Luxury bedding is in the eye, and touch, of the beholder. For some people, having sheets on their mattress is a luxury. For others, only 800-count Egyptian long-staple 100% cotton sheets and a goose down duvet constitutes luxury bedding. It all depends on where you are and what you have already. Add luxury bedding to a metal bed, like a brass bed, and you are living high on the hog.
Let’s say you have a mattress and sheets, a blanket, a pillow and even a bedspread. What is luxury for you? Well, lets start with the sheets. 100% cotton is better than any polyester/cotton blend. The more polyester, the more pilling of the threads, making the sheets rough. So, no polyester. You need percale for a tight weave, and hopefully some wrinkle resistance. The number of threads per inch, as in 400 count, rate smoothness and life expectancy. The more threads, the longer the sheet should last and the smoother it should feel on the skin. The source of the cotton, and hybrid, is a matter of debate. Egyptian, aka pima cotton, among other names, is a cotton in which the fibers are naturally long. Long fibers should spin into stronger and smoother thread. I am sure there are differences, but I cannot tell what they are once the sheet is made. Perhaps I am not sensitive enough. As long as the sheets are cotton and on the bed, I’m happy.
Blankets are less a grade of luxury as a personal preference. There are wool blankets for winter, cotton blankets for summer air conditioning, various polyester forms of blanket for light weight and more warmth than cotton. You just have to take notice of blankets on beds not your own and notice if there are some blankets you like better than what you are using at home. In Europe, the blanket (and top sheet) is replaced by a duvet, which may be filled with feathers or other filler material. Again, your experience will tell you whether you want to go this way the next time you need to buy blankets.
Pillows: Here it is not so much the cover as the contents. Some swear by various organic, natural fillers, but I am still in favor of polyester filling. I find the seed/seed hulls too heavy, and feathers prickly and sneezy. In addition, as someone with heat issues, I really, really like my Chillow ™. If you want relief from hot flashes, try one. They are not cheap, but the difference between waking up every 15 minutes to flip the pillow and sleeping for hours makes the price negligible.
Satin sheets are really fine when first sliding in between them and feeling the cool kiss of satin on the body. Since I a looking for cool, the fact that they warm up where they touch the body is not in their favor. For most people, that initial shock of cold is a drawback, and the warmth an advantage, until you move around and run into cool areas again. I think this is why satin sheets are kept for special occasions, when comfort is less important than the idea of satin sheets, romance and the special effort to have sexy, clean sheets.
Luxury really is in the eye of the beholder. Just mind the pros and cons of strange beds and see if you need to adjust your linens the next time you buy for your own bed. And don’t forget to count the trundle beds when calculating how many sets of luxury bedding you are going to need.
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