PFAS-treated materials are commonly used in surgical gowns because of their liquid repellent properties. Due to environmental and health concerns associated with PFAS, there is growing interest in PFAS-free alternatives for medical textiles. These materials must maintain liquid repellency and barrier performance to provide protection in clinical environments. Therefore, a deeper understanding of liquid-material interactions is needed. This study aims to characterize the liquid-material interaction of selected materials. Three SMS-nonwoven fabrics with different surface treatments were evaluated, a fluorochemical-treated reference material, a non-fluorochemical repellent treated material, and an antistatic material without repellent treatment. The materials were tested using clinically relevant liquids with varying surface tensions including water, synthetic blood, ethanol, isopropanol (IPA) and rapeseed oil. Static contact angle measurements, alcohol repellency (AR) test, observation of spreading using syringe pump test and hydrostatic head testing were performed. The PFAS-treated show the most consistent repellency across the tested liquid. It had the highest AR rating up to 90% alcohol-water solutions, passed both blood and oil repellency test and showed no visible wetting. The non-fluorochemical repellent-treated material showed good repellency for higher tension liquids such as water and synthetic blood and could repel 50% ethanol solution. However, it showed limitations against rapeseed oil and 50% IPA-water solution. The antistatic-treated material showed the lowest overall repellency mainly against alcohol-water solutions and oil. The results concluded that surface tension is not the only factor influencing wetting behaviour. Overall, the study provides comparative insight into how selected SMS-nonwoven materials interact with the test liquids and shows that evaluation of repellency of surgical gowns should consider liquid type and surface treatment.