Bed Linen Care Guide
Don’t underestimate the power of how the best bed linen can help you get a good night’s sleep!
While care labels provide a great starting point, proper bed linen maintenance requires additional steps and is essential for increasing the longevity of your linens. Changing your bed linen regularly is one of the less arduous household chores (apart from putting the duvet cover back in) and it’s well worth getting it right for that great feeling of sliding into a freshly laundered bedding.
Here’s how the experts (IE: the team at ALSO Home) recommend you do it…
Wash your sheets frequently:-
Now we know what you’re thinking here. Bear with us! We spend a third of our lives in bed (maybe more on somedays!), so although bed linen doesn’t wear like clothing, you do need to wash it every 7-10 days. Night after night, germs, sweat, skin cells, hair and body oils accumulate, and no one wants to be sleeping in that. Keep multiple sets of bed linen available so a clean set is always ready to go on the bed. By rotating three sets of sheets per bed, the sheets will last longer.
Airing your bed every morning will allow the bed to breathe and for any moisture to evaporate. We believe the best time for making your bed is just after breakfast, after the bed has had time to cool down.
Don’t overload your washing machine:-
It can be tempting to overfill the machine at once and power through the laundry pile as quickly as possible – but you must resist. You’ll probably need to do a couple of washes to get the job done well, as sheets need to circulate to get clean. Remember there is a lot of material in there that needs to be cleaned!
You should wash bed linen separately from towels or other clothing. This gives the sheets more room to circulate in the water, which means they’ll get cleaner. Washing your bed linen alone also prevents damage caused by zips and other fasteners, and it reduces the amount of pilling that can happen over time.
Choose the right washing machine cycle:-
You should also choose a setting with a cleaning cycle that uses the hottest water safe for the sheets’ fabric (check the label). A lot of bed linen on the market specifies a temperature of 40C but the hotter the water, the more germs you kill. So, wash sheets as high a temperature as possible, ideally at least 60C. This is especially important if anyone in the house has been unwell – you want those germs gone!
Pay attention to whether you have 100% linen bed linen, or enzyme washed cotton – temperatures to wash them will differ. The more frequently 100% linen sheets are washed, the softer they will become. Use a mild detergent, but avoid bleaches or detergents containing bleach. Linen can be ironed at the hottest setting on your iron. It also helps to iron with steam or very soon after the bed linen has dried.
Don’t over tumble:-
Remove sheets from the dryer while they are still damp, so they are easier to iron. If you forget this, pop them in again for 5 minutes with a wet towel to give them a little moisture. Again, a hot iron will help remove germs – useful if you’ve washed the bed linen at a cooler temperature. Ideally, sheets should be line-dried to keep them as fresh as possible but drying in a tumble dryer on a medium heat is also perfectly fine. Shaking the bed linen before pegging it up will help reduce wrinkles.
Don’t dry sheets with towels:-
Sheets will dry more quickly than towels, so don’t make the mistake of loading them into the tumble dryer at the same time. You’ll just waste energy.
If you need any further help or guidance please contact our team who will be delighted to help you with your query.