How To Keep White Dress Shirt Collars Clean

You can easily prevent ring around the collar. A reader stopped by yesterday and posted a comment here and asked about whether or not a mock neck undershirt would help prevent ring around the collar.

While a higher necked undershirt/t-shirt would likely reduce the amount of oils, dirt, and dead skin that would get in the inside collar of your favorite shirts, not all of us are willing to trade in our favorite undershirts.

Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this very issue recently,

Even though I wear an undershirt much of the time which allows me to wear a shirt more than once between washings/dry cleanings, the one thing I have yet to avoid is the dreaded ring around the collar.

I get it pretty much every time I wear a collared shirt.

So, there's two ways to think about this problem;

1) Cleaning ring around the collar, or

2) Preventing ring around the collar

There's about a gazillion sites out there that provide ideas on how to clean ring around the collar. However, I was more curious about how to PREVENT it.

Funny enough, I had come up with some ideas on how I would approach solving the problem myself. Still, I got curious on whether or not anyone else had invented a similar solution.

So I hit the keyboard, started googling away, and these are the results.

Solutions to Prevent Ring Around the Collar:

White Collar Grime

Collar & hat protectors – From the company that brought you Garment Guards, (orig link), these are 100% super-soft cotton strips with adhesive backing.

Cut to size and place the disposable cotton strip on the inside of your collar.

Throw away after use. Price: $9.95 for a 10′ roll (1.25″ wide).

More Info: fashionfirstaid.com

White Athletic Tape

Compliments from the very intelligent folks over at the forums of AskAndyAboutClothes.com.

Another version of this is the white wide fabric medical tape you can get at your local drugstore.

More Info: askandyaboutclothes.com

Scrub Your Neck

On AskAndyAboutClothes.com and ArtofManliness, some suggest that cleaning/scrubbing your neck, or applying a talc powder to the back part of your neck that comes in contact with the collar of your shirt are also ways to minimizing ring around the collar.

Check Comments Below

Check out the Comments section of this article too for more advice, such as using Scotch Guard Fabric Protector

Update 7/2015 – Items from my original article that are no longer available, at least on the sites I originally referenced.

KOllar Guards (was kollarguard.com)- Same principle, but KOllar Guards are made from super-soft/smooth rayon and are 100% bio-degradable. Price: $19.95 for 24 strips.
InCollar (was incollar.com) – offered by Population 3. Not sure what material the strip is made from, but InCollar uses a skin safe hypoallergenic adhesive, and come in different lengths based on your collar size. Price: $8.99 for a pack of 15.
Clean Collar (was etsy.com/listing/71685820/clean-collar-prevents-ring-around-the) – found this one on Etsy. Price: $9.95 for a pack of 10 (each strip is 12″ long)

I'm definitely going to try out one or more of these products and see how well they work and I'll report back.

I think the pricing on these items might be a little on the high side though. Paying $0.60 – $1 per use seems a little steep to me. I guess you could argue that a strip *could* be used more than once, though.

To me, it appears that there's one common design flaw theme that all of the above products have – but I don't want to let the cat out of the bag.

Who knows, maybe I'll work on a little side project and see if I can come up with an alternate solution to address it!

If you've tried one of the above products, let me know what you think of them.

Also, if you know of any other ways to prevent ring around the collar, please share them below.