The Best Kitchen Towels of 2023

Williams Sonoma does it again with their striped towels. Made of 100% Turkish cotton, it’s soft, durable, and gets the job done. It comes in 11 attractive colors, too. Although these towels feel great to the touch, they’re on the thicker side, so it’s a little difficult to dry smaller items like wine and water glasses.

The standout factor of these kitchen towels is how inexpensive they are ($1 a towel for a set of 12). Since they're made of thinner cotton, it was easy to dry small and oddly shaped dishes, but it was less absorbent than some of the other towels we tested and harder to use by the end of the drying line. After their first wash, these kitchen towels also shrunk about an inch, making us concerned about their durability. But for their low price, they’re cheap enough to replace after a few uses.

Flour sack towels are known for their absorption and quick-drying capabilities, and the NowDesigns Flour Sack towels live up to that reputation. They scored high in our tests for a number of reasons. First, they are very attractive. A pack of 3 comes with each of the following colors: turquoise blue, orange, and grass green. The second reason is performance, as they’re notably more absorbent than the other flour sack style towels we tested. They didn’t leave any lint or fuzz behind on the dishes, either.

These flour sack towels are thick and absorbent and easily dried both large and small dishes. But like most flour sack towels, they are frustratingly large (almost twice the size of the average kitchen towel). Aesthetically, this style is better suited for a kitchen drawer and not something to feature as part of your kitchen decor. Although they had a slight smell after being left in a Ziplock baggie overnight and smelled like bleach before washing them, they’re still good for basic dish drying.

This kitchen towel from Crate and Barrel is large (20 x 30), made of 100% cotton, and features an attractive patterned waffle weave knit. Not only does it come in 5 attractive colors (we tested the blue one), it’s also pretty absorbent. That said, it’s not without a few flaws. The terry material left some streaks and fibers behind on both the wine and water glasses. Also, due to its very large size, it was difficult to dry smaller or irregularly shaped items.

The Made By Design cotton kitchen towels from Target are affordable and a good size for drying bigger items, but the thin cotton material isn’t very absorbent. Plus, it took a long time to dry all of the items in our tests. The cotton was so thinly woven that it felt brittle and scratchy to the touch. It also left streaks on the wine glasses and some fibers on the water glasses we tested.