Mattress Reviews

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How I score a duvet

Duvets are scored on value, warmth for weight, breathability, washability, durability and terms. Support, edge support and motion isolation are mattress criteria and mean nothing here.

Warmth for weight separates two duvets at the same tog. Breathability is what decides whether a duvet feels hot. Durability matters because a synthetic fill quietly stops being the tog on its label.

Tog is the least useful number on a duvet

Tog measures thermal resistance and nothing else. Two duvets at 10.5 keep you equally warm and can be completely different products.

Weight. Reaching a tog with a light lofty fill produces a duvet that drapes. Reaching it with a dense fill produces one that presses down.

Breathability. A duvet that traps moisture feels clammy and therefore hot regardless of its tog. Clamminess, not temperature, is what people mean by sleeping hot.

Longevity. Synthetic fills compact with use and washing, so a duvet that was 10.5 tog when new is less than that after five years and does not announce it.

For down, fill power is the figure doing the work. Most retailers do not print it.

Choose for your bedroom, not the season

Two other things worth trying. An all-season set of two duvets that button together gives three warmth levels from one purchase. And on a shared bed, two single duvets, one each, is normal across Scandinavia: it removes duvet stealing entirely, lets each person have the warmth they want, and stops movement dragging across the other.

Weighted blankets, honestly

Roughly 10 per cent of body weight. Too heavy becomes restrictive rather than calming and makes turning over hard work.

They make your bed warmer. Weight comes from fill, fill is bulk, and bulk insulates. If you sleep under a 10.5 tog duvet and add one, drop to a 4.5.

Many people find them calming, which is a sound basis for buying one. The research on measurable sleep outcomes is mixed and mostly small studies, so it is a comfort product rather than a treatment. If sleep is a persistent problem, a GP is the useful step.

Every one reviewed, scored