Summertime, and the livin’ is easy – and so is the sleepin’, in bedding designed for summer nights.
Let’s start from the bottom up, with bedding basics: mattress toppers and pillows. Some of these items incorporate gel technology to promote a cooler sleep surface.
In the Cool Gel line from Canadian retailer Linen Chest, a bed, bath, kitchen and home decor company with 28 stores across the country, the fabric covering toppers and pillows (and even duvet covers) is infused with heat-absorbing compounds. Thus, it takes longer than usual for the surface to warm up from body heat, and, therefore, remains cool.
“That’s a pretty nice feeling on a hot summer night,” says Stan Leibner, Linen Chest’s president. “It’s almost like built-in air conditioning.”
Mattress toppers and pillows are what the industry calls “white goods,” as they’re usually wrapped in white or pale fabric. For aesthetic and practical purposes, we cover them with sheets and pillow cases. The good news is that this does not affect the cooling properties.
Since it’s summer, bedding generally goes with a soft, bright palette. There’s always classic white, which is, well, a classic; it’s a colour choice that never goes out of style. Greys and blues are still popular decor colours, and this season we see a variety of greys in bedding, from silver to charcoal. Blues range from pale blue to turquoise and navy. Both colourways often feature accents of coral and blush, and yellow and gold.
There’s texture to this story, too. Bedding made of cotton sateen is soft and silky to the touch. The cotton is breathable, and the sateen weave gives it a gentle sheen.
Matelassé is another finish that provides texture in coverlets and duvet covers. It’s the result of weaving fabric for a three-dimensional effect that looks almost like embossing or quilting, but doesn’t rely on warm batting between fabric layers the way a quilt does.
For sleeping under a fan or in an air-conditioned room, you’ll probably want more than just a sheet over you, but down- or polyester-filled quilts or duvets might be too much. Leibner recommends silk and bamboo-fibre bedding, including silk-filled pillows, duvets, mattress pads, and toppers.
“Silk filling is natural,” he says. “Silk naturally wicks moisture away from the body. It’s also hypoallergenic and repels dust mites.”
Whether you keep the windows open to catch a breeze or you’re curled up in an air-conditioned room, you can be cool and comfortable in style. •
Linen Chest
www.linenchest.com
