DUVETS: THE HEAT FOR THE BED
There is nothing better to sleep than to curl up a duvet. Its soft texture, its lightness and the heat they provide are the best conditions to have good dreams. They provide as much or even more heat than blankets, and they are lighter and more comfortable. The Nordic ones have a lot of success, but you need to know that they are not all duvets are Nordic.
A Nordic better
When we sleep our body is more sensible to low temperatures, which is why we need some element to provide us some heat. Nature is intelligent when providing birds with feathers that cover their body and protect them from cold. For this reason textile industries use feathers as stuffing for the Nordic duvets. There are many advantages that differentiate a Nordic duvet from a normal one: It’s light, very light. It has a very simple design. The Nordic duvet can be used during winter and during summer. The bed sheets are replaced by a cover that protects the duvet, and most important, bed is made with no effort. To place the cover correctly can be done with only one hand.
Duvet types
The duvet stuffing is what makes the difference. The stuffing is the most important part of the duvet. To choose a Nordic duvet you must note its insulation power. The quantity of stuffing is also important like the kind of backstitch it has to see if it has interior blocks where feathers are placed and so the stuffing can create ventilation cameras basic for the insulation power of the duvet itself.
A duvet may be composed of…
1) Fiber or acrylic
: It’s an artificial component that imitates feather or down, without reaching its qualities. Not long ago, it was the most economic and the worst quality stuffing, even though now there are new high quality fibers being developed and with the advantages of the natural material, so they are ventilated, antiallergenic and with a very nice touch. As an advantage, these duvets can be cleaned in a washing machine.
2) Feather or dove
: They are the best thermal isolators that come from nature. As it weights very little and takes a lot of place, the feather creates an air space that isolates temperature of the exterior body. Nevertheless, a feather duvet is much more expensive than an acrylic one. But, what differentiates the feather of the down?
Feather has a solid part that down does not have. Down protects better from cold than feathers. Down filled quilts have more thermal capacity because they avoid heat dispersion, and they prevent air entries from the outside? Also, since it does not have a “solid part”, they don’t create microorganisms.
The higher the percentage of down is in a duvet, the higher is its quality. Between two down filled duvets, choose the one with more volume, and between two with the same volume, choose the lighter one. Don’t let the color of the plumage influence you, it does not influence the quality of the stuffing. Nevertheless, the grey feather can be seen though the cover, and give a not very clean appearance of the Nordic.
Shopping time
Think about the environmental temperature, the room’s temperature and the preferences of those who will use it. For a person that is not very sensible to cold or someone who sleeps in a house with a good heating, a duvet with not much feather can be enough.
There are different models, thicker for winter and thinner for summer time. There are even manufacturers that sale the two together, so that depending on the temperature they can use one separately or both at the same time.
The greater quality Nordic duvets are those made with the highest percentage of down, since downs are little flakes of large light and flexible threads that isolate cold better than feather. We can also find differences between European feather and down and the Asiatic ones: European feather and down are bigger, have greater heat power and offer more guarantees on its washing and sterilizing process.
The sewing
The way a duvet is sewed is very important to tell the quality. The best system of sewing is the one with interior air spaces squares. This system has an internal partition of about 2,5 cm of height for each square. These spaces provide the placement of the stuffing along the Nordic, even in the seams, avoiding cold zones like this. These seams give an uniform distribution to the stuffing along the surface of the Nordic.
The cloth of the duvet in which is put the stuffing, can be made of different materials even though the suggested ones are cotton or linen because they are the healthiest ones.
The duvet cover
The exterior of this kind of duvet is covered with a cover that can be made of diverse materials, even though the most natural and ventilated textile is cotton 100%. These covers are the ones in charge of decorating a room and make the bed the central interest of the room. There are plenty of models. They can be plain, print, for kids, etc. They are washed as normal bed sheets.
Maintenance and cleaning
The down filled quilt and feather keep the humidity that our body rejects while we are sleeping and moves it to the exterior, keeping us in a dry and nice climate. This humidity evaporates quickly when ventilating the product.
Plump up and ventilate the Nordic every day to remove the humidity kept and redistribute the stuffing. It is suggested to not line the bed just after raising up, but to leave the duvet fold at the end of the bed and to straight it off afterwards.
The only problem we can find with these kind of duvets is when washing it, so it does not lose its structure and to not harm its stuffing. It is convenient to follow instructions of the manufacturer to proceed with general washings. But to remove little spots we can isolate the spot making the stuffing go down and cleaning only that zone without harming its composition.
Alberto Montilla
Elegir Colchon