S l e e p e r

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

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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

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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

Yes. Buy a Featherbed.

Sleeper has spent the last icy nights of the season curled up on an L.L. Bean featherbed ($129), a classic model filled mostly with goose feathers.

The fabric is quite soft and the color of frozen custard, nice in itself but something to consider if you believe, as you should, that sheets are clothes for your bed. You have the option of buying a special cover or having one stitched up by your dry cleaner — easy enough — but that'll take the edge off the fantastic sinking-into-bed effect.

Sleeping directly on top of the thing is best. In fact, it's so good you'll hardly give a thought to the hairs left behind by your sweet little dog. It's almost like floating.*

So it is not silly, after all, to put a bed on top of your bed, if you live in a cold climate and have (as you should!) a non-pillow-top mattress. The question is economics. The L.L. Bean has some drawbacks: it's heavy, sort of like an old-school down jacket. You need to fluff it every day, which is not a task to take lightly, especially if, for some reason, you have a kingsize bed. If you don't get to the gym in winter, this might really work out for you.

You can feel the feathers, the way you can feel them in a pillow that's not 100% down. No danger of quills poking through this particular cotton, with its thick nap. I didn't mind one bit. But what a down-filled bed must be like! The mind reels.

I have this figured out: We just have to cooperate. It's the Internet age, after all. We simply timeshare featherbeds with Sleepers in the opposite hemisphere. I'm ready to brush aside the exchange rate for one of these. Or maybe even buy one of these ($493). I'll coordinate the whole thing. Let's hear from you!

*The co-sleeper, for his part, felt like he was in the middle of a queensize lettuce-and-tomato sandwich.

Featherbeds: Fluff? or Not Fluff?

Why would anyone want a featherbed?

You know, one of those puffs noblemen four or five centuries ago in drafty castles used to put between themselves and their straw-and horsehair mattresses?

One of those things John Denver sang about?

(Granted, that song was redeemed by the Muppets.)

They exist, though. They're still in use commonly in certain cold climates. On Apartment Therapy, a few people casually refer to their "beds," as in, "In winter, I use a down bed..."

If you have a great mattress, do you need a bed on top of your bed?

One Sleeper reader squirms at the idea of a mite-filled fluff that you can't wash coming between you and your clean sheets. You can buy featherbed sheets. Could it possibly be worth it to have to manage yet different-size linens?

But what if featherbeds are little-known source of pleasure? Like down pillows your whole body can sink into. If that's the case, would you then be tempted to crawl into an eiderdown-filled nest and stop eating and die? I think that's what happened to the mice introduced to the Scandia Contessa pillow.

But seriously, what if featherbeds are like mother's love?

Sleeper has just unpacked a featherbed — an old-school model, since she's a purist — and is about to get to the bottom of the matter.