dei_EntityRegistrantName

RUSSELL INVESTMENT CO

rr_RiskReturnHeading

UNCONSTRAINED TOTAL RETURN FUND

rr_ObjectivePrimaryTextBlock

The Fund seeks to provide total return.

rr_ExpenseNarrativeTextBlock

The following tables describe the fees and expenses that you may pay if you buy and hold Shares of the Fund. You may qualify for sales charge discounts if you and your family invest, or agree to invest in the future, at least $50,000 in Russell Funds. More information about these and other discounts is available from your financial professional and in the Front-End Sales Charges section and the More About Deferred Sales Charges section beginning on pages 39 and 42, respectively, of the Prospectus, and in the Purchase, Exchange and Redemption of Fund Shares section, beginning on page 15 of the Fund’s Statement of Additional Information. Please see the Expense Notes section of the Fund’s Prospectus for further information regarding expenses of the Fund.

Operating Expenses Caption [Text]

rr_OperatingExpensesCaption

Annual Fund Operating Expenses (expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)

Portfolio Turnover [Heading]

rr_PortfolioTurnoverHeading

Portfolio Turnover

Expense Breakpoint Discounts [Text]

rr_ExpenseBreakpointDiscounts

You may qualify for sales charge discounts if you and your family invest, or agree to invest in the future, at least $50,000 in Russell Funds.

Other Expenses, New Fund, Based on Estimates [Text]

rr_OtherExpensesNewFundBasedOnEstimates

“Other Expenses” are based on estimated amounts for the current fiscal year.

Expense Example Narrative [Text Block]

rr_ExpenseExampleNarrativeTextBlock

This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in the Fund with the cost of investing in other mutual funds.

The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated and then redeem all of your Shares at the end of those periods. The example also assumes your investment has a 5% return each year and that operating expenses remain the same. The calculation of costs for the one year period takes into account the effect of any current contractual fee waivers and/or reimbursements. The calculation of costs for the remaining periods takes such fee waivers and/or reimbursements into account only for the first year of the periods.

Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, under these assumptions your costs would be:

Strategy Narrative [Text Block]

rr_StrategyNarrativeTextBlock

The Fund seeks to achieve its objective by opportunistically investing in a broad range of fixed income securities across sectors, the globe and the credit quality and maturity spectrums, with an emphasis on higher-yielding securities. The Fund’s fixed income investments may include U.S. and non-U.S. corporate debt securities, Yankee Bonds (dollar-denominated obligations issued in the U.S. by non-U.S. banks and corporations), fixed income securities issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government (including Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and zero coupon securities) or by non-U.S. governments, or by any U.S. government or non-U.S. government agency or instrumentality (including emerging markets sovereign debt), emerging markets debt securities (including Brady Bonds), convertible securities, high yield fixed income securities, investment grade fixed income securities and mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. The Fund may also invest in other asset classes in order to seek to achieve its objective, including equity securities.

Russell Investment Management, LLC (“RIM”) provides or oversees the provision of all investment advisory and portfolio management services for the Fund, including developing the investment program for the Fund and managing the Fund's overall exposures. RIM employs a multi-manager approach for the Fund whereby RIM selects the investment strategies for the Fund and utilizes multiple money managers to pursue those strategies. RIM manages assets not allocated to money managers, which include assets managed by RIM to effect the Fund's investment strategies and/or to actively manage the Fund's overall exposures to seek to achieve the desired risk/return profile for the Fund. RIM may utilize quantitative or qualitative analysis or quantitative models designed to assess Fund characteristics and identify a portfolio which provides the desired exposures or use strategies based on indexes that represent the desired exposures, including index replication and optimized index sampling (strategies that seek to purchase the securities in an index or a sampling of securities using optimization and risk models, respectively). RIM also manages the Fund's cash balances.

The Fund may invest without limitation in securities denominated in foreign currencies and in U.S. dollar-denominated securities of foreign issuers. The Fund considers emerging market countries to include every country in the world except Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Emerging market countries also include frontier market countries, which are less developed than traditional emerging market countries. The Fund may invest in currency futures and options on futures, forward currency contracts, currency swaps and currency options for speculative purposes or to seek to protect a portion of its investments against adverse currency exchange rate changes. The Fund invests in derivative instruments and may take both long and short positions relative to the underlying asset. The Fund’s use of derivatives may cause the Fund’s investment returns to be impacted by the performance of securities the Fund does not own and result in the Fund’s total investment exposure exceeding the value of its portfolio. The Fund also purchases loans and other direct indebtedness, including bank loans (also called “leveraged loans”). The Fund may enter into repurchase agreements and reverse repurchase agreements. The Fund may invest in money market securities and commercial paper, including asset-backed commercial paper. The Fund may invest in bank obligations. A portion of the Fund’s net assets may be “illiquid” securities. The Fund may invest in variable and floating rate securities. The Fund may invest in puts, stand-by commitments and demand notes, including variable rate demand notes. The Fund may invest in pooled investment vehicles, including other investment companies and exchange traded funds. Depending upon market conditions, RIM may determine to allocate a significant portion of the Fund's assets to cash in order to seek to achieve the Fund's objective. The Fund may expose all or a portion of its cash to changes in interest rates or market/sector returns by purchasing derivatives. The Fund is classified as a “non-diversified fund” under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, which means that a relatively high percentage of the Fund’s assets may be invested in a limited number of issuers. Please refer to the “Investment Objective and Investment Strategies” section in the Fund's Prospectus for further information.

Risk Narrative [Text Block]

rr_RiskNarrativeTextBlock

An investment in the Fund, like any investment, has risks. The value of the Fund fluctuates and you could lose money. The principal risks of investing in the Fund are those associated with:

Active Management. Despite strategies designed to achieve the Fund’s investment objective, the value of investments will change with market conditions, and so will the value of any investment in the Fund and you could lose money. The securities selected for the portfolio may not perform as RIM or the Fund's money managers expect. Additionally, securities selected may cause the Fund to underperform relative to other funds with similar investment objectives and strategies. There is no guarantee that RIM will effectively assess the Fund's portfolio characteristics and it is possible that its judgments regarding the Fund's risk/return profile may prove incorrect. In addition, actions taken to actively manage overall Fund exposures, including risk, may be ineffective and/or cause the Fund to underperform.

Multi-Manager Approach. While the investment styles employed by the money managers are intended to be complementary, they may not in fact be complementary. A multi-manager approach could result in more exposure to certain types of securities and higher portfolio turnover.

Index-Based Investing. Index-based strategies, which may be used to actively manage the Fund's overall exposures, may cause the Fund's returns to be lower than if the Fund employed a fundamental investment approach to security selection with respect to that portion of its portfolio. Additionally, index-based strategies are subject to “tracking error” risk, which is the risk that the performance of the portion of the Fund's portfolio utilizing an index-based strategy will differ from the performance of the index it seeks to track.

Quantitative Investing. Quantitative inputs and models are generally backward-looking or use historical data to evaluate prospective investments or to generate forecasts which could result in incorrect assessments of the specific portfolio characteristics or ineffective adjustments to the Fund’s overall exposures. Securities selected using quantitative analysis may perform differently than analysis of their historical trends would suggest. Inputs or models may be flawed or not work as anticipated and may cause the Fund to underperform other funds with similar investment objectives and strategies.

Equity Securities. The value of equity securities will rise and fall in response to the activities of the company that issued them, general market conditions and/or economic conditions. Investments in small and medium capitalization companies may involve greater risks because these companies generally have narrower markets, more limited managerial and financial resources and a less diversified product offering than larger, more established companies. Small and some medium capitalization stocks may also be thinly traded, and thus, difficult to buy and sell in the market. Investments in preferred stocks are subject to the risks of common stocks, as well as the risk that interest rates will rise and make the fixed dividend feature, if any, less appealing to investors resulting in a decline in price.

Volatility Strategies Risk. Volatility strategies depend on mispricings based upon market anticipated volatility and realized volatility of an underlying asset. If anticipated and realized volatility are incorrectly estimated, the strategy may result in losses.

Fixed Income Securities. Prices of fixed income securities generally rise and fall in response to, among other things, interest rate changes. Volatility in interest rates and in fixed income markets may increase the risk that the Fund’s investments in fixed income securities could lose money. In addition, the Fund could lose money if the issuer or guarantor of a fixed income security or other issuer of credit support is unable or unwilling to make timely principal and/or interest payments, or to otherwise honor its obligations. Fixed income securities may be downgraded in credit rating or go into default.

Non-Investment Grade Debt Securities (“High Yield” or “Junk Bonds”). Non-investment grade debt securities involve higher volatility and higher risk of default than investment grade bonds.

U.S. and Non-U.S. Corporate Debt Securities Risk. Investments in U.S. and non-U.S. corporate debt securities are subject to interest rate risk and market risk, and are affected by perceptions of the creditworthiness and business prospects of individual issuers. Non-U.S. corporate debt securities may expose the Fund to greater risk than investments in U.S. corporate debt securities.

Government Issued or Guaranteed Securities, U.S. Government Securities. Bonds issued or guaranteed by a government are subject to inflation risk, price depreciation risk and default risk.

Asset-Backed Commercial Paper. Investment in asset-backed commercial paper is subject to the risk that insufficient proceeds from the projected cash flows of the contributed receivables are available to repay the commercial paper.

Money Market Securities (Including Commercial Paper). Prices of money market securities generally rise and fall in response to interest rate changes.

Variable and Floating Rate Securities Risk. Variable and floating rate securities generally are less sensitive to interest rate changes but may decline in value if their interest rates do not rise as much, or as quickly, as interest rates in general.

Mortgage-Backed Securities. Mortgage-backed securities may be affected by, among other things, changes or perceived changes in interest rates, factors concerning the interests in and structure of the issuer or the originator of the mortgage, or the quality of the underlying assets. The underlying assets may default or decline in quality or value.

Asset-Backed Securities. Payment of principal and interest on asset-backed securities may be largely dependent upon the cash flows generated by the assets backing the securities and asset-backed securities may not have the benefit of any security interest in the related assets.

Puts, Stand-by Commitments and Demand Notes. The ability of the Fund to exercise a put or stand-by commitment may depend on the seller’s ability to purchase the securities at the time the put or stand-by commitment is exercised or on certain restrictions in the buy back arrangement. If there is a shortfall in the anticipated proceeds from demand notes, including variable rate demand notes, the notes may not be fully repaid and the Fund may lose money.

Loans and Other Direct Indebtedness. Loans and other direct indebtedness involve the risk that payment of principal, interest and other amounts due in connection with these investments may not be received. The highly leveraged nature of many such loans, including bank loans, and other direct indebtedness may make such loans and other direct indebtedness especially vulnerable to adverse changes in economic or market conditions and/or changes in the financial condition of the debtor. Investments in bank loans are typically subject to the risks of floating rate securities.

Repurchase Agreements. Repurchase agreements are subject to the risk that the sellers may not be able to pay the agreed-upon repurchase price on the repurchase date.

Reverse Repurchase Agreements. Reverse repurchase agreements are subject to the risk that the other party may fail to return the security in a timely manner or at all. The Fund may lose money if the market value of the security transferred by the Fund declines below the repurchase price.

Non-U.S. and Emerging Markets Securities. Non-U.S. securities have risks relating to political, economic and regulatory conditions in foreign countries. The risks associated with non-U.S. securities may be amplified for emerging markets securities.

Currency Risk. Non-U.S. securities that trade in, and receive revenues in, non-U.S. currencies are subject to the risk that those currencies will decline in value relative to the U.S. dollar or, in the case of hedging positions, that the U.S. dollar will decline in value relative to the currency being hedged. As a result, investments in non-U.S. dollar-denominated securities and currencies may reduce the returns of the Fund.

Yankee Bonds and Yankee CDs. Issuers of Yankee Bonds and Yankee CDs are not necessarily subject to the same regulatory requirements that apply to U.S. corporations and banks.

Synthetic Foreign Equity/Fixed Income Securities. Investments in these instruments involve the risk that the issuer of the instrument may default on its obligation to deliver the underlying security or its value. These instruments may also be subject to liquidity risk, foreign risk and currency risk. In addition, the exercise or settlement date may be affected by certain market disruption events which could cause the local access products to become worthless if the events continue for a period of time.

Derivatives. Investments in a derivative instrument could lose more than the initial amount invested. Compared to conventional securities, derivatives can be more sensitive to changes in interest rates or to sudden fluctuations in market prices and thus the Fund’s losses may be greater if it invests in derivatives than if it invests only in conventional securities. The use of derivative instruments involves risks different from, or possibly greater than, the risks associated with investing directly in equity or fixed income securities, currencies or other investments. Derivatives are subject to a number of risks such as leveraging risk, liquidity risk, market risk, credit risk, default risk, counterparty risk (the risk that the other party in an agreement will fail to perform its obligations) and management risk. They also involve the risk of mispricing or improper valuation and the risk that changes in the value of the derivative may not correlate exactly with the change in the value of the underlying asset, rate or index.

Currency Trading Risk. Currency trading strategies may involve instruments that have volatile prices, are illiquid or create economic leverage. Forward currency contracts are subject to the risk that, should forward prices increase, a loss will be incurred to the extent that the price of the currency agreed to be purchased exceeds the price of the currency agreed to be sold.

Counterparty Risk. Counterparty risk is the risk that the other party or parties to an agreement or a participant to a transaction, such as a broker, might default on a contract or fail to perform by failing to pay amounts due or failing to fulfill the obligations of the contract or transaction.

Securities of Other Investment Companies. Investments in other investment companies expose shareholders to the expenses and risks associated with the investments of the Fund as well as to the expenses and risks of the underlying investment companies.

Illiquid Securities. An illiquid security may be difficult to sell quickly and at a fair price, which could cause the Fund to realize a loss on the security if it was sold at a lower price than that at which it had been valued.

Liquidity Risk. The market for certain investments may become illiquid under adverse or volatile market or economic conditions, making those investments difficult to sell. The market price of certain investments may fall dramatically if there is no liquid trading market.

Convertible Securities. Convertible securities are subject to both the credit and interest rate risks associated with fixed income securities and to the market risk associated with common stock. Contingent convertible securities generally provide for mandatory conversion into common stock of the issuer under certain circumstances, and therefore are subject to the risk the Fund could experience a reduced income rate and a worsened standing in the case of an issuer’s insolvency.

Non-Diversification Risk . Investing a relatively high percentage of assets in the securities of a single issuer or group of issuers, may cause performance to be more vulnerable to changes in the market value of the single issuer or group of issuers, and more susceptible to risks associated with a single economic, political or regulatory occurrence.

Large Redemptions. The Fund is used as an investment by certain funds of funds and in asset allocation programs and may have a large percentage of its Shares owned by such funds or held in such programs. Large redemption activity could result in the Fund incurring additional costs and being forced to sell portfolio securities at a loss to meet redemptions.

Global Financial Markets Risk. Global economies and financial markets are becoming increasingly interconnected and conditions (including recent volatility and instability) and events (including natural disasters) in one country, region or financial market may adversely impact issuers in a different country, region or financial market. In addition, governmental and quasi-governmental organizations have taken a number of unprecedented actions designed to support the markets. Such events and conditions may adversely affect the value of the Fund’s securities, result in greater market or liquidity risk or cause difficulty valuing the Fund’s portfolio instruments or achieving the Fund’s objective.

New Fund Risk. The Fund is a new Fund. There can be no assurance that the Fund will grow to an economically viable size, in which case the Fund may cease operations. Investors may be required to liquidate or transfer their investments at an inopportune time.

Please refer to the “Risks” section in the Fund’s Prospectus for further information.

An investment in the Fund is not a bank deposit and is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other government agency.

Risk Nondiversified Status [Text]

rr_RiskNondiversifiedStatus

Non-Diversification Risk . Investing a relatively high percentage of assets in the securities of a single issuer or group of issuers, may cause performance to be more vulnerable to changes in the market value of the single issuer or group of issuers, and more susceptible to risks associated with a single economic, political or regulatory occurrence.

Bar Chart and Performance Table [Heading]

rr_BarChartAndPerformanceTableHeading

Performance

Performance One Year or Less [Text]

rr_PerformanceOneYearOrLess

Because the Fund is new, performance history and average annual returns for the Fund are not included in this Prospectus. Performance history and average annual returns for the Fund will be included in the Prospectus after the Fund has been in operation for one calendar year.

Risk/Return:

rr_RiskReturnAbstract

Maximum Deferred Sales Charge (Load)

rr_MaximumDeferredSalesChargeOverOther

1.00%

^[1]

Advisory Fee

rr_ManagementFeesOverAssets

1.00%

^[2]

Other Expenses

rr_OtherExpensesOverAssets