Thread counts, memory foam and $200 pillows make buying bedding a shopper’s nightmare. Does all this choice guarantee a good night’s sleep, asks Adam McCulloch.
The dream goes like this: you walk into your local bedding store to replace a pillow so old that it’s starting to resemble the shroud of Turin. Confronted with a stadium full of fluffy white options you stray deeper into the labyrinth. You’re lured on by the promise of down pillows of genuine dodo feather or the legendary two thousand thread count sheets owned by Cleopatra. You alternate between Hungarian and Canadian down and vacillate between Egyptian cotton and Supima. Weakened by indecision the warm doonas and comforters close in muffling your cries for help. If you’re lucky, in fifty years, a late night security guard will discover your body, perfectly preserved among memory foam contoured accurately to your corpse, and you’ll end up a museum curiosity alongside the bog man of Tollund.
Sadly this consumer nightmare is real - well kind of. There’s now a zillion different bedding options including weaves of Egyptian cotton, two ply, four ply, Supima cotton, latex fill, Siberian down, damask, baffled pillows, you name it. Try and buy a “regular” pillow and you just might end up re-financing the house to purchase a $20,000 mattress by Hypnos (who also make beds for the royal family), a $279 visco pillow by Tempur (who I’m sure develop moon landing vehicles as a sideline), and $2000 Anichini sheets.
Infinite choice is not your friend. The secret to surviving any retail bedding experience is a basic knowledge of linen, a resilient set of retail blinkers and a dogged belief that the pillow that served you before is perfectly adequate. Walk in, open to the possibilities of a better boudoir and you’re completely stuffed.
Thankfully most Australians are unabashed cheapskates between when it comes to bed linen. Product development manager for Sleepmaster Barbara Hill, has worked in bedding for fourteen years. She says, “The main market in Australia for pillows is still between ten and twenty dollars,” which means there’s a whole lot of room for up-selling. She claims, “people are becoming more quality conscious, which has been a long time coming in this country.” Over the years she’s noticed that Europeans and Americans have always sought out fancier bedding. “There are fabrics that are still not making an appearance here,” she says. Fabrics like Italian bed linens from Anichini that have a thread count over a thousand - more than five times Target’s 200 thread count Sateen at more than twenty times the price.
Tempting as it may be to key the BMW whose owner waffles on about thread count at a dinner party, it may be the case that a tighter weave leads to less sick days. “Thread count is important to health,” claims Hill, “Dust mites feed on skin and hair particles that every person, no matter how clean they are, sheds.” Disgusting? Yes, but also unavoidable. These particles fall through looser weave cottons into the pillow and doona filling where they go rotten. “It’s when they’re soft that the dust mites can feed on them. Any weave that above a 233 thread count, it will also be impervious to dust mites. It’s the best insurance you can have for a healthy night sleep. Especially for asthmatics.”
So maybe there is room for more than just soft, medium and hard in one or two fabrics. Still, ignoring any bedding under the magic 233 thread count still leaves a tyranny of choice. Why does Egyptian cotton even matter? “It’s a very fine cotton and it has a long strand.,” says Hill, “The longer the strand the more lustre it will have and the more durable it will be.” She claims that some sheets can even last up to ten years. Sure. Fine. So they last a little longer.
My point is this: choosing bedding can drive you around the twist. For example, my friend Donna who sees a therapist on a weekly basis also has the most impressive bedroom ensemble imaginable. Like Iraq’s Roadmap to Peace, her bedding purchases occurred in several strategic phases and, like the roadmap, no one realistically expects it will ever end. “There’s the bed skirt, the sheets, the padded pillow covers, the pillow shams, the mattress pad cover, it’s a non-hypo-allergenic-fibre-fill puffy. That was three hundred dollars. Apparently it loses stains…whatever. I got suckered, ” she says, grabbing for another beer and forgetting to mention the monogrammed pillow covers. All up, stage two (let’s call it operation pillowslip) cost easily in excess of a thousand dollars. It’s not that she’s some whacko - this is a real person who has sacrificed quite possibly hundreds of hours to understand the range of modern bedding options available. Now she’s reduced to only buying sheets with a stripe in them, (“They make you feel longer and thinner in bed,” she says) and lasping into fits of profanity every time I mention memory foam. “Don’t talk about the memory foam,” she stammers, clearly not won over by manufacturer’s claims that it conforms to your body. “You’re laying on a rubber bed in your own sweat. It’s like sleeping in glad wrap that you can’t get away from because that shit just keeps clinging to you”. Sleepmaster’s Barbara Hill admits, “Memory foam tends to be a little bit warm to sleep on. Some people find that to be an advantage. The reality is that natural products have features and benefits that man made products [like memory foam] just can not do.”
Nature’s number one choice in bedding has always been down from the ida duck. Hill explains that “it’s an insignificant ugly looking thing that’s dark greyish in colour but it plucks it’s own down to line the nest.” The most coveted ducks for doonas live on the Arctic circle in Siberia. Each winter the birds feather their nest with down to protect the hatchlings against the coming cold. In spring, after the babies have left, farmers laboriously collect the down and replace the nest ready for another season. “In Europe you can buy a true ida down quilt and pay about ten thousand US dollars for one quilt,” she says, adding, “With feather and down they can now do DNA tests which identify the region that the bird was actually found in.” So rather than trusting the label on the doona you might want to get CSI on the case.
If you’re already DNA testing ducks you’re well ahead of the game. Just choosing pillows shapes is likely to bring on a migraine: there’s king size, European, side sleeper, back sleeper, tummy sleeper, contoured, snore reduction…and believe me it’s not a decision you want to make hastily. I once accidentally bought a set of king covers for queen pillows and for two years endured six inches of saggy pillowslip flopping at my ear like an amputee’s shirtsleeve. But why all these variations? With the exception of popsicle-head actors, the general populace’ cranium shape hasn’t changed a bit in recent years. Pauline Whitehead, general manager of pacific Brands (which produce both Sheridan and Tontine) suggests that our desperate need for variety, like most things, might be blamed on Al Qaeda. “An obvious trend has emerged where people tend to cocoon…It is partly due to the increased global threat.” She goes on to explain, “In addition people are treating their homes, in particular their bedrooms, with as much love and attention as they do themselves. The home has developed into a reflection of one self and an environment to decorate, design and create. The bedroom is part of that and is no longer merely a room to sleep in, but a place where one rests, recuperates, retreats, revives, regenerates…”
Even newlyweds no longer have to agree on the matrimonial nest. Onkaparinga make a doona that can be adjusted to have more down on one side for the colder partner.
It all seems like complete overkill to me - or at least it did until the other day. The problem in researching bedding in order to illuminate how ridiculous we’ve become in our quest for choice, is now I’ve turned into a very discerning shopper of bedding indeed. Previously where two pillows seemed identical I can now tell the difference between four ply Irish linen and two ply Italian by feel alone. I can honestly say that I prefer a side sleeper Canadian down pillow and, I’m embarrassed to admit, have a minimum acceptable thread count of 400. (If I had a shiny new BMW you could key it.)
If yogis sleep on beds of nails, Japanese folk doze on wooden pillows and drivers still fall asleep at the wheel, then surely in an unconscious state, the quality of ones linen is immaterial. For a little perspective I contacted the Australian Sleep Association, which always appealed to me as the cushiest workplace around. (Asleep on the job? Perfect.) According to their report, almost 90 percent of Australians suffer from a sleep disorder at some time in their lives. Poor sleep apparently costs Australia between three and seven billion dollars a year. Just think how many really nice pillows you could buy with that. They also also suggest that most people need somewhere between 6.5 hours and 8.5 hours to function properly. Skimp on the zeds and you may find you have poor impulse control, anger management problems and are at risk of serious medical issues like hypertension and heart disease. You’re far more likely to suffer workplace accidents (no big deal while pushing pens but far more serious if you’re a brain surgeon) and then there’s the heightened possibility of contributing to the road toll on your way to work.
The medical perspective seems to be that bed linen is more about fashion that function. My father coincidentally is a brain surgeon with a steady hand and minimal interest in thread count. He claims that the secret to a good night sleep is this: make sure you have a completely dark bedroom (get a night light for the toilet so your pineal gland isn’t stimulated by the 100 watt globe) at a comfy 25 degrees. Other tips are marrying someone who doesn’t snore, avoiding caffeine or alcohol, and exercise in the morning so your body has time to wind down. Don’t bother with sleeping pills either - they lose their effectiveness with extended use. “Quite frankly, I think sheets are a very minor part of it”, he says.
That’s all well and good to discover now. Unfortunately I can’t go back to basic sheets and good sleep etiquette. The lure of Egyptian cotton and the friendly Canadian ducks is just far too much. Still, it’s not too late to save yourself. Next time you plan a weekend sortie to seek out new bedding, follow this plan of attack: get to bed early, eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and ensure the bedroom is dark and cool. In that way you’ll rise early, rested and have ample time to experiment with pillow combinations, test doona warmth and have your duck DNA tested. If you don’t you’ll turn up groggy, vulnerable, unable to make decisions and the modern bedding nightmare will begin. Once trapped among the padded isles, no one but no one, can hear you scream.
Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in Sunday Magazine. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr.
