The Best White T-Shirts for Men of 2024

White T-shirts are the most basic wardrobe staple, so you want to find a quality brand. They’re the perfect piece of clothing if you want to look stylish (and casual) without thinking about it, or spending too much. Not every man can pull off just a classic white T-shirt and jeans, but the best shirts should fit well and be nice enough that you could if you wanted to.

If you’re looking for a solid, classic white tee to wear, we recommend the Everlane Premium Weight Crew (available at Everlane) . For a basic undershirt, we recommend the Goodfellow & Co Lyndale Crew Neck T-Shirt (available at Target). And, if you prefer to buy your shirts by the bag, the Fruit of the Loom Men's Stay Tucked Crew T-Shirt (available at Amazon) performed the best in our testing for the lowest price around.

We spent a month testing the most popular plain white tees on the market, both cheap and casual, concentrating not on the shirts that look the best out of the box (or the bag), but on the shirts that held up to wear and tear over weeks of extensive wearing and washing. If you want a durable T-shirt that is going to still look great after you’ve worn it for six months straight, this is the list for you.

Note, we've also reviewed the best white T-shirts for women, too.

How We Tested

The Testers

We’re Megan McCarthy, the executive editor for growth, and Kyle Hamilton, a product test technician here at Reviewed. We are both people who wear clothing, and are both fond of T-shirts. Megan selected the shirts, designed the tests, ran the measurement tests before and after the shirts were washed and worn, and lead the visual tests. Kyle ran the laundry tests—every wash and dry cycle—ensuring that each wash was the same exact procedure each time.

The Tests

It’s a minor scandal when a celebrity repeats an outfit, but everyday Americans don’t have to walk the red carpet on a daily basis. According to educator and textile expert Deborah Young, the assistant chair for textile science at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), most people wear the same 18 garments over and over again in any given month. So, if you’re an average American, you likely wear the same shirt about two or three times a month. Because we wanted to evaluate our picks based on how these shirts would look after six months of regular wear, we designed our tests to evaluate how well these T-shirts hold up over 15 wash and dry cycles.

The shirts: We decided to test the best white T-shirts for men and the best white T-shirts for women together. We chose our contenders based on suggestions from our product experts, Google search rankings, Amazon results, and other publication’s best T-shirt lists. For consistency, we ordered all the shirts in a size Large. Between the two lists, we had a total of 18 shirts, which ranged in price from $2.50 per shirt from both Hanes and Fruit of the Loom to $350 for a shirt from The Row, a fashion brand founded by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Measurement testing: Cotton shirts are going to shrink, there’s no way to avoid it. What sets a quality shirt apart from a terrible garment is the amount of shrinkage. According to Young, acceptable shrinkage for knits is 5%. We measured the shirts when they were brand new to get our base measurements and after weeks of wear and wash testing, we measured the shirts again to see the differences.

To get our base figures, we used a flexible tape measure to measure four points on each shirt: 1) The length of the back of the shirt, from the back of the center neckline to the center hem, 2) The length of the front of the shirt, from the center neckline to the center hem, 3) The width across the front of the shirt, from armpit seam to armpit seam, and 4) The length of the arm, from the sleeve seam to the hem of the arm, along the seam.

We also weighed the shirt using a Sartorius AY501 scale. Once the wash and wear tests were completed at the end of the month, we repeated the measuring and weighing process with each shirt. We calculated the differences between the before and after numbers to measure the shrinkage of each shirt, and compared the results among the contenders.

Wash testing: We always washed all 18 shirts together in one load, with two white towels added to the drum as ballast. We washed each load in a LG WT7300CW Top Load Washer on the delicate cycle, which used cold tap water. We used an exact measurement of 46ml of Persil liquid laundry detergent, the winner of our Best Laundry Detergent roundup, as the cleansing agent for each wash. When the wash was done, we dried the shirts in the delicate cycle using a Samsung DV431AEP/XAA Dryer. Each shirt was washed after it was worn, and every shirt went through a total of 15 wash and dry cycles.

Wear testing: We anonymized all of the shirts, to the best of our ability, by striking out the brand name with a Sharpie laundry marker and writing a number on the inside back neck of the shirt. We asked our Reviewed co-workers to wear a random shirt for a few hours around the office, and then answer a short survey ranking the shirt for comfort, style, and overall experience. A total of 12 Reviewed employees participated in the anonymous wear testing. This testing phase went on every work day for two weeks in mid-September.

Visual tests: Once the wear and wash testing phases were completed, we hung the shirts on our best clothes hangers and visually evaluated each shirt on a three-point “rattiness” scale. A shirt received 3 points if it looked fairly new and kept it shape, 2 points if it looked well-loved but lived-in, and 1 point if it was beat to all hell.

What You Should Know About White T-Shirts

Ever since James Dean skulked onscreen in a plain white T-shirt, blue jeans, and an attitude, T-shirts moved from military-grade undergarment to a Hollywood-approved wardrobe staple of the modern uniform. A perfect white cotton tee is likely the most popular piece of clothing in the average American closet, and, odds are, you might be wearing one right now. The curved hem tee, in particular, was a stand-out in 2020.

Classic white T-shirts are 100% cotton, although the type of cotton can differ among shirts. Standard cotton is a short staple cotton called “upland cotton.” Slub cotton includes noticeale imperfections and is popular among fashion designers. Higher-quality cotton, like pima or Egyptian, is known as extra-long staple cotton. (You may have also heard of Supima cotton. Supima is the brand name of a nonprofit organization that promotes pima cotton and licenses that name to different manufacturers.)

The difference between a short staple and a long staple is right there in the name. The fiber in standard cotton is about 1 ¾ inches long, while pima is 2 ½ or 3 inches. This fiber length is essential in ensuring a smooth finish in the fabric. As FIDM's Young puts it, “the shorter the fiber, the more ends you have sticking out.”

T-shirts are also differentiated by the type of knit. A cotton jeresy t-shirt—which is the most common knit—provides a comfortable amount of drape and doesn’t stretch out too far. (Rib knit, another popular option, is stretchier and results in a more fitted look. Due to the fitted nature, rib knits are more popular with women’s styles.)

How Do You Avoid Prevent Pit Stains On White T-Shirts?

Yellow discoloration in your armpits isn’t the fault of your T-shirt. Blame the combination of your sweat with the aluminum from your antiperspirant for those awful shirt-killing stains.

While the weight of a shirt can help prolong the stains from forming for a bit—thinner white shirts will show stains on the outside faster than thicker shirts—most stain prevention is best accomplished by pretreating your shirt before you wash it or switching up your deodorant to one without aluminum.

Another trick to keep shirts pristine and white is somewhat counterintuitive: Go easy on the bleach. According to Young, overbleaching your shirt can cause the entire garment to yellow.

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Other T-Shirts We Tested

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