Buyers often receive a cropped logo. The document that matters is the current STANDARD 100 by OEKO-TEX certificate for the article in this order, and reading it is a matching exercise: eight fields on the document, each of which has to match something you actually know about this order. Read it before you write "OEKO-TEX certified" on a hangtag.
This page walks the eight fields, says what each one proves and what the common mismatch looks like, and ends with what the certificate lets you claim - and what it never proves. We hold STANDARD 100 on our own programs, so the examples are the mismatches we see most often on incoming RFQs.
The eight fields, and what each one proves
- Holder. The company named on the certificate should be traceable to the company on the contract. The mismatch: a holding company or a trading name that is not the entity you are buying from. A certificate is held by a legal entity - if the holder is not your counterparty or its audited production company, ask which relationship the certificate describes.
- Site. The address should be the site that makes or finishes this cloth, not a sister plant left off the scope. The mismatch: a group certificate whose scope lists one mill while the cloth comes from another. Weaving and finishing can sit at different sites; both have to be inside the scope for a finished article's claim to hold.
- Standard. Confirm it says STANDARD 100, not a different OEKO-TEX label. OEKO-TEX publishes several standards - MADE IN GREEN, LEATHER STANDARD, ORGANIC COTTON, STeP - and a logo from any of them looks similar on a homepage. Only STANDARD 100 is the harmful-substances test.
- Product class. The class has to fit the end use: Class I baby textiles, Class II direct skin contact, Class III non-skin-contact articles, Class IV furnishing textiles. The mismatch: bedding quoted on a Class IV certificate, or a curtain program quoted on Class II. Bedding and a curtain are not automatically the same class, and the class decides how strict the tested limits were.
- Article. The tested article has to describe this construction. The mismatch: a greige certificate offered as covering a coated blackout, or a plain-weave article covering a satin-stripe program. Coating, printing and finishing change the article; a new finish is a new article until the certificate says otherwise.
- Dates. Issue and expiry should cover the production date of the lot. The mismatch: a certificate that expired between the sample approval and the bulk production - the claim has to hold at the time the cloth is made, not at the time you first saw the logo.
- Institute. The test institute named on the certificate is the one you can verify on the OEKO-TEX label check. The label check is the public registry; the institute and the certificate number are what you type into it.
- Lot. Ask whether this shipment's quality documents point back to that certificate. The certificate is article-level; the shipment's own paperwork should reference it. This is the field buyers skip, and it is the one that turns a document into evidence for the roll in your warehouse.
Appendix 4 or Appendix 6: ask which limits the article was tested to
STANDARD 100 certificates are issued against one of two limit-value catalogues. Appendix 4 is the baseline catalogue for standard textile products. Appendix 6 enforces stricter limits - perfluorinated compounds, heavy metals, phthalates, volatile organic compounds - aligned with Detox and ZDHC manufacturing targets. The same article can be certified under either, so the appendix is part of the specification: ask for it on the RFQ the way you ask for the class.
Our own STANDARD 100 coverage is issued against Appendix 6, across Product Classes I-IV, which is why the class question above is one we can answer per article rather than per homepage.
What the certificate proves, and what it never proves
A STANDARD 100 certificate proves one thing: the named article, at the named site, was tested for harmful substances against the named limit catalogue, and passed, while the certificate was valid. Everything a buyer sometimes reads into it is a different document:
- It is not a colorfastness report. Fastness to washing, rubbing and light is tested separately, to ISO 105 or AATCC methods, and quoted per lot on the test report.
- It is not a GSM, width or construction specification. Those are the fabric spec's own fields.
- It is not a recycled-content claim. That is GRS - a different standard, a different registry, a different certificate. An order can need both; neither proves the other.
- It is not a shipment-level document. The certificate covers the article; the shipment's own quality documents are what tie the roll to it.
What we can send
We hold GRS and OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 for the programs those certificates name. Ask sales for the current PDF and match it to the style on the quote - the eight fields above are the matching exercise. Certifications is the company page, and the registry lookups - including our Textile Exchange ID and the OEKO-TEX label check - are walked through in how to verify OEKO-TEX and GRS certificates. The glossary entry for OEKO-TEX is the short definition, with the class table.
If the order is also recycled polyester, read the GRS and RCS note next. The two systems answer different questions.