The best merino wool t-shirts (2025), tried and tested

We’re talking $80 (or more) t-shirts here, so that’s a valid question. I think merino shirts are worth the investment. They offer significant benefits over cotton and other natural fibers, as well as synthetic materials. Merino offers great temperature regulation, excellent moisture absorption, and is odorless, which means you can wear it more and not need as much of it. Three merino shirts in your wardrobe will last you as many days as 10 cotton shirts, so financially that’s a wash.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the benefits of merino wool:

Odor resistant: One of the superpowers of Merino wool is that it is naturally odor-resistant. This means you can wear a merino t-shirt several times before you need to wash it. How many times? I would say it depends on where you are and what you are doing, but usually three to seven times. Our top pick, after all, is called a 72-hour shirt, because that’s how long you can wear it before it needs to be washed.

Thermoregulation: Merino wool can keep you warm in cold weather and cool in warm weather. Yes, there are limits to this – no T-shirt will keep you cool on a hot summer day in the tropics – but merino far outperforms cotton and synthetics.

Moisture wicking: This is important for anything you wear while walking or to the gym. Merino wool is excellent at transporting moisture away from your skin, through the fabric, where it can evaporate quickly. This is why it makes a good base layer.

cleverness: Merino wool shirts are great for traveling, hiking, backpacking, and as everyday shirts around town. They can also be used year-round, even in the cold, as part of a good layering system.

Fillable: Merino wool shirts tend to be smaller in size than cotton and many synthetic materials, which means they take up less space in your suitcase when traveling. Combine this with the odor resistance above and you’ve got the perfect travel t-shirt.

One place where cotton and nylon blend shirts may have an advantage is in durability. Merino wool isn’t really any less durable in my experience, but it can pill, as the wool fibers break and tangle together in little knots, forming little balls on your shirt. Some pilling isn’t a big deal, but if a shirt has a lot of pilling, you know it’s made from very short wool fibres, not longer continuous fibres.

Unfortunately, most manufacturers do not advertise the length of their spun fibers, and this is where our tests come in. I hate piling, and I’ve removed all but one of my shirts, which I like anyway (the piling isn’t that bad).