The Mystery of the Italian Washing Machine - Revisited
Updated: Aug 29
We finally got the real explanation, from someone who installs these machines for a living
It might be interesting to share how we pulled off living in Italy for part of the year. I will post some steps and what we are learning along the way.
We love every minute of it, and what was once a dream is our life!
We live in Tuscany in the Fall, then back again in the Spring, and in California for the rest of the time (in a previous blog, I explained why we live in Italy only part of the year).
Step 1: This week let's revisit the mystery of the Italian washing machine
In our first year living in Italy, I wrote a blog about the mystery of the Italian washing machine. It was meant to be lighthearted, aimed at making readers smile rather than explaining all the technical details of the machine.
I wrote it because many people who come to Italy face the same mystery: why does washing laundry at home take up to five hours?
To solve the mystery, we asked local friends in Puglia to come over and explain the codes and symbols on the washing machine dial. At one point there were four of us, with a fifth person looking over our shoulders, trying to make sense of it. Finally I suggested they show us the shortest cycle, and we would stick to that one. After some investigating, we found it: about thirty minutes.
Through trial and error, we discovered we could clean clothes by running this cycle twice — once with detergent and once without.
We did not fully understand the Italian washing machine, but we found a solution that worked for us.
Then something happened.
Step 2: The dishwasher mystery deepens
When we first used our new dishwasher, the default "Eco" program ran for three hours before finishing. The next day I found a "short wash" cycle instead, which promptly tripped our electric switch twice. It turned out the mystery was not just about washing machines.
Step 3: The technician who finally explained it
In previous posts, we talked about our decision to move from Puglia to Tuscany, buy a house, and renovate it. As part of the renovation, we bought a dryer to speed up the laundry process. When it was delivered by our local electronics store, a trained technician came to install it and walk us through it.
In Italy, many things run on relationships, so we make a point of supporting our local businesses when we buy large items like appliances. By the time the dryer arrived, we were already friendly with the store's staff and with the delivery technician himself.
While he was there, I asked him about the best energy-saving programs for our washer, dryer, and dishwasher. What he told us finally unraveled the mystery of the Italian washing machine — and it turned out the same logic applies to our dryer and dishwasher.
Step 4: Why "Eco" means slow
Our technician explained why the eco cycle, despite taking so long, is the one to use. "Eco" refers to programs that are more efficient in their electricity use. On a washing machine, clothes are washed at lower temperatures than a standard cycle — and the cycle itself runs much longer. Depending on the machine, an eco program can take up to five hours.
The extra time does not mean extra energy use. It is closer to the opposite. Heating water is what actually costs money — by some estimates, roughly ninety percent of a wash cycle's electricity goes toward heating the water alone, not toward spinning or tumbling. So the eco cycle avoids blasting the water hot and fast, and instead lets clothes soak at a lower temperature for long stretches.
During those soak stretches, the drum barely moves and the heating element sits mostly idle, so the machine is drawing very little power even while the clock keeps running. It only ramps back up in short bursts for the occasional tumble, rinse, or spin.
Step 5: Slow and cheap, not slow and wasteful
Eco mode turns out to be the most cost-effective setting on the washer and the dishwasher, since both are heating water the same way. The dryer works a little differently — it heats air, not water — but the trade-off is similar: a lower heat setting run longer uses less power overall than blasting hot air to finish fast. Across all three appliances, eco mode uses closer to the minimum energy needed to get the job done, instead of brute-forcing it with heat and speed.
Step 6: Reading the dial
The dial on an Italian washing machine can carry a mix of symbols and words — sometimes Italian, sometimes another language entirely, usually paired with an icon. A few rough rules of thumb:
The word "Eco" signals a long cycle, three to five hours, that uses less energy.
A number with a minute symbol, like 40', usually means a short cycle of about that many minutes.
A number with a degree symbol, like 40°, refers to water temperature — the higher the number, the more energy the machine uses heating the water, and often the longer the cycle runs.
"Express" or "Rapido" points to a very short cycle, around fifteen to twenty minutes, which we sometimes run twice, once with soap and once without, to get clothes properly clean.
Insights
We still lean on our local appliance store's staff more than we lean on the dial itself. To keep energy use down, we mostly run Eco cycles at night or before we leave in the morning, and for everything else we keep a visual guide to the standard EU washing-machine symbols nearby. The real fix was not decoding the dial ourselves — it was building the kind of relationship with our local store that meant someone was willing to come explain it in person.
More next time.
If you have enjoyed reading about our life in Italy, my memoir goes deeper into where it began.
Stories from Puglia: Two Californians in Southern Italy — the memoir of finding our way through the towns, food, and people of the deep south.
"This book elevated my trip. Well written and fun." — Amazon reviewer. https://a.co/d/0340l3Ak
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