Topic summary
Thread count
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Units of textile measurement.
Industry standard in North America
Thread count is often used as a measure of fabric quality, thus "standard" cotton thread counts are around 150 while "good-quality" sheets start at 180 and a count of 200 or higher is considered "percale". Some (but not all) extremely high thread counts (typically over 500) mislead as they usually count the individual threads in "plied" yarns (a yarn that is made by twisting together multiple finer threads). For marketing purposes, a fabric with 250 two-ply yarns in both the vertical and horizontal direction could have the component threads counted to a 1,000 thread count although according to the USA's National Textile Association (NTA), which cites the international standards group ASTM International, accepted industry practice is to count each thread as one, even threads spun as two- or three-ply yarn. The USA's Federal Trade Commission in an August 2005 letter to the NTA agreed that consumers "could be deceived or misled" by inflated thread counts.