There's A Crucial Difference Between Bath Sheets and Bath Towels

A Twitter squabble has inspired us to break down the difference.

Shelf with clean towels, candles, flowerpot on bathroom wooden table
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Earlier this week, a very important debate broke out on social media. No, we're not talking about the latest Kardashian drama, or even any news out of the White House. Rather, this particular matter, raised by Twitter provocateur Yashar Ali, had to do with bath sheets. Yes, bath sheets. For the uninitiated (of which it seems there are quite a few), those are the largest-sized bath towel.

Ali's tweet, originally intended to answer a question from Twitter user Abdul as to the appropriate number of towels a couple should own, caught users' attention not for its suggested numbers, but for its mention of that largest species of bath towel: The bath sheet.

The conversation quickly turned into a digital referendum on the topic of bath sheets. What are they, people wondered? Why do they have that name? What's the difference between a bath sheet and a regular towel?

A subsequent tweet by Mikel Jollet asking, simply, "What the hell is a bath sheet?" garnered more than 1,000 replies, ranging from the literal ("a beach towel that matches all your other bath towels") to the inspiring ("a bath sheet is a bath towel with ambition") to the complex ("It’s when you take a shower and then lay in your bed until you have way less time than you need to get ready, as any woman knows.").

You know the debate had escalated when weighed in with one if its delightfully quippy replies. If that still didn't quite answer it for you, fear not, dear reader; I'll break it down even further.

The bath sheet is, indeed, the largest in the suite of towels, which includes face or washcloths, hand towels, and bath towels (and, in some cases, bath mats, but we'll save discussion on those for another day). While the standard bath towel measures somewhere between 25" and 31" wide by 52"-58" long, a bath sheet clocks in at anywhere from 35" by 60" to 40" by 70". Read: They're perfect for those who hate having to shimmy a single towel down their body to get perfectly dry, or resort to a top and bottom towel. That said, they're significantly larger, which means they take up more space and may take longer to dry.

At the end of the day, the bath sheet/bath towel debate comes down to personal preference, so let's let everyone enjoy their bath sheets in peace—unless you're trying to take them to the beach, in which case, don't: There's a whole other set of towels for that.

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