Every newborn checklist says "muslin squares" and then refuses to give you a number. So here is one, based on how they actually get used rather than how they are sold.
The short answer: 8 to 12
Eight is the floor if you are willing to run a wash every couple of days. Twelve means you can miss a wash without a crisis. Anything beyond about sixteen and you are storing muslins rather than using them.
That sounds like a lot for something described as a "square of cotton". It stops sounding like a lot the first week in.
Where they actually go
- Two or three live wherever you feed. One over the shoulder, one on your lap, one that has already been used and you have not moved yet.
- Two in the changing bag. One as a changing surface on someone else's floor, one for everything else.
- One in the pram as a sunshade, clipped over the hood. Cotton muslin breathes, which a folded blanket does not — this matters more than people realise on a warm day.
- One in the car. You will be glad of it exactly once, and then never forget again.
- Two or three in the wash at any given time. This is the part the checklists leave out.
Sizes: get both
Small squares (around 70–80cm) are the workhorses — mopping, burping, wiping. Large wraps (100cm and up) are for swaddling, pram covers and using as a clean floor layer. A large wrap will do a small square's job at a pinch. A small square will never swaddle anything.
If you are buying once, go roughly two-thirds small, one-third large.
Why the cheap ones are usually fine
Muslin softens with washing. A stiff new muslin is not a bad muslin, it is an unwashed one — give it three or four washes before you judge it. This is also why expensive muslins are hard to justify: after a month of laundry, the £4 square and the £14 square feel much the same.
What does vary is size honesty and how well the edges hold. Cheap muslins that are cut smaller than stated, or come apart at the hem, are the actual false economy.
One thing worth spending on
A single larger, nicer wrap — the one that ends up in every photograph and gets handed to visitors. Everything else can be the practical stuff.
Our printed cotton muslin squares come four to a pack from £6.99, dispatched from the UK in 1–3 working days. Browse the rest in Muslins & Swaddles.
The bit nobody says
You will lose some. They will go to nursery and not come back, get used to wipe something you would rather not think about, or vanish behind a car seat until the summer. Buy accordingly and do not be precious about them.