Smart textiles are fabrics that sense a change in the wearer or the surroundings, such as heat, moisture, pressure, movement or a heartbeat, and, in the more advanced kinds, react or adapt to it. The usual classification has three levels. Passive smart textiles only sense: a shirt with textile heart electrodes is one. Active smart textiles sense and react: wax capsules that melt and soak up body heat are one. Very smart (or ultra smart) textiles sense, react and adapt, with a unit that works like a brain: leggings that read a yoga pose and vibrate to correct it are one (Çelikel 2020, following Tao 2001). The sensing or reacting is done by the fibre, yarn, print or finish itself, which is what separates a smart textile from a gadget clipped onto clothes.
Last verified: 18 October 2026. Product details are read from each maker’s own page on that date, research from the papers and EU project records, and standards from this site’s register and the publishers’ catalogues. Every source is linked where it is used.
Smart textiles at a glance
| Question | Short answer | Section |
|---|---|---|
| What are smart textiles? | Fabrics that sense, and sometimes react or adapt to, a stimulus such as heat, moisture, pressure or an electrical signal from the body | Definition |
| What are the types? | Passive (sense), active (sense and react), very smart (sense, react and adapt) | The three types, with examples |
| What are real examples? | Heart and breathing shirts, sensing socks, phase-change temperature buffers, cooling finishes, colour-changing prints, haptic leggings | Classification table |
| How are they made? | Conductive yarns knitted, woven or embroidered in; stretchable inks printed on; responsive chemistry applied as a finish or capsule | How a smart textile is built |
| Is there a standard? | Terminology in ISO/TR 23383 and ASTM D8248; test methods in the IEC 63203 series for e-textiles | Standards |
| How big is the market? | Published estimates for 2025 range from about USD 2.6 billion to USD 8.3 billion, because publishers count different things | The market |
What are smart textiles? Definition, and smart versus intelligent
A smart textile is a fibre, yarn or fabric whose properties change in a useful way in response to a stimulus: mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical or magnetic. The response may be a signal (a sensor), a physical change (an actuator: colour, heat flow, shape, light, vibration), or both under some form of control. That is the working sense used in the standards documents on the subject: ISO/TR 23383:2020 gives definitions, a categorisation, applications and standardisation needs for “smart (intelligent) textiles”, and replaced the European report CEN/TR 16298:2011 on the same topics (national catalogue record). ASTM keeps a separate vocabulary, ASTM D8248-20 Standard Terminology for Smart Textiles, whose scope says plainly that “smart textiles is an emerging field” and the standard “will evolve accordingly” (ASTM product page).
Smart or intelligent? In practice the words are used as synonyms; the ISO title puts “intelligent” in brackets after “smart”. Where authors do separate them, “intelligent” is kept for the top level, a textile that also processes information and adapts. The Spanish term is textiles inteligentes. E-textiles (electronic textiles) are the subset that carry electrical circuits; a phase-change fabric is smart but has no electronics at all.
Smart is not the same as functional. A waterproof membrane or an antibacterial finish does one fixed job whatever happens around it. A smart textile’s behaviour changes with conditions: a thermochromic print is one colour below a temperature and another above it.
The three types of smart textiles: passive, active and very smart, with real examples
The three-level scheme goes back to Xiaoming Tao’s Smart Fibres, Fabrics and Clothing (Woodhead, 2001) and is repeated in most reviews. In one peer-reviewed summary: passive smart textiles “can only sense the environment, as they are just sensors”; in active ones, “besides the sensor function, they also have an actuator function”; ultra smart textiles “sense, react, monitor, and adopt themselves according to the stimuli” (Çelikel, Smart E-Textile Materials, IntechOpen 2020).
The table sorts products that are, or were, on sale by what the textile does. Each example is cited to the maker’s own page or the primary record; the standard column links this site’s register where a record exists; maturity is as found on 18 October 2026.
| Type | What the textile does | Mechanism | Commercial example (source) | Standard or test method | Maturity, Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Passive | Senses heart and breathing | Textile ECG electrodes and respiratory inductance plethysmography sensors in a tight shirt; a battery-powered recorder logs the data and sends it by Bluetooth | Hexoskin smart shirt: 1-lead ECG, breathing rate, minute ventilation, 3-axis accelerometer (maker page) | EN IEC 63203-201-2 (conductive fabrics); BS EN IEC 63203-204-2 (resistance change in knee and elbow bending) | On sale, niche (sport, research) |
| Passive | Senses foot strike | “100% textile sensors” in the sock; the Sensoria Core module sends cadence and foot-landing data by Bluetooth to a phone app | Sensoria Smart Socks (maker page) | EN IEC 63203-201-1 (conductive yarns) | On sale, niche |
| Passive | Senses skin temperature | Sensors in a sock measure foot temperature continuously; a rise can signal inflammation before a diabetic foot ulcer | Siren socks, monitored by nurses who alert the patient’s provider (maker page) | No textile-specific method in the register | In service, as a monitored programme |
| Passive | Senses touch | Conductive yarn woven into the cuff on standard looms; a removable tag reads swipes and taps and controls the phone | Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google, 2017 (Poupyrev et al., CHI 2016) | None | Discontinued: app support ended 24 April 2023 (report quoting the in-app notice) |
| Active | Absorbs and releases body heat | Microencapsulated wax melts as skin warms, storing heat, and solidifies as it cools, releasing it: a phase-change buffer, no power | Outlast, which began as a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract to improve insulation in spacesuit gloves (maker page; NASA Spinoff) | ASTM D7024 (steady-state and dynamic thermal performance of textiles), withdrawn | Widely sold (the maker names clothing, shoes and helmets) |
| Active | Cools more when hot and sweaty | A finish of “hydro-functional polymers that reversibly change their behavior with temperature and moisture”, raising evaporative cooling as moisture builds | HeiQ Smart Temp: “up to 2.5°C (4.5°F)” lower fabric surface temperature “under test conditions”, a maker’s figure (maker page) | No method specific to the effect | Widely licensed (the maker cites more than 5,000 tested products) |
| Active | Changes colour with temperature | Reversible leuco-dye microcapsules in a print; colour appears below one temperature and clears above another | Matsui Chromicolor Type 37: colour appears below 32.0°C, disappears above 41.0°C (maker page) | None for the colour change itself; see colour-changing fabric | On sale as inks and masterbatches |
| Active | Changes colour on command | Electrochromic layer switched by a low voltage | No textile product found on sale; research prototypes only | EN IEC 63203-301-1:2024 (electrochromic films for wearable equipment) | Research and pilot |
| Active | Emits light | Light sources built into the garment | CuteCircuit illuminated garments such as its Galaxy Dress and Graphene Dress (maker page) | None | On sale, niche |
| Very smart | Senses a pose, decides, gives feedback | Sensors in the leggings; an app analyses the pose and sends “gentle vibrations through the leggings to guide your movement” | Wearable X Nadi X yoga leggings, listed at USD 99 (maker page) | None | On sale, niche |
| Very smart | Monitors a rescuer and the hazard around them | “Integrated smart wearables” built on smart fibres and e-textiles, to improve responders’ safety and coordination | PROETEX, EU research project with the CNR as coordinator, 1 February 2006 to 31 January 2010 (CORDIS record) | Protective clothing standards apply to the garment, e.g. EN 1149-5 | Research, closed |
Where a product sits depends on where the decision is made. A Hexoskin shirt, a pair of Sensoria socks and the Jacquard cuff are passive at the level of the fabric: the textile senses, and the deciding is done by a clip-on unit or a phone. Counted as a whole system, each one senses and responds. Authors also disagree at the edges; the review quoted above lists conductive fibres and UV-protective clothing as passive examples, where others would call them functional. When a seller calls something “intelligent”, ask which part senses, which part decides, and which part acts.
How a smart textile is built: sensors, actuators, conductors, power and data
Every smart textile combines some of five parts. Only the first two need be textile; the others are often a small rigid module that clips on and comes off for washing.
| Part | What it does | Textile forms | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensor | Turns a stimulus into a signal | Conductive electrodes knitted or printed against the skin; yarns whose resistance changes with strain (piezoresistive); temperature and humidity sensors in the fabric | WEALTHY (EU, 1 September 2002 to 28 February 2005) built conductive and piezoresistive yarns, “woven or knitted in fabric form”, into a garment that monitors vital signs (CORDIS record) |
| Actuator | Turns a signal or stimulus into a change | Phase-change capsules, thermochromic prints, electrochromic layers, heating tracks, LEDs, vibration motors | Outlast; Chromicolor; Nadi X |
| Conductor | Carries power and data | Metal-plated or metal-wire yarns, carbon, conductive polymers; printed stretchable inks | Silver-plated polyamide embroidery thread, “< 100 Ohm/m” (HC 12) and “<300 Ohm/m” (HC 40) (Madeira) |
| Power | Supplies energy | Usually a small rechargeable battery in a module; textile energy storage is in research | RMIT laser-printed graphene supercapacitors: a 10 × 10 cm waterproof, stretchable patch in three minutes (Thekkekara and Gu, Scientific Reports 2019) |
| Processing and data | Reads the sensors, decides, communicates | Almost always a rigid chip; Bluetooth to a phone is the norm (the “IoT” part) | Hexoskin and Sensoria both send data by Bluetooth to an app |
Three ways to put circuits into cloth. Weave or knit conductive yarn in as the fabric is made: Google’s Jacquard team engineered a conductive yarn that could be woven on industrial looms, so only a patch of the garment needed to be interactive (Poupyrev et al. 2016). Embroider or sew it on afterwards: MIT’s “e-broidery” work patterned conductive textiles by numerically controlled sewing to make sensors and user-interface elements (Post, Orth, Russo and Gershenfeld, IBM Systems Journal 39(3-4), 2000). Print stretchable conductive inks onto the fabric: DuPont launched its Intexar inks and films for smart clothing in July 2017, saying they are applied with standard apparel processes and that garments “can endure over 100 washes”, a maker’s claim (DuPont release as published by Textile World).
Conductive yarns are resistors, not wire. Silver-plated polyamide, the commonest choice for sewn circuits, conducts far worse than copper, and the figure depends on the construction: Madeira gives under 100 ohms per metre for its heavier HC 12 thread and under 300 for the finer HC 40, and notes that more conductive material in the stitch lowers the resistance. More on yarn choice in conductive threads in wearable technology and fundamentals of e-textiles.
Worked example: how far can a conductive-yarn trace carry power?
Take an LED drawing 20 mA from a 3.3 V supply, wired with 0.5 m of thread at 100 ohms per metre (the HC 12 figure above), and allow a 5% voltage-drop budget (the calculator’s default).
- Trace resistance: 100 Ω/m × 0.5 m = 50 Ω.
- Voltage drop: 0.020 A × 50 Ω = 1.00 V, which is 30.3% of the 3.3 V supply. Only 2.30 V reaches the LED.
- Heat in the thread: 0.020² × 50 = 0.020 W, or 20 mW, next to the skin.
- Longest trace inside a 5% budget: 0.165 V ÷ (0.020 A × 100 Ω/m) = 0.0825 m, about 8 cm.
So half a metre of a good conductive thread is six times too long for this load. The fixes are the ones designers use: shorter runs, several parallel stitch lines or a heavier thread, a higher supply voltage, or a lower current. Open this example in the conductive yarn resistance calculator and change the figures for your own thread. Resistance also climbs as a trace is washed and flexed; the trace wash fatigue calculator projects that, once you have fitted its constants from your own wash trial.
Smart textiles and wearable technology: what is the difference?
Wearable technology is any electronics worn on the body: a smartwatch, a fitness band, a chest strap. Smart textiles are the cases where the fabric itself does part of the job, as a sensor, a conductor or an actuator. Smart clothing (or smart garments) means a finished garment built on smart textiles, usually with a small detachable module for the battery and radio. The overlap is large and the terms are used loosely, which is why “smart textiles and wearable technology” usually appear together.
For the wearer, the difference shows up in three places. A garment touches far more skin than a watch, so it can read signals a wrist cannot, such as breathing from chest expansion. It has to survive laundering, which a watch never does. And in fashion, the fabric itself becomes the display, as in illuminated stage dresses or the touch-sensitive denim cuff. For sport-specific sensing see textile sensors for sports; for health uses, smart textiles in health and wellness.
Examples of smart textiles by use
- Health monitoring. Shirts that record ECG and breathing (Hexoskin); socks that watch foot temperature for people with diabetes (Siren). The EU’s WEALTHY project was one of the early garment-based monitoring systems, meant to assist “patients during rehabilitation or subjects working in extreme stressful environment conditions”.
- Sport and fitness. Socks that measure cadence and foot landing (Sensoria); leggings that coach a pose by vibration (Nadi X).
- Protection. Garments that monitor emergency workers (PROETEX). An established use of conductive fibre is quieter: antistatic protective clothing, whose fabric must dissipate charge. Its surface resistivity is tested to EN 1149-1 and the garment requirements are in EN 1149-5. More in uniform fabrics.
- Thermal comfort. Phase-change buffers (Outlast) and moisture-responsive cooling finishes (HeiQ Smart Temp) need no power or electronics at all.
- Home textiles. HeiQ lists home textiles among the uses of its moisture-responsive cooling finish, which needs no electronics.
- Fashion and entertainment. Colour-changing prints, light-emitting garments and touch-sensitive fabric.
Smart textile standards and test methods
There is no single “smart textile standard”. There are vocabularies, and a growing family of IEC test methods for e-textiles, published in Europe as EN IEC 63203. Each designation below links to its record in this site’s standards register.
| Standard | What it covers |
|---|---|
| ISO/TR 23383:2020 | Smart (intelligent) textiles: definitions, categorisation, applications and standardisation needs. A technical report, not a test method |
| ASTM D8248-20 | Standard terminology for smart textiles |
| EN IEC 63203-101-1:2021 | Wearable electronic devices and technologies: terminology |
| EN IEC 63203-201-1:2022 | Electronic textile: measurement methods for basic properties of conductive yarns |
| EN IEC 63203-201-2:2022 | Electronic textile: basic properties of conductive fabrics and insulation materials |
| EN IEC 63203-201-3:2021 | Electronic textile: electrical resistance of conductive textiles under a simulated microclimate |
| BS EN IEC 63203-201-4:2025 | Electronic textile: sheet resistance of conductive fabrics after abrasion |
| BS EN IEC 63203-204-1:2021 | Washing durability of leisurewear and sportswear e-textile systems (listed as withdrawn in the register) |
| BS EN IEC 63203-204-2:2025 | Electronic textile: resistance change in a knee and elbow bending test |
| EN IEC 63203-301-1:2024 | Test method for electrochromic films for wearable equipment |
| EN 1149-1:2006 | Protective clothing, electrostatic properties: surface resistivity |
| ISO 18080-1:2015 | Electrostatic propensity of fabrics, corona charging method (parts 2 to 4 use friction) |
| ASTM D7024 | Steady-state and dynamic thermal performance of textile materials; withdrawn |
A smart garment also has to meet the ordinary standards for its base textile, and for the electronics it carries. For how the general textile test families fit together, see textile testing standards.
Washing, care and durability: the main barrier
A 2021 review of e-textile wash testing found that “so far, there are no standardized methods for wash testing of e-textiles”, and called washability “one of the main obstacles that stands in the way of a wider market success of e-textile products”. Because each developer tests differently, products described as equally washable can behave very differently (Rotzler, von Krshiwoblozki and Schneider-Ramelow, Textile Research Journal 91(19-20), 2021). The IEC washing-durability method listed above is one answer to that gap.
What care instructions say therefore varies by product and is the maker’s own claim: Siren describes its socks as machine washable and needing no charging; DuPont claimed over 100 washes for Intexar garments; the Jacquard tag had to be taken off before the jacket was washed. Before buying, look for a wash count, the test that produced it, and whether the electronics come out. Non-electronic smart textiles, such as phase-change and cooling finishes, are washed like the base fabric.
How big is the smart textiles market?
We found no official statistic, only commercial estimates, and they disagree by a factor of three for the same year. Three current examples, each read on the publisher’s own page on 18 October 2026:
| Publisher (page date) | Estimate | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| IMARC Group (updated 8 October 2026) | USD 5.95 billion in 2025 | Passive and active smart textiles; sensing, energy harvesting, luminescence, thermoelectricity; end uses from military to transportation |
| Research and Markets (October 2026) | USD 4 billion in 2024 | Functions: sensing, energy harvesting, thermoelectricity, luminescent; applications: military and defence, healthcare, entertainment, automotive, sports and fitness |
| Market Research Future (updated 15 September 2026) | USD 8,292.5 million in 2025 in the headline; USD 2.6 billion for 2025 in the same page’s summary | “Garment- and fabric-integrated sensing, actuation, energy and communication systems”; passive, active and ultra-smart |
The spread comes from scope. Whether phase-change and cooling finishes count, whether the electronics module is valued with the garment, and whether heated clothing is in or out all change what is being counted. Treat any single figure as one publisher’s definition, not a fact about the industry, and compare forecasts only within the same publisher. The segment names that turn up in searches, such as “smart fabrics for the transportation market” or “for sports and fitness”, are these publishers’ report categories, not separate industries. This page gives no forecast.
A short history of smart textiles
| When | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 1997 | A NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract with Triangle Research and Development puts phase-change microcapsules into fabric to improve spacesuit glove insulation; Gateway Technologies acquires the patent rights and in 1997 renames itself Outlast Technologies | NASA Spinoff; Spinoff 2009 |
| 2000 | MIT researchers publish “e-broidery”: circuits, sensors and interface elements sewn from conductive textiles | IBM Systems Journal 39(3-4) |
| 2001 | Tao’s Smart Fibres, Fabrics and Clothing sets out the passive, active and very smart levels | Woodhead Publishing |
| 2002 to 2005 | WEALTHY knits conductive and piezoresistive yarns into a health-monitoring garment | CORDIS |
| 2006 to 2010 | PROETEX builds smart garments for emergency and disaster workers (total cost EUR 12.8 million) | CORDIS |
| 2011 | CEN/TR 16298 gives European definitions and a categorisation; ISO/TR 23383 replaces it in 2020 | Register |
| 2017 | The Levi’s jacket with Jacquard by Google goes on sale; DuPont launches Intexar printed circuits for clothing | Poupyrev et al.; DuPont release |
| 2020 to 2025 | ASTM D8248 terminology (2020), and IEC 63203 e-textile test methods published as European standards from 2021 | Register |
| 2023 | Google ends Jacquard app support on 24 April, and the jackets’ smart functions stop | In-app notice, as reported |
Frequently asked questions
What is a smart textile?
A fibre, yarn or fabric that senses a stimulus such as heat, moisture, pressure or a body signal, and in the more advanced kinds reacts or adapts to it. The sensing or reacting is done by the textile itself, through conductive yarns, printed circuits, capsules or a responsive finish.
What are some examples of smart textiles?
Shirts with knitted ECG electrodes that record heart rate and breathing, socks that track foot strike or foot temperature, fabrics with phase-change wax capsules that buffer body heat, cooling finishes that respond to sweat, thermochromic prints, light-emitting dresses and leggings that vibrate to correct a yoga pose. The classification table above names a maker for each.
What are the types of smart textiles?
Three: passive smart textiles only sense; active smart textiles sense and react, with an actuator; very smart (ultra smart) textiles sense, react and adapt, with a processing unit. The scheme dates from 2001 and is the one most reviews use.
What is the difference between smart and intelligent textiles?
Mostly none: ISO’s report is titled “smart (intelligent) textiles”. When the words are separated, “intelligent” means the top level, a textile system that processes information and adapts its response, rather than one that only senses or only reacts.
Can smart textiles be washed?
Non-electronic ones, such as phase-change and cooling finishes, wash like the base fabric. Electronic ones vary: most have a module that must come out, and wash life is the maker’s own figure, because there was no agreed wash test for years. Look for the number of washes and the method behind it.
What is the future of smart textiles?
Forecasts are commercial estimates that disagree with one another, so this page does not repeat one. What can be checked is the direction of the standards work: test methods for conductive yarns, fabrics, abrasion, bending and washing in the IEC 63203 series, which address the durability problem that has kept most electronic smart clothing in niche markets.
Sources
- Classification: Çelikel D.C., “Smart E-Textile Materials”, in Advanced Functional Materials, IntechOpen, 2020, doi:10.5772/intechopen.92439; Tao X. (ed.), Smart Fibres, Fabrics and Clothing, Woodhead Publishing, 2001.
- Research: Poupyrev I. et al., “Project Jacquard: Interactive Digital Textiles at Scale”, CHI 2016, doi:10.1145/2858036.2858176; Post E.R., Orth M., Russo P.R., Gershenfeld N., “E-broidery: Design and fabrication of textile-based computing”, IBM Systems Journal 39(3-4):840-860, 2000, doi:10.1147/sj.393.0840; Thekkekara L.V., Gu M., Scientific Reports 9, 2019, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-48320-z; Rotzler S. et al., Textile Research Journal 91(19-20):2401-2417, 2021, doi:10.1177/0040517521996727.
- EU projects: WEALTHY and PROETEX, CORDIS records. NASA: Spinoff, “Feeling Hot, Staying Cool”.
- Makers’ own pages, read 18 October 2026: Hexoskin; Sensoria; Siren; Outlast; HeiQ Smart Temp; Matsui thermochromic; CuteCircuit; Wearable X; Madeira HC threads. DuPont Intexar launch, 25 July 2017, as published by Textile World. Jacquard end of support: 9to5Google, 17 and 28 March 2023.
- Standards: ASTM D8248 product page; CEN/TR 16298 catalogue record; the register records linked in the standards table.
- Market estimates: IMARC Group; Research and Markets; Market Research Future.
How this page is kept
Last verified: 18 October 2026. Product facts are read from each maker’s current page and are rechecked when a product is withdrawn or renamed; figures marked as a maker’s claim are not this site’s measurements. Research and project facts come from the papers and the EU’s CORDIS records. Standards are listed from this site’s register, which records each designation from the publisher’s catalogue. Market figures are quoted as each publisher states them, with the date of its page, and are not endorsed. The worked example uses the site’s conductive yarn resistance calculator as it stood on this date, and the prefilled link was opened to check that it shows the figures quoted.
Change log. 18 October 2026: rewritten in full, and two overlapping articles on smart textiles, wearable technology and intelligent textiles were merged into this page. Corrected from the earlier versions: HeiQ’s temperature-responsive textile is a polymer finish with no electronics, not a fabric with IoT sensors; commercial conductive yarns are mostly silver-plated polyamide, and the silver-versus-graphene comparison table had no source and was withdrawn; Outlast’s NASA origin was spacesuit glove insulation; the Levi’s Jacquard jacket stopped working when Google ended app support in April 2023; digital textile printing is a printing method, not a smart textile. Unsourced market figures (including a 2005 estimate and “1 billion dollars by 2010”), unnamed case studies and forecasts were removed.
Found an error, or a newer figure? Please tell us through the contact page, naming the section and the source that disagrees.
