The cloth napkins for every night and the good nights.

Now Designs has made kitchen and table textiles for decades, and its Spectrum napkins are the kind of thing that should be in every drawer. They are 100% cotton, 19 inches square, with mitered corners and a half inch stitched hem, sold in a long run of solid colors.

The indigo is the practical choice. Dark cotton hides tomato and wine better than white, washes warm and tumbles dry low, and needs only a quick press on the cotton setting for a clean fold. They match the Spectrum placemats if you want a set.

Skip them for a formal table; they are everyday cotton and look it. The maker says not to bleach them, which is another reason to buy a color rather than white.

Solino's Fete napkins are 100% European flax linen, 20 inches square, OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified, and sold by Solino itself. At about $10 a napkin they cost less than most linen and hold up to daily use, which is what makes them the pick: good enough for guests, cheap enough to not save for them.

Linen is the best napkin fiber. It absorbs well, it dries fast, and it softens with every wash rather than wearing thin. The maker says they are machine washable and can be pressed with a low or steam iron for a crisp look, or left rumpled for a relaxed table.

Skip them if you dislike creases; linen wrinkles and will look slept in unless ironed. White also shows stains, so treat spills the same night.

SARO's Stonewashed Stitch Border napkins are 100% linen, 20 inches square, in an undyed natural shade with a contrasting stitched edge. Stonewashing softens linen before it reaches you, so these feel broken in on the first night instead of after a dozen washes.

The natural color is the forgiving one. It sits with earthenware, white porcelain and wood equally well, and it hides the faint stains that white linen shows. It suits the long, informal dinner more than the formal one.

Skip them if you want to machine dry everything; the maker says cool machine wash, recommends dry cleaning and says cool iron. In practice that means hanging them to dry, which linen does quickly.

Garnier-Thiebaut is a French table linen maker that designs and weaves in the Vosges, in eastern France. The Confettis napkins are plain satin weave with no pattern, in 100% two-ply twisted extra long staple cotton of medium thickness. The result is a napkin with a very subtle sheen, a smooth hand and the weight that makes a proper fold hold its shape.

This is what a formal table wants: bright white, crisp when ironed, and with a slight luster under candles that linen does not have. Two-ply twisted yarn and long staple cotton are the reason it lasts through years of hot washes. They come in sets of six, so two sets cover a table of twelve.

Skip them for every night. They need ironing on high heat, from the back, to look their best, and at 18 inches square they are the smallest here, though still dinner size.