Photo By: Werner Straube Photo By: Sarah Hebenstreit / Modern Kids Co. Photo By: Kristina Wolf Photo By: Photography by Chad Jackson Photo By: Hilton & Hyland, a member of Luxury Portfolio International Photo By: Hyde Evans Design Photo By: Amy Lutz Cotton sheets are described by thread count, which literally means the number of threads in the cloth. Most sheets are in the 200 range, while expensive sheets are more than 500. The higher the thread count, the softer and more durable they are. Hold up a sheet to the light to determine its quality. Light will not shine through a high-thread-count sheet. Also, high-thread-count sheets won't fuzz or pill. Another great way to test this is to scratch the sheet with your fingernail to see if any pill comes off. If so, it's a lesser-quality sheet. The finest-quality wool blankets available are of merino wool. They are also the warmest. Synthetic blankets, however, are non-allergenic, less expensive and easier to wash.
Fill power, or "loft," is a measurement of the quality of down products. Down comforters with great loft have fluffy clusters of down that have the power to fill the comforter with fewer ounces than inferior types of down. Down comforters with high fill power listed on the package are lighter and warmer than down comforters with less fill power listed on the label (or not listed at all). Remember, it's not the ounces that are important, it's the fill power of the down. Rather than buying an expensive duvet cover for a comforter, buy a couple of flat sheets in the size and color you need and sew them together on three sides. Sew grommets into the fourth side and close with a decorative ribbon. You can buy a full flat sheet to use instead of a queen flat sheet for a queen-size bed. Not only is a full sheet less expensive, but there's much less material hanging over the edge when you make the bed. When buying flannel sheets, make sure the label says "preshrunk." Otherwise, the flannel will probably shrink, causing your fitted sheet to no longer fit.
For the summer months, buy easy-care cotton or thermal blankets. These will allow air to flow through them. If you want to give your mattress a pillow-top look and feel, buy either a featherbed or a polyester fiber bed. They're soft and luxurious and give your bed that "lofty" look. They're also less expensive than a new mattress. When buying a mattress with a pillow top, it's important to buy fitted sheets deep enough to fit over the extra thickness of the mattress. Many people think that buying a larger size will do the trick, but they're just longer and wider and end up not fitting. Deep fitted sheets run anywhere from 13 inches to 22 inches depending on how thick your new mattress is. If you own some wonderful sheets that you want to continue using, just buy "suspenders" for the fitted sheet, which will keep it from popping off. To fill a decorative sham, buy an inexpensive queen-size pillow. It fills the sham completely — even in the corners — and will give your bed that beautiful full look.
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I was waking up grumpy, with backaches from the strain of staying level. I'd bought the bed a decade before, shortly after my divorce. Now, with a new man in my life, I decided I was ready for a new mattress. Around that time, I visited my parents and slept on their new pull-out couch. But instead of peaceful slumber, it felt as if I were being gassed by the mattress's smell. I opened a window but tossed all night, worried about the toxic fumes I might be inhaling. Mattresses, I soon learned, are rarely ecologically innocent. Most are made with synthetic fibers or foam, which don't biodegrade. Cotton or wool stuffing can be processed with pesticides and other chemicals—some of them potentially carcinogenic. Considering I spend one-third of my life lying in bed, realizing this was fairly disquieting. The good news is that choices once limited to size and firmness now include environmental options as well. If you prefer an innerspring mattress—steel coils surrounded by layers of fluffy padding—you can rest easy on beds made from organic cotton and wool, with steel coils that aren't coated in chemicals.
If, like me, you prefer a solid-foam mattress, you can opt for latex made from the milky sap of rubber trees. And though I worried that sleeping on something made from coconut husk fibers or natural rubber would feel like napping in Gilligan's hut, when I test-drove the beds, my back couldn't feel the difference. Here are three tips from my eco-mattress hunt. The smell that kept me awake at my parents' house is a cocktail of chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are associated with skin irritation and respiratory problems. Walter Bader, author of Sleep Safe in a Toxic World and cofounder of Organic Mattresses Inc., sent a conventional mattress to a lab that measured its emissions and found 61 VOCs. "Mattresses are like cigarettes were in the 1930s," Bader says. "Completely unregulated, and everyone thinks they're safe." Experts, though, remain divided about what exposure levels pose a danger. Berkeley-based toxicologist Janet Weiss, MD, who has studied these chemicals, says, "Like the new-car smell, mattress smells aren't hazardous."
Others argue that exposure should be limited as possible. "Although the amount people inhale is incredibly small, the exposure adds up," says epidemiologist Devra Lee Davis, PhD, of the Environmental Health Trust. Choosing organic materials is one of the best ways to cut the toxins you inhale while sleeping. Fumes are strongest in the first few weeks, so it also helps if you can let your new bed air out in a spare room or garage before using it. Ask for the Real Credentials There is no government certification for eco-friendly mattresses. "Manufacturers use the terms green and natural however they want, and there isn't much standardization," says Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group. While shopping, I found mattresses made with castor oil, aloe vera, green-tea infusions, and bamboo—and labeled every variation of green, eco-, organic, and natural. It takes some sleuthing to push past the green stickers and figure out what really goes into a mattress.
I tried out one "eco-friendly" memory-foam mattress in a store that was plastered with green leaf symbols. A salesperson offered me piping hot green tea, but when I pressed her on what was so green about their mattress, she explained that more than 10 percent of the oils in the petroleum-based memory foam had been replaced with plant-based oils. So the product wasn't exactly green, just 10 percent greener. "We're the hybrid cars of the mattress world," she said. "We're still burning gas, but it's better than a regular car." Yet to many shoppers, the company's beds appear just as pure as those made by rigorously green Organic Mattresses, Inc., a company Bader started because of his chemical sensitivities (the handcrafted creations are made from cruelty-free wool, certified organic cotton, and 100 percent natural rubber latex in a facility where no one is allowed to smoke, wear fragrances, or wear fabric softeners). When shopping, ignore words like eco- and natural. Instead, seek out companies that explain ingredients clearly and can point to where materials are sourced.
Even better, look for third-party certification" Oeko-Tex Standard 100 is the largest voluntary third-party certification for textiles free of harmful substances, and Global Organic Textile Standard certifies that a natural fiber was grown organically and processed sustainably. Find a Comfortable Compromise If I had a $3,000 budget, I'd be on a virtuous mattress made by Organic Mattresses in a heartbeat. But there's only so much I can spend on my back health and eco-consciousness. I decided I wanted a memory-foam mattress that replaced some of the usual synthetic latex with soy. And after careful research, I bought it from Magniflex, an Italian company, because its bona fides were so impressive: Its memory foam is 30 percent plant oils, one of the highest percentages in the industry; it uses water to expand the memory foam rather than relying only on solvents, like most companies; and it created a flame retardant derived from sea sand, saving me from more chemical additives. The company's textiles are Oeko-Tex certified, and it uses GOTS-certified cotton.