Winter Warmers from the Fine Bedding Company

[This post is sponsored by The Fine Bedding Company]

You know how at this time of year, people suddenly become obsessed with the idea of “snuggling” under a blanket on the sofa? Well, brace yourselves, folks, because I have the mother of all blankets for you to snuggle under…

OK, it’s not technically a blanket. This, my friends, is a coverless duvet, and when I said earlier this year that the existence of these had changed my life, I really wasn’t exaggerating. Since writing that post, I’ve acquired 3 more of these wonder duvets: a gorgeous storm grey herringbone duvet for our bed, a second single duvet for Max, and the dusk pink one above, which I bought purely for “snuggling on the sofa” purposes.

(I know, who even AM I?I barely even recognise myself. I’ll be using the word “cosy” next…)

Of course, technically you can use ANY duvet as a blanket, but as we have a superking bed, and I didn’t fancy having to lug a giant duvet up and down from our 3rd floor bedroom every time I wanted to watch TV, I got it in a double, which is perfect. The beauty of these duvets is that they’re incredibly lightweight, but still super-warm: this one is a 10.5 tog, which I find much, much warmer than any blanket I’ve ever owned, and it’s also large enough that you’re not constantly having to adjust it, either.

Like many people, we’re trying our best to keep the heating as low as possible this winter, due to the cost of living crisis, and my pink duvet friend here has really been helping make our evenings a little less miserable as a result of that. As for the other duvets, meanwhile, well, I still love them…

This grey version is the latest addition to my collection, and, as with the first one I wrote about, I love it. For me, the main attraction to coverless duvets is the fact that you don’t have to faff around trying to re-insert them into their covers every time you change the bedsheets. That’s one of those life skills that I have sadly never managed to acquire, and as I’m also one of those absolute freaks who insists on ironing everything, including bedding, changing the sheets used to be a tortuous, all-day affair for me, which I would complain about bitterly to anyone who would listen. (So, no one, then…)

Well, no more, folks. These duvets don’t require ironing: after almost a year of using them, I can confirm that they come out of the washing machine looking exactly the same as when they went in, which is a huge time-saver for me. Yes, they do take longer to dry than traditional bedsheets would (They can be tumble dried, but I always just put them on the washing line if it’s dry enough, or over the radiator if it isn’t), but as we have two to swap over, it isn’t a big deal, and they’re normally dry within a few hours, anyway.

(Also pictured: my extra-long hot water bottle, which is the other thing making the current cold snap even vaguely bare-able…)

When I wrote my first post about these, I had a few questions about washing them… As I said, we have a super-king bed, but I use a king-size duvet on it (I’ve actually always done this: when we first got our bed we bought a king-sized duvet by mistake, and didn’t realise… it fits the bed fine, just with less fabric hanging over the sides, and as there tends to be more choice of bedding in that size, we just kept using it.), and it just fits into our washing machine.

To be fair, our machine is an integrated washer/dryer, so it has quite a small drum size; I think the super-king version would be too big for it, but this one fits fine, and if you have a larger machine than we do, you shouldn’t have any issues at all. I just changed Max’s bedding today and his single duvet fits into our machine with room to spare, so they’re perfect for kids rooms. I also find that, as there’s no cover for the duvet to shift around in (Please tell me I’m not the only one who always seems to end up basically sleeping under a cover, with the duvet itself all bunched up in one corner of it?), they tend to be much warmer, too – and, considering the temperature here is currently -3°C and is due to go down to -7° overnight, that is very, very welcome right now, let me tell you.

Anyone else use these duvets? What do you think of them?