Your bedroom is one of the most important personal areas in your life. A good mattress, sheets, blanket and/or comforter can create a relaxing, deep sleep experience. Rest is even more important in today’s information-rich society. It’s important to relax and free your body and mind of the frantic chaos of modern life. Having quality home bedding will help you do this.

In choosing the right bedding it’s important to first choose the right fabrics your bedding will be made from. Different fabrics have different characteristics that make each suitable for a certain style or taste. The fabrics can be divided into two categories: natural and man-made. The natural fabrics are wool, cotton, linen, and silk. The man-made fabrics are acetate, acryllic, nylon, polyester, and rayon. Bedding can be made from any of these choices, but natural fabrics are considered to be more appropriate to bedding than man-made fabrics. In particular, it is rare to see bedding made from rayon.

After choosing the fabrics, the next step is to consider the various options for the bedding itself. A general collection of bedding is to have a mattress cover, a sheet over the mattress cover, and a blanket over the sheet. The bed’s occupant sleeps between the sheet and the blanket, using the blanket to cover himself. Sometimes, especially in the winter months or in cooler climes, a comforter may be placed over the blanket to provide further warmth.

It’s always a good idea to make sure that the bedding you choose is right for your needs. If you don’t like the feel of wool, for example, avoid using it in bedding that will be touching your skin, like wool sheets or wool blankets. Wool comforters, however,  can be very comfortable on cold nights, even for people that don’t normally like wool. If you don’t like rayon, polyester or other man-made fabrics, natural fabrics are far superior to man-made fabrics. Consider a reasonably priced cotton or silk sheet if you are looking for that extra bit of softness.

A sheet is a sheet, at least in terms of it’s basic construction. The fabric the sheet is made from, however, drastically seperates one sheet from another. There are many kinds of cotton fiber for sheets to be made from, from Egyptian cotton to Indian muslin. A basic way to tell one sheet from another is thread count: how many threads per square inch does the sheet contain? Simply holding it up to a light source is a quick way to discern this. If you can see the actual weave of the fabric, your sheet has a low thread count. The higher the thread count, the softer and more durable the sheet is.

Let’s review some different types of sheets and a few characteristics of each one:

Muslin: These are considered to be the low end of the cotton spectrum. Muslin is a “rough-and-tough” fabric and it has a thread count of 128-140.

Percale: A flat, smooth, closely woven fabric that is combed. A combed fabric has undergone a cleaning process that eliminates dirt and short, undesirable fibers. Percale can come in 100% cotton or 50% cotton/50% polyester varieties. It is also a finer fabric than muslin, with a thread count of 180-200.

Pima or Supima: A high quality cotton whose long fibers are similar to Egyptian cotton. The difference between the two is purely geographical.  Both pima and supima are popular bedding fabrics because of the soft hand feel they possess.  The thread count of Pima/Supima is from 200-300.

Egyptian Cotton: The queen of all cottons grown on the banks of the Nile. Egyptian cotton owe’s its superior durability, luster, and silky hand feel to its extra long fibers. The thread count of Egyptian cotton goes from 200-400.

Of the types listed above, Egyptian cotton is the most popular of them all by a wide margin. The incredible softness of the cotton is due to the fact that that rich soil and humid conditions along the Nile riverbank are perfect for growing long cotton fibers (called staple). The long length of the fibers allows the cotton to be spun into very fine yarns that are lustrous and durable, making for a quality fabric. Not surprisingly, this also makes Egyptian cotton the most expensive on the market.

When translated into sheets, Egyptian cotton sheets are the cream of the crop. The luxurious feel of the cotton fabric against your skin make for a very enjoyable sleeping experience no matter how your day has gone.