Duvet covers come in a range of different designs and colors, meaning all you need to do is change your duvet cover if you want to give your bedroom a cheap and easy makeover. That being said, you still need to prioritize the duvet cover’s fabric and weave over how much variety a cheaper fabric might offer in design or color.
Duvet covers stay in direct contact with our skin for hours at a time every night. Therefore, comfort should always take precedence over décor if you value the actual quality of your sleep. On that note, let’s look at some of the best options that make for the most comfortable duvet covers you can buy.
Percale
Percale is a plain weave with no gloss, so expect your percale duvet cover to be crisp, matte, and smooth. Since percale is also a weave like sateen, it is not limited to just cotton threads. The percale weaving pattern can be used with threads of rayon, nylon, polyester, etc., as well. Nevertheless, high-quality percale duvet covers are woven from pure cotton threads only.
The most premium and comfortable percale duvet covers are woven exclusively with threads of Egyptian cotton. Rare as the fabric is, you should still be able to find a premium collection of 100% Egyptian cotton duvet covers on a site like givans.co.uk. When weaved in Egyptian cotton, the over-and-under checkerboard style produces tightly woven, highly durable, and smooth silk duvet covers.
Linen
Linen duvet covers are ideal for summer nights because the fabric dissipates heat and moisture at a faster rate than regular cotton. If you do go with linen though, regular ironing would be necessary to keep the covers from looking crumpled all the time.
Although it wrinkles easily, linen does score higher than regular cotton in terms of overall durability, quality, and environmental sustainability. Linen is also a much finer, yet stronger textile than any cotton weave can be. If you must have only the best linen for your duvet, look for covers made from pure Irish linen with a thread count of 1,000+.
Sateen
Is sateen a different fabric that is superior to cotton? No, sateen is a weaving pattern and technique where a single weft thread is weaved over by at least three or four warp threads. When all threads used are made from pure cotton, the resulting product is called cotton sateen. So, technically, cotton and sateen cotton duvet covers are manufactured from the same fabric.
However, the comfort, feel, look, and durability of a pure sateen cotton cover will always be on a much higher level, as compared to any regular, pure cotton cover. It’s the 4-string or 5-string sateen weave that makes all the difference here, transforming cotton into something significantly more premium.
Since sateen is a weave and not a fabric, it is not limited in its application to just cotton threads. Pure cotton threads are only used to weave the most premium sateen duvet covers, but the same weave is also used with polyester, nylon, and/or rayon threads to manufacture bedcovers. If a duvet cover is spelled as made from “satin” instead of sateen, it indicates the cover was weaved in the same pattern, just not with pure cotton threads. If it states that the cover was manufactured from satin cotton, this indicates that the duvet cover has a cotton blend.
Now that you know a bit more about the different materials used for duvet covers, you can find something that suits your comfort level.
