Workers with years of work experience and students with rarely entering into the cotton textile workshop were chosen as subjects to investigate the thermal environment in the cotton textile workshop. Questionnaires have been applied to obtain actual thermal sensation and personal information. In this period, thermal comfort parameters were measured to derive the predicted mean vote (PMV). The adaptive predicted mean vote (aPMV) model and the extended predicted mean vote (ePMV) model were also introduced to compare with the actual mean vote (AMV) and the PMV. Compared with the PMV model and the ePMV model, the aPMV model is more suitable to describe the actual thermal environment in the cotton textile workshop. According to the actual thermal environment and thermal acceptability (TA) survey, the aPMV range for the worker in the cotton textile workshop was recommended to find the environment thermally acceptable to textile worker, which was applied to a graphic of acceptable zone for the cotton textile workshop. The acceptable zone is defined by the combinations of the key factors for thermal sensation, thermal adaptation and technological requirement, so it is suitable to be applied to the cotton textile workshop. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.