The best way to keep your clothes looking nice for as long as possible? Taking good care of them. Try to avoid putting your nice clothes in the dryer, as high heat and tumbling can really wreck the fabric, and make sure you’re keeping your clothing clean and free of stains.

These are good rules of thumb, but proper maintenance of your professional clothing doesn’t need to be expensive and there actually is no reason for you to be having your lab coat dry cleaned after every wear. It’s expensive and if your lab coat is made of durable high quality fabric, it should be able to withstand going through the washing machine.

Especially if you’ve spent a lot of money on a premium lab coat, you may be tempted to take it to the dry cleaner instead of regular laundry, and that ultimately is a choice that is up to you, but at the end of the day it’s probably unnecessary. In fact, having to dry clean your lab coat might mean it ends up getting dirtier than it should, since it is a pain to have to visit the dry cleaner every time you wear your coat once.

And for the record…you should be washing your lab coat after every use!