S l e e p e r

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

At Least, Make the Bed.

Memo to the sleep-deprived (including yours truly) for any reason, but especially if you have chaos in your life: Make the bed. Every day. If you can't keep up with keeping house, just do this one thing.

Advantages:
1. Huge sense of accomplishment. Seriously.
2. At the end of your crazy days, you have a serene and neat place to retire to.

In haste,
Sleeper

When to Flip a Mattress

A reader writes:

Dear Sleeper,

Do you flip and turn your mattress at measured intervals? I know this is a pretty pedestrian topic, but we’re preparing in our slow way to purchase a new mattress, and I want to do right by it.

Signed,
A Heavy Napper

Dear Heavy:

You should flip and rotate your mattress once a season, because the soft padding around the coils can become compressed over time, and you don't want to be lying there in a trench. It's a fate that can befall the best mattresses — in fact, a higher-quality mattress is more likely to compress than a cheaper one, because it has more padding.

This instruction is for a two-sided mattress, with no pillowtop. You can't flip a one-sided mattress. Hence they wear out faster.

Furthermore: "When you buy a new mattress," says John Moy of Long's Bedding, in Manhattan, "you should flip it every month for the first six months, and then every three months after that." The reason for the initial frequent flipping, he says, is that you want the mattress to wear evenly from the start, before any identations from your body get "set." If you start flipping your mattress after you see indentations, it's too late.

Sweet dreams,
Sleeper

An Overlooked Bedmaking Step

I have lately fallen under the spell of Cheryl Mendelson's book Home Comforts. She offers this advice under "Daily Care of the Bedroom," under the forgivably antic chapter title "The Cave of Nakedness:"

"Each day when you arise, air the bed. Open the windows, if possible; throw the bedcovers back over the foot of the bed. Let the bed stand this way, unmade, while you shower and eat breakfast. The bed should air for at least an hour if you are going to work, or even longer if you are staying home. This helps immensely toward keeping the bed feeling and smelling fresh until you next change the sheets."

The bed does feel better at night if you do this. And there is something wonderful about how the ritual reminds you of the end of the day, and the pleasures of going to sleep, even while you're flinging open the curtains amid the smell of burnt toast.

A Review of Sheet Suspenders

We all know Sleeper is against a fussy bedroom. Yes, my waking life is entirely dedicated to the art of sleep. But that has not necessarily to do with thread count and certainly nothing to do with senseless accessories.

It just happens to turn out that one of those items hanging among the blister packs of batteries, poster putty, sour gummies, and light-up keychains at Bed Bath and Beyond is impressively useful. I would never have tried sheet suspenders were it not for Alanna, who posted in response to my rant about waking up in in the midst of bunched-up sheets, which is not unlike finding yourself in last night's clothes after sleeping at your departure gate in Newark.

Yes, your sheets are chosen with care — Yves Delorme. But because they are a little too big, they gather into flabby rolls by dawn even if you don't toss and turn. You may as well be lying there in the middle of a giant diaper.

Sleepers, it is not your fault. Linens makers have ceded to the demand for sheets with deep pockets, owing to the craze in recent decades for extra-fluffy, superthick pillow-top mattresses. If you are savvy and have bought a great standard-thickness mattress, because you know that a pillow top wears out before a mattress does and so is a poor investment, I pet your head.

But we're off the subject. You can buy the $14.99 brand-name sheet suspenders or, Alanna says, the $3.50 generic kind. Those are your options. Your bottom sheet will need just a few seconds of smoothing to be perfectly flat in the making. Now turn your hospital corners, and you're set.

If you have any idea how to cope with morning-after-in-Newark syndrome, let me know.

Needless to say, Sleeper says sheet suspenders are definitely Not Fluff.

Against Crispness

A reader writes:

Dear Sleeper,

You seem to enjoy a crisp, well-made bed; I, however, find a bed with super-soft sheets and a fluffy comforter and pillows to be the most compatible with my sleeping style. Do you have any bedding recommendations for a lazy Nester who detests making the bed and loves sleeping in every orientation and position?

Dear Lackadaise,

An unmade bed is a homewrecker, even when everything else in the house is in its place. No matter where you are during the day, you'll pass through the bedroom at some point, and then there it is, that great big galloping mess. It's no better if you work in an office — coming home to an unmade bed is like coming home to an argument. To say nothing of the pleasure you deprive yourself! Slipping into a neat bed is one of life's great joys. But you know this, on some level. What you don't know is that making the bed is a pleasure, too.*

That said, you can be minimal. What do you really need? I have only recently acceded to the greatness of featherbeds. You might enjoy one; there's nothing like falling into that softness. Then again, if you sleep with a Portuguese water dog, the featherbed is a huge nuisance. It needs either its own sheet, or... forget it. Opt instead for a delicious mattress pad for extra cushioning.

You want high thread count sheets, say 300 or 400. In general, higher thread count sheets are softer, although they aren't necessarily better, despite what sheets makers want you to believe. Trust the "hand" — the way the sheet feels between your fingers. There is no need to bankrupt yourself; high-thread-count sheets can be had for a reasonable sum these days. And if they're decent, they'll soften more after many washings. Don't bother with jersey sheets. They bunch.

Next, you need the fluffiest, loftiest down pillow you can bring yourself to buy. It's a serious investment, very much worth it. One-third of your life! And you need a kingsize. No one needs a kingsize anything (shah. we don't talk about that here), but if you sleep with your feet in Rhode Island and your right arm pointing to Mecca, you'll always have some pillow acreage within reach of your head. You also could use a bed like this one, built by Kate Sanger. You don't want to go slamming your leg into a sleighbed.

Now. The very least you can get away with, effortwise, is a fitted sheet and a duvet. Make your bed in five seconds! Well, fifteen: fluff the pillows every morning. And wash that duvet cover every week. Yes. You're dispensing with a top sheet, after all. This is the price.

As for the comforter, you should alternate between a summerweight down and a loftier down, depending on your longitude. If you like a barely-there blanket in summer, Pendleton makes a lovely soft one.

* The best bedmaking scene in film is in a bad movie from the '80s, a romance that takes place in Chicago with I thought Tom Cruise but it must have been someone else. Help me. The seduction scene takes place when he puts headphones on her head... this was back when headphones were sort of a big deal. And they break up on New Year's, over a salad with pecans in it. Anyway we'll figure this out, and you'll rent it, fast-forward to the scene of this girl making the bed, in slow motion, in natural light, the sheet floating upward and settling. And it will change your life.

Hospital Corners: Fellas

Sergeants are really into beds: they have more esoteric requirements of them, and spend more time thinking about them, and cause other people, i.e., privates, to spend more time thinking about them than even Sleeper thinks about them. Maybe.

Turning in a tight corner, keeping sheets perfectly taut. Is it true about the quarter bouncing off the mattress? What's it like to be married to a Marine, from a bedmaking standpoint?

When you're in the army, your bunk's the only real estate you've got. And you've got to keep it maniacally groomed. Does it help, if you're an enlisted Sleeper, to tuck in to that neatly made cot after a day at Camp Lejeune? The bit of neatness at the end of a day of... of...

What is it like, is all Sleeper wonders. There must be Sleeper grunts, surely. A report from the field from someone philosophical, please, if you're out there and awake. Your leader seems to sleep soundly. What can that mean?

Hospital Corners

Sleeper's mother, an insomniac, was given to fits of benign cruelty after particularly bad nights. One morning she insisted on scrubbing Sleeper's hair, which tended to be matted and stringy, seven times with coarse salt. Another morning the punishment was Hospital Corners. "These are really hard to do," she said, leveling a mean, exhausted stare and pushing a dark curl out of her eyes. Naturally Sleeper blocked the instructions, intimidated.

Who wants to go to bed in something from the hospital, as if sleep were an affliction? Or an emergency?

But hospital corners are marvelous! They keep the top sheet tucked in, and they look so neat.

We can now explain that making hospital corners is exactly like wrapping a gift. We can call them Gift Corners, at the risk of sounding twee.

Sleep is a present you open every night. (Something to teach young Sleepers.)

Shar-Pei Syndrome

Why is it so hard to find fitted sheets that aren't extra-deep? Please, someone specialize in fitted sheets that won't sag if you're a tosser and a turner on a standard-thickness mattress.

The term "standard thickness" has become meaningless, actually. All those beds with superfluffy pillow tops and inexplicably thick mattresses, to say nothing of the preponderance of woolly, egg-cratey, featherbed-y mattress add-ons, have changed the linens landscape forever, and not for better.

Making up the bed in childhood was painful. It was hard, hard, hard to stretch sheets over the surface of the mattress. But the result was delicious: sheets tight as a drumhead.

Only two set of sheets in Sleeper's closet — some inexpensive old flannels from Bed Bath & Beyond and the summer Calvin Kleins, a wedding gift — fit this way. They're seamed at the corners: no sub-par "universal" (i.e., elastic all round, in a vague rectangle shape) construction. They're tailored like a good shirt. In the morning, they're still tucked in.

It's unpleasant to wake up among sheets that have gathered themselves into thick rolls mid-bed, as though you're lying there in the middle of a giant, ill-ftting diaper.