Bedding used to be crazily ornate – gaudy textures, ruffles all around, and a city of pillows you’d have to push off the bed before settling in. It’s less formal these days – people gravitate toward sumptuous, simple pleasures – fine-woven sheets crafted from natural fibers, a few plush pillows deliberately placed, and blankets soft enough for a baby’s skin. But that doesn’t mean decisions on what to buy are easy.
“It’s important to build your bed from the ground up,” says Kathy Seib, senior vice president and design director for KN Karen Neuburger. The key components are all about comfort – a structurally sound mattress and frame, exquisite linens – and of course dressing it to look tasteful, inviting, and indicative of your personality.
Bare Basics
The two major trends in the design of the bed are the low, flat platform look – lower furniture often makes small rooms look larger, helpful in smaller urban dwellings – or a heftier, higher bed that stands as the room’s focal point. At Patrick’s Fine Linens & Home Décor in Alexandria, VA, hand-carved headboards and stalwart mahogany bed frames abound, as well as more delicate choices – such as a slender frame in wrought iron that co-owner Troy Englert says is “the same bed the Queen sleeps on.”
The mattress is such a crucial – and potentially costly – part of a good night’s sleep that you’ll want to shop around. Some high-end mattresses can be adjusted for softness, firmness, incline, and temperature. Uniformity and durability of material is key, but as Seib says, “everybody has a different level of comfort.”
Serious Sheets
Perhaps the most interesting advances in sheets are in the quality of organic fibers. “Concern for the environment is not a trend, it’s here to stay,” Seib says. Sheets woven from beech wood fibers, bamboo/cotton blends, or brushed Pima or Egyptian cotton are light and velvety to the touch, with the added value of being natural, renewable materials that can be responsibly cultivated.
Many manufacturers trumpet high thread count, but it pays to look past the numbers. Those threads may be one-ply or two-ply (two-ply is better) – this impacts the way the fabric feels to the skin and stands up to wear over time.
Piquant Pillows
Whether your instinct is to pare them down or pile them on, changing out pillows and shams is a sensible way to change the look of your bed without making a large investment. Many people are taking hints from great hotels in this area, supplementing their two rows of European pillows with a bolster or two. The abundance is fun, but may not make the most sense, if you’re always having to adjust. As Seib says, most people these days crave a “livable luxury.”
Sometimes that just means knowing what will suit your style. Ann Gish, president of Ann Gish Inc., says her favorite pillow is the knitted pillow, an accent that brings a sense of country warmth to the bed.
Turning Down, Taking Care
“There’s a way to do very feminine and still keep it tailored,” Gish says. Accents emphasizing texture – such as a silken edge or tiny crystals sewn into a pillow or a quilted silk coverlet or fitted duvet – bring depth and nuance to the setting but aren’t, as Gish says, “drippy.”
High-end companies such as Bella Notte and Anichini make duvet covers that feel feather-light. The Bella Notte linens shown right are machine-washable and low-maintenance, but running your hand over the fine material, you would guess it to be more fragile than that detail implies.
If you’re spending the extra money for quality, though, Englert suggests using linen wash – he recommends Le Blanc or The Laundress – which gives them a subtle fresh scent.
