Tips for choosing the perfect duvet

Thinking of buying your first duvet? Perhaps you’re fed up with the lumps and bumps which seem to have developed in your old one. Maybe it feels too restrictive and heavy, or perhaps you lose sleep; being too hot in the summer and cold in the winter. With so many duvets available on the market, where do you start looking to find exactly what you need for those blissful, undisturbed eight hours?

Online Research

It’s the obvious one isn’t it. However, before you do, take a few minutes to decide what you want and what you need. Somewhere along the line will be a compromise. Do you live in an area which is warm 12 months of the year? Or maybe temperatures in the height of summer struggle to reach 20F.

Once you have an idea of what you require, pull up a detailed duvet buying guide. Try to steer clear of the manufacturers. While the information may well be sound, they are obviously going to be biased toward their own products. There are some excellent independent blogs out there specializing in comparing all forms of bedding.

Size and Material

Not as obvious as it sounds. Although duvets come in fixed sizes as you would expect, if your preference is to get as snug as a bug on those cold winter nights, perhaps a larger overhang will reduce the risk of those cold draughts creeping under the duvet when you turn over. On the other hand if you quickly overheat, being able to easily get a leg into the fresh air may keep you slumbering soundly.

There are a large range of fabrics used in the manufacture of duvets. From cotton and silk to heavyweight and hardwearing to synthetic materials. While none have any major bearing on heat retention, if you have any personal preferences, or suffer skin allergies, take a closer look at the materials used in manufacture.

Choice of Fillings

As with the outer fabric of your duvet, there are a whole range of different fillings available. Natural fillings include feathers, down, a mix of both, or wool or silk. Or the filling could be one of a number of synthetic materials for those who may suffer allergic reactions to feathers or down. Again, the material used has little bearing on the heat retention, but if you want a really lightweight duvet and are not hypoallergenic, down filled is probably the lightest.

Heat Retention

The nitty-gritty of your duvet, the Tog value denotes its thermal resistance, in other words, how warm it will keep you. Tog values run from 3.5 for those who live in the tropics, to 16.5 for those who reside in Alaska. For the rest of us, who have warm summers and chilly winters, a 10 Tog should suffice.

Check out all these points in much greater depth, as well as duvet warranties and combinations on your favorite bedding comparison site, and begin to look forward to blissful nights of unbroken slumber.