate that these towels come in dozens of different colors to help freak your bathroom decor a little. Heads up that these are the smallest bathroom towels (by a few inches) that we picked.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “Very fluffy, very absorbent: These towels are reasonably large, fluffy, and absorbent. Very like hotel towels (which is why I got them, they even have that hotel towel smell). They're not particularly lightweight, but that isn't a minus to me. One towel arrived with malformed stitching. I sent a photo and short e-mail to their customer service, and they sent a new one with no hassle.”
The Best Beach Towels on Amazon: Ben Kaufman 100% Cotton Velour Towels
Oh, you wanted color. In a recent GQ guide to the best beach towels (miss u, summer), Amazon only placed one option: these colorful cotton velour towels. Priced at just $10 each, these oversized beach towels are made using fast-drying combed ring-spun cotton. If these towels are a bit too colorful for you, then we also like the brand's striped beach towels.
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What Amazon Reviewers Say: “Vibrant colors: Perfect heaviness, vibrant colors, great quality, now if only they would offer this in a 40 x 70 size…surprisingly not too much lint in dryer after first wash, that’s a good sign.”
The Best Bath Towel Set: NY Loft 100% Cotton Bath Towel (4-Pack)
If you're buying in bulk for your guest room, this NY Loft set includes four plushy, textured bath towels for $90, which is a pretty bulletproof value. Not only are they made from 100% cotton, but the fabric is also OEKO-TEX Standard 100-certified. Unlike other towels on this list, these feature three different surfaces in one (one pebbled, one ribbed, and another with a box-weave pattern) so that they absorb more water and dry more quickly. Reviewers praise their absorbency and soft handfeel after a shower. We should note that they're slightly smaller than some of our other picks, so keep that in mind if you're looking for more coverage.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “These are exactly what we were looking for. A soft towel that absorbs everything. And doesn't just glide off your body doing nothing like most towels. And so far they are not all worn out from the dryer and usage. We love them.”
The Best Patterned Bath Towels: Marimekko Terry Cotton Bath Towels
Helsinki-based design studio Marimekko has been making fabrics with its distinctive patterns and prints since 1951. The bath towels can be mixed and matched and there are even more to choose from at Marimekko's storefront on Amazon, all dreamed up by the company's top textile designer. The towels themselves are made from a soft terry cotton, and one of our editors (who uses them as hand towels) vouches that they have a gentle handfeel and easily brighten up a humdrum bathroom with their cheerful designs.
What Amazon Reviewers Say: “I bought this for my new black and white bathroom and was pleasantly surprised when I washed it because it got softer. It’s a good quality towel and I’ll be ordering a few more.”
What Distinguishes a Meh Bath Towel from a Great One?
To find the fluffiest, plushest, long-lasting towels, we used a three-part rubric.
GSM and Feel: Textile companies use the GSM (grams per square meter) metric to measure a fabric's thickness. It's similar to thread count, though we think with less B.S. baked in. Bath towels with a higher GSM rating will be thicker and potentially fluffier. They're also more absorbent, so your towel won't be soaked through before you even get to your legs.
Quick-Drying: If you prefer quick-drying over maximum absorbency, you'll end up with a thinner towel. There's reasons to go that route: fast-drying towels won't get as funky, as soon, in a poorly ventilated bathroom. Amazon's selection of towels doesn't include many of our favorite towels in this category, but we found a few solid ribbed and waffle-weave towels worth considering.
Materials and Certifications: If you care about sustainability (we all do), then you'll appreciate how many textile brands are now using organic cotton. Not only that, but many towels and similar home goods can carry a Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) rating (organic fabrics were used) and/or OEKO-TEX certification (no harmful synthetic materials were used). We're also fond of Egyptian and Turkish cotton, which are justifiably known for being ultra soft.
You'll notice that price is not a factor in this calculus. We don't want GQ shoppers to waste their money, but we do believe high-quality towels are worth the price (within reason). Amazon has an endless scroll of cheap towels, many of which have somehow have tens of thousands of reviews. Skip past these products unless you want the cheap white towels you'd find in a motel.
How We Chose These Bath Towels
Many of these towels, like the Brooklinen Super-Plush, Onsen Waffle-Weave, or Cozy Earth towels, were personally tested by GQ shopping editors for our guide to the best bath towels. We've also tested additional towels for past iterations of the GQ Home Awards. We pulled our favorite options from these guides available with two-day Prime shipping. And to round out our selects, we sifted through a high-pile heap of bathroom products on Amazon. While we haven't tested all of these towels, we're confident in our entire lineup of options. To make sure we picked out the top towels, we carefully checked customer reviews and relied on the rubric outlined above.
FAQs
Long-staple cotton fibers will typically offer the best feel and the most durability over time. Synthetic materials tend to be loaded with fabric softeners that will help them feel nice when new but won’t stand up to the daily-use test. Quality cotton towels will also become softer and more plush over time.
The GSM shows the towel’s weight and density in a range that typically varies between 300 and 900. Lower weights typically mean that the towel is less absorbent. The higher the weight, the more absorbent. If you opt for a towel that is on the lighter side, it will dry out faster.
While white towels are an easy, classic route that will always look polished, it’s definitely okay to branch out into the world of pattern and color. Brands like Tekla and Dusen Dusen have created some fun patterned options. Plenty of retailers have also started offering varying textures that would allow you to mix up the look without diverting from a classic white palette if you’re worried about being able to keep them bleached and bright.
Timothy Beck Werth is a seasoned editor, journalist, and product reviewer with 15 years of experience under his belt. For GQ Recommends, he covers tech, smart home gadgets, home goods, and grooming. Tim has reviewed countless products for GQ and other publishers, and he currently has an army of robot vacuums taking over his living room. He personally swears by Brooklinen's Super Plush towels, which he says are the softest and most absorbent towels he's ever encountered.
Brittany Loggins is a journalist who loves to learn about what's new in tech, design, and fashion. She contributes to GQ, Architectural Digest, the New York Times, and lots of others.
