Selling Home Textiles Online: Size Is the Claim

A bed size is a dimension, not a body

Apparel fit is a body problem, covered in apparel sizing and fit returns. Home textiles share the symptom, not the cause. A bedsheet has no wearer. It has a mattress, and a mattress is a number.

It should be arithmetic. It is not, because nobody fixed the number. IS 745:2003, the Indian Standard for handloom cotton bed sheets, sets ends, picks and mass for fifteen varieties. On size it does something else. Clause 5.3 leaves length and width to what the buyer and seller agree, or to what the seller declares. The standard then applies a tolerance to your declared figure, borrowed from a Ministry of Commerce and Industry notification, S.O. 2937 of 20 September 1962, issued under the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958. That Act was repealed by section 159 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999. A 2021 revision of IS 745 exists, so check the clause against the edition you work to.

There is no Indian double. There is your double, and the tolerance you hold. Towels run the other way. IS 7056:1989 fixes six minimum sizes for terry and huck a back towels, from 40 cm by 60 cm up to 80 cm by 155 cm, each with a minimum mass per ten pieces. Sell both and you are running two sizing regimes in one catalogue.

The declaration the general rules do not cover

The seven general pre-packaged declarations are in legal metrology labelling for ecommerce, and fibre composition and care marking sit in apparel labelling. Neither covers the rule written for your category.

Rule 14 of the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 names bed-sheets, hemmed fabric materials, dhoties, sarees, napkins, pillow-covers, towels and table cloths. It asks for three things. The number and the finished dimensions, on the package or label. Where the package holds pieces of different dimensions, the dimensions and retail sale price of each piece. And the dimensions and sale price marked on each individual piece.

The third is the one almost no set complies with. A sheet plus two pillow covers is three pieces, and each is meant to carry its own dimensions and price. Rule 13 then fixes the units: metric, and no system other than the International System of Units for a net quantity declaration. Inches are what buyers search. Centimetres are what the declaration is made in. Carry both, and say which is which.

What actually differs from apparel is narrower than it looks. IS 15798:2007, the labelling standard for consumer textiles, sets declared value plus tolerance for length, width, mass, blend composition and shrinkage, and wants at least five care symbols to IS 14452:2009. Its scope names woven and knitted fabrics and ready-made garments. A finished made-up is neither, so read your buyer specification rather than assuming that tolerance set is yours.

Shrinkage is the clause that breaks your size

This is where the returns come from. IS 15798 clause 3.5 caps dimensional change on washing at 2 percent for woven fabric, and tightens it again if you print pre-shrunk or shrink resistant. IS 745 Table 2 allows a handloom cotton bed sheet up to 8 percent in grey and 6 percent finished. Different standards, different scopes. The gap is still money. Six percent off a 229 cm sheet is about fourteen centimetres. The buyer measured the mattress, then washed the sheet.

IS 1954:1990 is the measurement method, and it measures a piece relaxed and conditioned to moisture equilibrium at 65 percent relative humidity and 27 degrees Celsius. Your packing bench measures the same sheet under tension, straight off the roll, in whatever humidity Panipat has that week. Both are real. Only one is the standard. Declare the smaller number and publish the shrinkage you allow.

Which orders are mandatory, and which are not

IS 745 and IS 7056 both say the article may also be marked with the Standard Mark. May. Mandatory marking comes from a quality control order, and the mechanism is the one we set out for helmets and protective gear: the order’s table decides scope.

Read that table properly. There is a trap. IS 17630:2021 is titled Medical Textiles Bed sheet and Pillow Cover, and it sits under the Medical Textiles (Quality Control) Order, 2023, published as S.O. 4247(E) on 27 September 2023 by the Ministry of Textiles under the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016. The Amendment Order of 2024, S.O. 830(E) of 22 February 2024, moved the Schedule A commencement to 1 October 2024. So an order does name a bed sheet. Its materials are spun lace, spun bond or woven cotton and polyester, for hospital use. Certification agencies market IS 17630 in wording broad enough to read as covering consumer bed linen. Your percale sheet is not in it.

Upstream is genuinely unsettled. The mandatory textile orders that exist sit on fibre and yarn, and they have moved twice. The Ministry of Textiles announced in November 2025 that it had revoked the order on viscose staple fibre. The polyester yarn orders were withdrawn, then held in force by an interim order of the Gujarat High Court, later set aside with the matter left open, as reported by the textile trade press. Put a clause in the yarn and fabric purchase order making the supplier warrant conformity at despatch, and ask for the licence number.

Bulky, light, and priced per piece

A quilt is close to the worst parcel in ecommerce: large, light, compressible. You are billed on the box, which is dimensional weight and packaging cost. This is not the furniture problem in furniture freight, where the item leaves the parcel network. Home textiles stay on the belt. They just take up room.

In the catalogue, treat dimensions as structured attributes rather than title text, the way we argued for footwear size systems. One controlled table, centimetres as the source, conversions derived, piece count and set composition as their own fields. Then check the price. Notification No. 9/2025-Central Tax (Rate) of 17 September 2025, G.S.R. 641(E), effective 22 September 2025, puts Chapter 63 made up textile articles and sets in Schedule I at 2.5 percent central tax where sale value does not exceed Rs 2,500 per piece, and in Schedule II at 9 percent above that. Bed linen and toilet linen sit at heading 6302 inside that chapter. The words are per piece, and Rule 14 already makes you print a price on each piece. If you sell sets near that line, get the classification in writing from your tax adviser.