Based on the model of steady-state heat and moisture transfer through textiles, an inverse problem of type design (IPTD) for bilayer textile materials under low temperature is put forward. According to the idea of regularization method, the IPTD for bilayer textile materials can be formulated into a function minimization problem. By means of the finite difference algorithm for nonlinear ordinary differential equation and the direct search method of one-dimensional minimization problems, an iterative algorithm for the regularized solution of the IPTD is constructed. By analyzing the results of numerical simulation in different environmental conditions, some conclusions are obtained: Hooke-Jevees's direct search method can effectively solve the IPTD for bilayer textile materials, at the same time, numerical simulation shows the effectiveness of the algorithm and the validity of the proposed inverse problem. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.