Types of linen in a hotel: a working list of items, sizes and terms

Hotel linen means the washable textile stock a hotel owns and counts, not a fibre. TÜROB's Türkiye Otel Tekstili Sektörel Analiz ve Stratejik İşbirlikleri Raporu (August 2026) (opens in a new tab) sorts it into five groups: bedroom and bed linen, bath, spa and pool, restaurant and banqueting, and room decoration and upholstery.

The supplier's offer says nevresim, the housekeeping count says duvet cover, and the opening list says bed linen set. Three names for one item, and nobody can tell whether the numbers agree. This article gives you the five groups, the items in each, and the terms in Turkish and English, so you can build one sheet that works as a purchasing document, a count sheet and a stock report.

What is linen in a hotel?#

In a hotel, linen means the washable textile stock the property owns, counts and sends to the laundry. It is a stock category, not a fibre.

The word comes from flax, but hotel linen covers cotton, polyester-cotton blends and microfibre. The test is whether an item enters the laundry cycle and appears on a count sheet. If it does, it is linen; if it does not, it belongs on another list.

TÜROB's Türkiye Otel Tekstili Sektörel Analiz ve Stratejik İşbirlikleri Raporu (August 2026) divides hotel textiles into five groups: bedroom and bed linen, bath, spa and pool, restaurant and banqueting, and room decoration and upholstery. The grouping is practical, not academic. Purchasing, laundry capacity, replacement budgets and monthly counts are all organised by group, because each group is issued and collected at a different point in the day.

Some items sit outside the linen list entirely: single-use amenities, guest supplies, staff uniforms and engineering textiles. They have their own lists and their own par figures. And the same physical item can land in two groups: a towel issued at the pool desk and a towel hung in the bathroom are counted by different people. Decide the group by where the item is used, not by what it is made of.

Write the group name on the purchase order. It is the field that tells the store where to put the delivery and which count sheet will pick it up.

Which items belong in the bedroom list?#

The bedroom group covers three layers: what protects the mattress, what touches the guest, and what sits on top for appearance.

Bed linen is the layer that is changed between guests and counted in par: sheets (fitted or flat), duvet covers and pillowcases. These are the lines that drive laundry volume. The protection layer is the mattress protector, called alez in Turkish. It is counted separately because it is changed on a longer cycle than the sheet and is often the item that fails first.

Fillings are inventory, not laundry. Duvets and pillows come with different fills such as goose down, microfibre or silicone, and they are washed rarely, so they are counted in the store rather than on the floor. Toppers are appearance items: bedspreads, pike (the light summer coverlet) and decorative cushions. They are usually counted by the floor supervisor and cleaned on a schedule, not at every departure.

Sizes are written as width × length in centimetres, with extra fields where the item needs them: pocket depth for a fitted sheet, fill weight for a duvet, size band for a pillow. The hotel sets these numbers and writes them on the line. Decide fitted or flat sheet once, for the whole property. Mixed stock means the floor cannot swap a sheet between two room types, and the par figure has to be split twice.

For fabric choices and how many sets to buy, see towel weight, sheet fabric and how many sets you need.

Bath, spa and pool: which towels does a hotel count separately?#

Bath, hand and face towels, foot towels used as bath mats, and bathrobes belong to the bath group. Pool and beach towels and peştemal belong to the spa and pool group, because they are issued and collected at a different point.

The bath group is the in-room set: face towel, hand towel, bath towel, a foot towel that serves as the bath mat, and the bathrobe. Each is a separate stock line with its own par. A foot towel and a bath mat are not the same decision: a textile foot towel goes into the laundry, a fixed rubber or fabric mat does not. Pick one, write it on the list, and stop counting the other.

Bathrobes are sized, so they are counted per size band. They are a high-loss item, so a departure check belongs in the count rather than being an extra task.

Pool and beach towels are issued against a card or a room number at the pool desk. That desk, not the floor, owns the count, because the towel never enters the room. Peştemal is a flat woven wrap used in spa and hamam settings. In some properties it is also sold as a retail item, so keep the operational stock and the retail stock on two separate lines.

The spa and pool group is the one most often missing from an opening list. It is also the group that grows fastest in summer, so its par is set per season, not per year.

What about tablecloths, napkins and curtains?#

They are linen too, but they are counted by the outlet or by the floor, not by housekeeping, and they are replaced on a different logic.

The restaurant and banqueting group holds tablecloths, runners, cloth napkins and naprons, the service covers worn or carried by waiting staff. Banqueting uses the same item types in larger sizes for function rooms. Those are counted per event setup, not per room, so the count happens after the room is cleared.

The decoration group holds curtains and upholstery: sun blinds, sheers and blackout curtains, plus the fabrics on seating, armchairs and chairs. Blackout curtains are specified by how much light they block and by the track they run on. They are replaced on a refurbishment cycle, not a laundry cycle.

These groups often arrive on the same supplier order as bed linen, which is exactly why they get mixed into the same count. Separate the lines at the order stage and the confusion never starts. Upholstery is not removable in most rooms, so it belongs on a condition survey with a date, not on a monthly count.

What do par, reject and condemned mean on a linen count?#

They describe where an item sits in the laundry cycle, not how good it is.

Par is the target number of pieces a hotel keeps so that a room can be made while another set is in the laundry. Par is set per item and per size, never per group. The count is a location count: pieces in circulation in the rooms, pieces in the laundry, and pieces in the store should add up to the par figure. A gap is the first sign of loss.

Reject is an item pulled out at the ironer or the folding table for a hole, a stain or a torn hem. It leaves circulation but is still in the building, so it must be held somewhere and counted. Condemned is an item written off: removed from the par figure and sold, given away or destroyed. Both the count and the par change on the same day.

If reject and condemned are used as synonyms, the par figure drifts upward and the purchasing list asks for items the hotel already has. Write the three words, plus the three locations, on the count sheet itself. Staff use the words the sheet uses. For the wider flow, see par levels, laundry flow and losses.

How do you turn this list into an opening list?#

Give every item one name, one place and one unit, and the same sheet becomes a purchasing document, a count sheet and a stock report.

Four fields per line: the item name in one language with the other in brackets, the group, where it is used, and the unit of count (piece, pair, set, metre). Buy in sets, count in pieces: a bed linen set is convenient on a purchase order and useless on a count sheet, so state the conversion on the line itself.

Assign an owner per group. Housekeeping counts bedroom and bath, the spa desk counts pool and peştemal, the food and beverage manager counts tablecloths and napkins, and decoration is signed off once with a date. Add a replacement trigger to each line, the thing that makes you pull the item, so the count and the buying decision use the same rule.

Keep single-use amenities off this sheet. They are a separate list with a separate par and a separate supplier. Test the finished list on one floor before the opening: if a room attendant cannot fill in the sheet without asking a question, the sheet is not finished.

For the vocabulary around the sheet, see housekeeping terms and abbreviations in Turkish and English. For what stays off it, see guest room amenities: choosing the list and setting par stock.

What to do next#

Take the five groups from the TÜROB report and build one sheet with four columns: item, group, where it is used, who counts it. Use that sheet for the opening order and for the first monthly count, then set the par figures and the laundry flow on top of it.