Best Cloth Dinner Napkins: Everyday Cotton to Linen

Now Designs has made kitchen and table textiles for decades, and its Spectrum napkins are the kind of thing that should be in every drawer. They are 100% cotton, 19 inches square, with mitered corners and a half inch stitched hem, sold in a long run of solid colors.

The indigo is the practical choice. Dark cotton hides tomato and wine better than white, washes warm and tumbles dry low, and needs only a quick press on the cotton setting for a clean fold. They match the Spectrum placemats if you want a set.

Skip them for a formal table; they are everyday cotton and look it. The maker says not to bleach them, which is another reason to buy a color rather than white.

The catch. Casual rather than formal, and cotton this weight wrinkles if left in the dryer.

SARO's Stonewashed Stitch Border napkins are 100% linen, 20 inches square, in an undyed natural shade with a contrasting stitched edge. Stonewashing softens linen before it reaches you, so these feel broken in on the first night instead of after a dozen washes.

The natural color is the forgiving one. It sits with earthenware, white porcelain and wood equally well, and it hides the faint stains that white linen shows. It suits the long, informal dinner more than the formal one.

Skip them if you want to machine dry everything; the maker says cool machine wash, recommends dry cleaning and says cool iron. In practice that means hanging them to dry, which linen does quickly.

The catch. Fussier care instructions than the others, and more per napkin than the Solino.

Garnier-Thiebaut is a French table linen maker that designs and weaves in the Vosges, in eastern France. The Confettis napkins are plain satin weave with no pattern, in 100% two-ply twisted extra long staple cotton of medium thickness. The result is a napkin with a very subtle sheen, a smooth hand and the weight that makes a proper fold hold its shape.

This is what a formal table wants: bright white, crisp when ironed, and with a slight luster under candles that linen does not have. Two-ply twisted yarn and long staple cotton are the reason it lasts through years of hot washes. They come in sets of six, so two sets cover a table of twelve.

Skip them for every night. They need ironing on high heat, from the back, to look their best, and at 18 inches square they are the smallest here, though still dinner size.

The catch. Needs a hot iron to look right, and costs about $14 a napkin.