How To Fold Towel Animals at Home Like a Luxury Hotel

Written by

Melissa Massello
Melissa Massello
Boston girl gone Austin + pixie dust spreader on the Tilt-A-Whirl. In her past life, Melissa was the founder of Shoestring Magazine, DIY Boston + The Swapaholics. Now she just wants to drink wine, hike, do yoga + save all the damn dogs, is that so wrong?
updated May 3, 2019
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(Image credit: Lauren Kolyn)

You know you’re staying in a luxury five-star hotel when your wash cloth or hand towel is folded into some sort of flower or zoo animal. It’s one of the little touches that signifies the level of care that’s been put into every aspect of your stay, so how cool would it be if—without a lot of extra effort—you could surprise your house guests with the same experience?

(Image credit: Credit Card Compare)

Now you can leave that lasting impression on visitors to your home (or just your kids), thanks to these animated gifs from the team at Credit Card Compare. Fold simple wash cloths and hand towels into seven different towel animals: mouse, swan, elephant, sea horse, baby monkey, crab, and snake. Using instructions from MakeTowelAnimals.com as a basis, the DIY animated gifs are not only mesmerizing but decently easy to follow—if a little intimidating where the combination of multiple towels are concerned.

(Image credit: Credit Card Compare)

The Swan might be the most iconic, at least in my own limited luxury hotel stay experience, so I decided to try starting with that one using the fun instructional gifs. (The Baby Monkey was also super intriguing, partly due to fact that it has the assistance of a few rubber band placeholders, but also just because, well, I love monkeys. My cousins used to call me Monchichi as a kid. It stuck.)

Anyway, here’s how I did.

If you want to give it a go at home for yourself, here’s the list of instructions. Pro tip: You might want to consider a bit of starch.

(Image credit: Credit Card Compare)

How to make a towel swan

Difficulty: Beginner
Materials: 1 bath towel (preferably starched)

Step 1: Lay the towel flat in a ‘landscape’ orientation.
Step 2: Fold the top corners inwards until they meet in the middle.
Step 3: Roll the outside edges inward to the middle.
Step 4: Make a downward fold about a third of the way up the ‘arrow’ shape, and an upward fold about two-thirds of the way up. This should form a ‘Z’ shape.
Step 5: Lay the ‘Z’ down and squeeze the corners to keep the curves in place.

To learn how to make all seven towel animals, get the instructions on the Credit Card Compare blog.