Study of water footprint (WF) is one of the hottest topics in the sustainability assessment and management of water resources. As a new analytical tool, assessment of the WF of products can help to understand the comprehensive impacts of products on water resources scarcity and pollution, as well as pinpoint actions to ensure that products do not contribute to unsustainable use of water resources. Textile production is a important necessity with a great amount of production and consumption, and its production process is accompanied by considerable volumes of water consumption and sewage emission. China is the world's largest textile producer and exporter. The large-scale textile industry places serious pressure on water resources and the water environment. In order to assess quantitatively the comprehensive impact of the industry stage of textile production on the water resources at the product level, this paper has applied the theory of the industrial water footprint (IWF). It has analyzed and determined the system boundary and content of the IWF of textile production and then constructed an accounting method for the IWF of textile. Based on survey and monitoring in many textile factories, the IWF of four typical cotton textiles (i.e., heather grey, bleached cloth, dyed fabric and yarn-dyed fabric) were calculated and analyzed. The results showed that: 1) The accounting methodology and associated parameters of the IWF of textiles proposed by this paper are operational and applicable, which meets the requirements of textile IWF assessment and reflects differences among different types of textile. 2) The IWF of yarn-dyed fabric is the largest (81.51L/lb), followed by dyed fabric (61.52L/lb), heather grey (37.84L/lb), and the IWF of bleached cloth is the smallest (36.51L/lb). 3) Comparing the IWF of products of the same type but in different colors, it was found that the darker the color is, the larger IWF it has. This is due to the fact that a dark colored textile needs to be washed more times, therefore leading to an increase in water, steam and energy consumption. 4) According to the IWF composition of the four textiles, the direct IWF has a larger share, and the indirect IWF is relatively small. This means that the comprehensive impact of the direct water consumption and pollution in textile production processes on the water resources is considerably larger than the impact of the industry production of materials. More importantly, the blue WF accounts for a major proportion of the direct IWF, while the grey WF occupies a smaller proportion, which means that the impact from water consumption is considerably larger than that of water pollution in textile production processes. 5) The indirect IWF is sourced mainly from the consumption of steam and electricity in the production department, and less from coal, gasoline and diesel consumption in the public department and transportation. These results implied that 1) For manufacturing enterprise, the key point to reducing the IWF of textiles is to curb water use in production process. 2) For consumers, choosing a lighter colored textile is the more environmentally friendly option.