S l e e p e r

Update: The Best Pillows: Scandia

I've got a new little sleeper in the family. If you do — or ever have — you know to keep things simple. So here's my advice if you need a new pillow: just get a Scandia. You won't regret it. I've tried many others, slept on and kept them for years. Hands down, Scandia are the best. They last the longest. The down is the loftiest, with the slowest "sink" and the most spring. The company will clean the pillows for cheap, and they'll add or remove down if you want your pillow a little firmer or softer. Recently I've gotten a lot of e-mail from people sleeping on sad rocklike formations, flat old foam pillows, and birthday-gift memory foam that just didn't pan out. (Another reason to ditch your memory foam: do you want to rest your head every night on a petroleum byproduct with a half-life of 1000 years?)

My favorite place to buy pillows is Nancy Koltes at Home, in Soho. They're offering 25% off all Scandia pillows and comforters till April 27th. The pillows aren't on the Web site, but you can check the Scandia site for details (I like the Versailles medium, in queen, $275), and then call Nancy Koltes and ask for Victor.

There.

Buying a Mattress? Read This

It is a fact that buying a mattress is a weird and perilous quest, with salespeople primed to talk you into the fanciest model, pamphlets and videos on "sleep numbers," back pain, night sweats, NASA research, the evil of innersprings, the greatness of innersprings, and obscure fibers from high-tech to low (hand-combed horsehair, say). But wait, don't hide under your leaden futon. Let me brush off the dust bunnies and offer a little perspective:

1. If you're like many people, you've waited till your mattress is ancient to replace it. That means your back hurts, your neck hurts, and you're a sad and pitiful grouch. Mattress salespeople love this. You're vulnerable, so you'll listen to their pitch. You're depressed; they'll love to hear your story! They want to be your friend, or even better, your savior. The more impatient you are to get some sleep, the faster you'll hand over your credit card. It's not that there aren't great mattresses out there, but you shouldn't feel pressured to buy the first one you lie down on. Visit a few stores, try beds of all prices, take notes, and consult Sleeper's totally objective mattress reviews.*

2. Your boyfriend's aunt bought a $12,000 bed and swears it cured her sciatica. That is really good news for her. Was she sleeping on a cheap twenty-year-old mattress beforehand? Could be that any number of beds would have helped her back. Yes yes, try the mattress your relative is raving about, and try others, too. (You know how when someone buys a really expensive thing, they sometimes try to talk you into getting it too so they feel better about their decision?)

3. Many department-store sales floors are not staffed by store employees but by mattress makers' reps. That means in the Serta area, the person will try to talk you into a Serta, and in the Simmons corner, same story. What you want, really, is someone who can show you a lot of different mattresses and compare them more objectively. Seek out independent shops. Long's Bedding in Manhattan is a good one.

4. Know that pillowtop mattresses have a shorter lifespan than regular mattresses. It's because you can't flip them, and the pillow wears out before the rest of the bed. If you like a soft top, consider a featherbed or mattress topper you can replace (the one exception being memory-foam pads; in my experience they're a poor simulation of the real thing.) This is not to say I haven't been seduced by pillowtop beds.

5. How much should you spend on a bed? I feel strongly that no one needs to spend $60,000. I've found that beds under $500 of the 1-800-Mattress variety are really disappointing. People say good things about IKEA mattresses. Our bed (an Englander latex) cost around $1,200. There's no real answer, of course. Sleep around as much as possible — we bought our mattress after sleeping the weekend on one at a friend's house. Trust the way the bed feels to you, not the brand name.

* I don't work for anyone in the industry. Why do I do this? I love sleep. And well-made, useful things.

The Best Bedside Lamps

This is a luscious, content-full site, not a catablog. I strongly believe you don't have to go buy a lot of new things in pursuit of superior sleep. But I am delighted finally to feature bedside lamps, because I get a lot of questions about them, and, truly, a good bedside lamp is hard to find. It's got to be ample, but not too large — you want nightstand real estate for your books — and pleasing to look at. After all, it's the last thing you lay your eyes on at night.

Here are some lamps I'm loving:

The Flowerpot Lamp, blooming right out of 1969, when Verner Panton designed it. It's so absolutely cheerful, it will light your way through all those dreary cases you're reading for the bar exam. Not that that's good bedside reading... but when you make partner, you won't feel bad about having paid $367 for it at the current sad exchange rate. It's also quite heavy and substantial despite its whimsical appearance.

The Lytegem Lamp: similar in mood to the Flowerpot, but can be wall mounted. If you have a toddler, or you're very nearsighted and tend to flail madly for your glasses, or you're just clumsy, or, why am I going on about this, if you like an absolutely clear surface next to your bed — which in itself is a sleep aid — this one is perfect, and at $125, a good value. Well, nearly perfect: you should switch out the dark cord for a white one if you have a white wall.

Self-assembly: Find a base you like, for instance this slim, handsome model from The Conran Shop (about $60). Toss the boring shade. Trust your imagination. Have a quick hunt on eBay, or find a shade in an online shop. Remember the one you saw in the window of that antiques shop last weekend? (This shade is one of a pair from an East Village thrift shop.)

Tube Top: A good choice if, again, you have that toddler, who might knock the lamp down; it's lightweight acrylic and indestructible. Brooklyn designer Peter Stathis designed Tube Top after a moment of inspiration looking at a pair of kitchen tongs. Nice that it has a dimmer switch, too. I like proportions of the medium size ($198, 21" high) more than the small ($98), but the small does come in all those great colors, like sun yellow. Actually, the clear version is most attractive. I'm sure the reason you don't see it in shelter magazines is because it doesn't photograph well.

Ballroom Glitz: I've about had it with Palm Beach (not really, but you have to admit it's overexposed) and post-post-Victorian eclecticism (since the world stole it from my mother, who invented it in 1963), but I am awfully fond of this lamp, which takes itself seriously, but not too, and has an airy little price ($88). If it starts to look silly, just put it on Craigslist, darling!

Eastwood Short Tree Trunk Table Lamp: I often find myself wondering why birds, deer, and antlers continue to persist in interiors now. At any rate, I realize I'm not ready to give up my woodlands obsession. This lamp ($350) has wit and dignity both, and it will still look good when all those cheap antler-y things don't anymore. Which is, you know, now.

Anglepoise: You can't afford a refurbished 1940 George Carwardine original, like this one from Ruby Beets? Look into the Counterpoise ($329) at Restoration Hardware. The wall-mounted version ($499) is nifty.

Signal Lamp: If you elect not to get an Anglepoise on account of the fact that the Soft Boys wanted to be one in 1976, for crying out loud, content yourself with this shy yet saucy French number from Conran's (unfortunately the price in British pounds is too depressing to convert — I'm just heading to bed).

Would You Pay for Sleep? By the Hour, I Mean?

I did. I paid for two naps today, in fact, at Yelo, a pay-per-snooze sleep spa in midtown Manhattan.

Wait! Joke, right? you say. Now that's a thing (you say) only someone in New York would dream up, a place where you pay by the hour to lie down. No pedicure, no psychotherapy, no tanning bed? Just close your eyes and give me your credit card?

But listen, you-in-Ohio: Remember when you were having a hard day at school, with a geometry test and volleyball in gym again and someone threw up on your shoe and you got detention because that girl asked you a question in chem and you were only telling her to be quiet and you even said please? And you really weren't feeling all that well by fifth period. But oh, there was the Nurse's Office.

The nurse's office, calm and quiet and with a someone-in-charge who wasn't interested enough in your problems to make a fuss but instead let you lie there. Nurse's Office, with your grayish walls and crumply landscape print and no one, no one else, for a little while. I love you...

Now imagine if you can, because it's true, that New York is like a bad school day every single day. Imagine a bleak hour between Christmas and New Year's. Everywhere are cross shoppers returning wrong-size slippers. Tourists paddling uncertainly over the sidewalks like baby penguins. There's an ice storm, because that's the style this season, ice storms, and you have no umbrella. And the smokers are smoking especially resentfully outside all the atriums because they work in retail and have no time off. And you have got yourself good and cranky because your girlfriend wanted to see the Klimt show, and it was dull dull dull, you knew it would be. And you're woozy from the consolation wine in the cafe.

Yelo, the sleep spa, is like going to the nurse, but better. You get your own room, with faint white noise and soundproofing to erase the clamor of 57th Street. A nice fellow named Jamie to give you reflexology for ten minutes. A zero-gravity lounge chair and a thick soft blanket and, if you want, aromatherapy, which you actually don't want, the fragrance emitter will wreck you with powerful raspberry essence. It reminds you of a highway rest stop...

And the restroom has strangely cold water, and the pale fabric covering the soundproof walls is faintly bubbled, as though it had been put up in great haste, and smudged, as though a previous napper had fled in haste, and you thought there might be some teak, or at least bamboo, and thicker carpet, because they do offer spa services in addition to naps. But if the nap happens (you tell yourself), who really minds? It is a fact of life in New York that a half-hour spent in peace and quiet can change the course of a day. And another fact that you're not going to take the train home to Brooklyn to have this peace and quiet.

So you pay for it. And the foot rub is good. The towels are warm. The "rain" sound is not too cheezy; there's faint thunder, real enough to give you that cozy feeling you get back home (in Ohio!) when it storms. And you do sleep, in a chair that's so much better than the vinyl couch in fifth grade.* You sleep. For a half-hour. And then the lights come up gently and gradually. The chair was supposed to come to its upright position gradually too, but that part didn't work. All the same, you don't mind so much. The course of the day is changed.

You know, you're right. It is the kind of thing only someone in New York would come up with, but that's the point.

___

Yelo, 315 West 57th  Street, (212) 245 8235 . "Nap Plus," 20 minutes of nap time plus 10 minutes of neck, shoulder, or foot massage, $30. Naps only, starting at $12 for 20 minutes.

*My co-sleeper, who advises against ordering the "animal sounds" off the audio menu — he had expected gentle snuffling and got raucous tweets — was disappointed the bed wasn't horizontal, but he slept, too. Yes, it was a date, in small, separate soundproof rooms. The vanguard of romance.

If You're Gazing Upward at 4 a.m.

Dear Sleepers:

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I'm a conoisseur of sleep, not a sleepyhead (even if I do crave more and more of it since the arrival of our little sleeper, who is a good sleeper, quite). But I love this poem by Dorothy Parker. Who is better at endings than Dorothy Parker?

Yours,
Marie of Romania

INSCRIPTION FOR THE CEILING OF A BEDROOM

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend—
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I’m bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall—
I’m a fool to rise at all!

Memorable Sleeps: In Public

Everyone is chattering about $60,000 mattresses, high-thread-count sheets, and timed-release Ambien. But all the beds in the advertisements are empty. Or populated with refreshed-looking awake people. Or a human in obviously-not-real sleep, with nicely arranged hair. 

That's because the act of sleep itself is deeply, deeply private.

Not that you haven't done it in public. Oh yes. You have fallen asleep on the bus, in a friend's car, during a budget meeting, in church. You have swayed into the aisle and jerked awake. You have dreamed of animal sounds and slowly realized the noise is real, and issuing from your own throat. You have sat upright and pretended to have been dusting your lapel for ten minutes. Your friend (a true friend) has seen what your mouth looks like when it's all slack, and she has never mentioned that fact.

"SLEEP seems to be a state that we are all of us ashamed of, and which many people appear to regard as little less than criminal. If it were not so, why should we deny with an intensity approaching irritation, when discovered drowsing, that we have been asleep? Our unwillingness to be found asleep lies in the fact that then we are off our guard, and in the power of the wakeful."

It's odd: You could have been standing there on the train in jeans hanging from your groin bones; you could have been kissing someone passionately, or putting on mascara, or even clipping your fingernails for Lord's sake (I hope you don't clip your fingernails in Grand Central) and thought nothing of it. But it's hard to imagine even a near-naked, aggressively passionate rider on Metro North not feeling vulnerable coming to consciousness drooling into his tats.

So... what was going through my mind when, all those years ago while dating a man I'll call Mr Pantone Marker, I would fall asleep in the middle of parties?  There I was, curled up on a Barcelona chair, while some acquaintance the color of that film you get on hot milk went on about... what did his friends talk about? But I wasn't bored. Oh, no. I would fall asleep happily right in the middle of the music, the mixed nuts, the poker. Come to think of it, that was the time in my life I slept the most soundly.

If you've tried everything in the medicine cabinet and you're still sleepless, you might try cultivating a less fascinating life.

___

The quote is from "The Sinfulness of Sleep" by Junius Henri Browne, published in The Galaxy, Vol. V, Issue II, Feb., 1868.

It's Featherbed Season!

...a good time to remember the pleasures of this underrated winter sleep option. I was initially suspicious. I became a convert to the featherbed faith. The Muppets are believers, too.

Do You Need a Duvet?

A reader writes:

Dear Sleeper,
Do you have a take on duvet covers?  We have bought a nice cotton one in a bright pattern that really makes the room, but as I'm spending money on an expensive down comforter that is designed to be lightweight, it seems  I'll be weighing it down with the cotton duvet cover. The comforter maker recommends finding a very light duvet cover to see the benefits of the light down comforter.  So... do you then have to buy a separate bedspread if your duvet cover is plain?  Does that then weigh the down comforter so it's no longer as "lofty"?  I'm trying to find a balance between getting the look and feel of a light, airy, cloudy bed and still having a bed cover that looks great from a design standpoint.

Puzzled in Duvet Land

___

Dear Puzzled:

Here are the disadvantages of duvet covers:
1. Truly annoying to get the down comforter in and out of them.
2. Weirdly expensive, like certain other items in the world.
3. Bad design.

Here are the advantages of duvet covers:
1. They keep your down comforter clean.

Now, you do have to keep your down quilt covered, unless you live in a dirt- and dust-free, child-free, pet-free, food-crumb-free, human-free home. You shouldn't clean a down quilt more than more than once a year — no matter what the label instructions say — because it damages the tiny goose feathers and shortens the life of your investment.

You don't need to shell out for a duvet cover, though. You can use a lightweight blanket as a coverlet over the quilt, then tuck it and the comforter in around the mattress. Because there's just a top sheet between you and the quilt, you'll still get that fluffy feeling. (There are a lot of swell blankets out there now; Area's "Harry" blanket is pictured at right.) If you prefer the floaty feeling, you can buy a couple of lightweight queensize sheets (Donna Karan and Calvin Klein make nearly transparent sheets, often available at discounters) and have your dry cleaner stitch them into a duvet cover for a relatively cheap price. If the lightweight sheets are a plain solid color, you could drape a spread over the foot of the bed, or choose some knockout sheets and pillowcases to add design interest.

I never quite understood the appeal of the free-floating down comforter, though. To me, one of winter's chief pleasures is covering yourself with some heavy bedding. In New York in February, I would be oh so happy in a queensize panini press.

Yours amidst the sound of knocking radiators,
Sleeper

Down Comforter Advice

A reader writes:

Dear Sleeper,

I moved to a new apartment and I'm getting a new queensize bed. Unfortunately, my old down comforter was destroyed by water damage while in storage. I would like to buy a new one and was wondering if you had any advice. My price range is $200-$500 and I live in New York City, where the summers are hot and winters are cold, although I keep my thermostat around 65-70 degrees. I read your article on Plumeria Bay and was wondering if you recommend that brand, or maybe I should just buy a generic from Bed Bath & Beyond.

Also, how much "hang" should the comforter have over the side of the bed? If you have a standard-thickness mattress (9"-13"), a 90" wide queen comforter will only have a 2" hang off the end of the queen mattress. Is that enough? Or do you go with the king, which would leave 12" off the end and over the box spring, which might come dangerously close to the floor? I've noticed that most online stores cheat and have pictures of full/queen comforters on fullsize beds, which produces a perfect hang.

Thanks for your advice!

Best,
Uncomfortable New Yorker

___

Dear Uncomfortable:

In your price range, I do like Plumeria Bay. I have the 800-fill tropical weight down comforter in queen ($546), covered with Lyocell, a fabric made from beech fibers. It's warm, but not too warm, and the material is soft and silky. Scandia makes a nice comforter, too. Their lightweight goosedown is a generous 102" wide ($550). I have found no down "leak" with either of these brands, whereas my old Company Store comforter trailed feathers (and was skimpy, but the company has since enlarged their sizes).

We have a platform bed, wth no box spring. So the hang, given the comforter's 92 by 92 inches, is ridiculously long. But here's the thing: I've started doing what our new housekeeper does — I tuck it in! I wondered whether tucking a down quilt would mush the feathers along the edge, but it doesn't.

I use a top sheet, then the comforter layer, then a light blanket on top. You tuck everything in, like wrapping a package.

If you use soft flannel sheets (my favorites are a cheap set the color of vanilla frozen custard, from BB&B), going to bed feels sort of like slipping into a padded mailing envelope. Mmm.

Now about those catalogues, with their dubiously fluffy comforters. One of their display secrets, besides, as you say, showing full/queen comforters on fullsize beds, is stuffing a king comforter into a queen duvet. You could do the same. But why pay for a king comforter, or a duvet cover? If you get at least a 92-inch wide comforter for a standard-thickness queensize mattress — or otherwise aim for at least 12 inches of hang — and use the layering trick above, you get around the whole duvet question. I think it's much nicer to snuggle into a tucked-in bed.

Sweet winter dreams,
Sleeper

Memorable Sleeps: Somewhere Over the North Pole

My husband and I recently adopted a four-month-old sleeper.

After an amazing, exciting, exhausting three weeks in southeast Asia, it was time to fly home to New York with our new babe.

Do you know about bassinets? The kind you can get on airplanes? If you're booking a long flight and traveling with a baby under about 22 pounds, request one. It cunningly attaches to the bulkhead in front of you, becoming a cozy dresser drawer for infants. There you are "reclined" in coach, or, as we were, in premium economy — very nice, but not business class — while baby lounges deliciously.

For days we dreaded this flight. How could we mix 30 bottles of formula on our tray-tables? Surely we would be pounded by the collective glare of a hundred passengers when baby screamed over four continents, or even one territory. Can you change a diaper in one of those restrooms, or even shut the door behind you while joggling a small wombat? We figured twenty-three hours of trippy (at best) time awake was a foregone conclusion.

But in between Thai Supper #3 and Thai Supper #4, in between staring at the baby, which was more fun than any of the cable channels, I did somehow fall asleep.

I dreamed of flat things. Bookshelves, bowling alleys, the floors of lakes. I dreamed hungrily of horizon lines, rooflines, the paved surfaces of empty roads through the desert, a vacant beach, a ruler lying peacefully in the middle of a desk. I was madly jealous of that ruler. I almost became the ruler. I so craved the sensation of horizontalness that I finally woke up, had an epiphany, pushed our enormous nappie-and-bottle-stuffed duffle into the aisle, and lay down underneath the baby, feeling triumphant as a polar explorer.

Therewith followed the coldest, loudest, shallowest, most miserable nap. An electrical plate made an impression on my left cheek that did not even fade by the time we flew over Visby. Miraculously, the little mammal, for his part, slept almost all the way home in that bassinet. It was Baby Business Class.

Stay tuned for more tales, and insights, under the new category Baby Sleep!