Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers: Which Kind Should I Use?

Cotton or cellulose fluff, cost savings or convenience, laundry or landfill: For some new parents, choosing between using cloth or disposable diapers can feel like a big decision. How do you know which kind of diaper will work best for your family?

Advocates for both cloth and disposable diapers make strident and often conflicting claims about the benefits and drawbacks of each. Depending on who you listen to, you may hear that either disposable or cloth diapers are the cheaper, healthier, more ecological, more convenient, and/or more enlightened way to care for your baby.

In our full reviews of cloth and disposable diapers we go into detail about the materials, construction, and performance of both types, but here we’ll address some reasons why parents choose cloth or disposable diapers, and what evidence exists to support them.

Diaper rash and skin health

Proponents of cloth and disposable diapers both claim that babies wearing their chosen type suffer less diaper rash. After talking to two pediatric dermatologists and reviewing the scientific literature on the topic, it’s clear to us that disposable diapers do have the edge in preventing the most common type of diaper rash, irritant diaper dermatitis, which is caused by moisture from urine and feces remaining trapped against the skin. Modern disposables are highly absorbent, and, as we found in testing for our guide, the top performers can keep a baby’s skin dry even after multiple wettings. Dr. Bruce Brod, a pediatric dermatologist who specializes in dermatitis, told us: “The skin is largely better off with disposable diapers because of the technology that evolved”—namely, the use of superabsorbent polymers, which take in and retain many times their weight in liquid. But some babies can develop allergic rashes from certain ingredients used in disposable diapers, including rubber, adhesives, fragrances, and dyes.

The conclusion? Either type of diaper can lead to rashes, but disposable diapers typically keep babies drier and better prevent the common problem of diaper rash caused by moisture.

Potty training

Some cloth diaper companies and educational sites claim that babies who wear cloth diapers potty train earlier than babies diapered with disposables. Besides anecdotal evidence, these sources often cite the fact that the age of toilet training in the US has risen from around 18 months in the 1950s and 1960s to 3 years old today, a climb that tracks the increase in popularity of disposable diapers, from their introduction in the mid 20th century to today, with over 95 percent of babies in the US using disposables.

Dr. Bruce Taubman, a pediatrician at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and coauthor of several studies on toilet training, told us he’s unaware of any scientific evidence that the use of cloth diapers leads to earlier potty training. “To my knowledge there’s no data,” he said, and suggested the change in the age of potty training likely has more to do with changes in family structures and parenting styles over the past several decades.

A 1987 study in Japan compared a small group of infants—including twins—half of whom were diapered with cloth and half with disposables. That study found the two groups potty trained at the same age. An article (cowritten by a dermatologist and a researcher for Procter & Gamble) comparing diaper and toilet training practices around the world noted the age of toilet training seems to be influenced by culture, pointing out that babies in India and China (which have higher rates of cloth diaper use) and Russia (where babies predominantly wear disposables) all potty train earlier than their counterparts in the US and Western Europe.

The conclusion? There’s probably no reason to choose a diapering method based on potty training goals.

Environmental impact

The environmental impact that this new person will have on the world weighs heavily on some soon-to-be parents. One of the more commonly reported reasons parents consider cloth diapers is that they’re more environmentally friendly than disposables, or are believed to be. There’s no question that disposable diapers create more landfill waste: a baby is likely to go through between 5,000 and 6,000 disposable diapers before becoming potty trained. A 2014 Environmental Protection Agency report found that disposable diapers account for 7 percent of nondurable household waste in landfills. Except in very limited cases, disposable diapers (regardless of what they claim) won’t compost or biodegrade in a landfill.

But disposable diaper advocates have countered that the energy and water costs of laundering cloth diapers, as well as the environmental impact of cotton production, make them less environmentally friendly than they appear, particularly in terms of the carbon emissions traceable to their care. The best life-cycle analysis we’ve found is a 2008 report (PDF) from the Environment Agency in the UK that compared the manufacturing, disposal, and energy costs of both diaper types. “The environmental impacts of using shaped reusable nappies [cloth diapers] can be higher or lower than using disposables, depending on how they are laundered,” the report concludes. The agency’s analysis found that based on average laundry habits and appliance efficiency, when washing with 60 °C (140 °F) water and mostly line-drying, the overall carbon emissions created by cloth diapering were roughly the same as those of using disposables. But using cloth diapers for a second child or getting them secondhand, exclusively line-drying them, and washing them in fuller loads could reduce that amount by up to 40 percent. (Whether there are any advantages to using so-called “eco-friendly” disposable diapers is even more complicated, and we’re planning a separate post on that topic.)

The conclusion? Cloth diapers are not necessarily more environmentally friendly, but if you’re particularly careful about how you acquire and wash them they are likely to be.

Cost

Diapering represents a significant, ongoing expense for parents of new babies, and many people want to figure out how to do it more cheaply. Whether disposable or cloth diapers end up being a cheaper option depends on a number of factors.

Disposable diapers can be a huge expense, but exactly how much they cost varies greatly depending on the brand, whether you buy them online or in a store, and the package size. If you buy large boxes of our main picks, Walmart’s Parent’s Choice or Target’s Up & Up diapers—discount brands that our lab testing and user reviews indicate perform as well as much more expensive brands—you’ll spend about $250 per year. More expensive brands, like our upgrade picks, Pampers Swaddlers or Cruisers, can cost $500 per year. The most expensive disposables tend to be “eco-friendly” brands: A year’s worth of Honest Company diapers can cost $850.

For cloth diapers, a set of 18 BumGenius 5.0 pocket diapers, our main pick, and 36 inserts cost about $300. (Fifteen to 20 diapers tends to be adequate for a single baby, if you’re doing laundry two to three times per week.) Because our main cloth diaper picks may be too big for tiny newborns, some families also purchase a set of prefold diapers and smaller covers to use for the early days, which can add another $100.

We asked Wirecutter appliances editor Liam McCabe to estimate the energy costs of washing a load of cloth diapers two to three times per week, which the cloth-diapering parents we spoke to reported as average. For these calculations, McCabe used national average prices for water, electricity, and gas—your own utilities costs may be higher or lower.

If you wash a full load of diapers in a front-loading washer like our main pick on the sanitize cycle (which uses water around 165 °F), and dry them in the dryer, it’ll cost around 47¢ per load, or about $60 per year if you’re doing two to three loads per week. If you use an old-style top-loader like a Speed Queen, the cost per load may be closer to 84¢, or $110 per year.

So, assuming your kid spends three years in diapers, you may save about $120 to $270 total if you exclusively use our cloth diaper picks instead of our disposable diaper picks. The savings increase if you use the cloth diapers for additional children (or buy them used) and/or line-dry them; they decrease if you use more rinse or hot-water cycles or tumble dry, or if utilities are significantly more expensive in your area than the national averages we used for these calculations.

These price comparisons don’t take into account the time required to clean cloth diapers, or the additional cost of using a diaper laundering service.

The conclusion? Cloth diapering can save you some money, but the difference may be less than you’d expect.