Poor Sleep quality
Where do I start ? I've read endless reports from scientists, dieticians, sleep therapists, physicians, in fact every kind of expert on improving sleep, however I had not found the solution to our problem. I know that there are many factors involved in getting a good night's sleep, not least of all having enough space to spread out comfortably in your bed. As a tall woman of 6ft and my partner being over 6ft we need a lot of space. It was time to take action.
After doing our research, we decided to purchase an Emperor sized bed (6ft 6ins x 6ft 6ins / 200cms x 200cms) surely now we were going to enjoy a heavenly nights sleep. Unfortunately it wasn't to be, just having more space was not the solution, we still had another issue to deal with, the duvet!
Can a single duvet really make that much of a difference to our quality of sleep?
We decided to undertake a challenge offered by The Big Little Duvet Company, and trial the "Scandi " way of sleeping. This experiment entailed sleeping with our own extra large single duvets instead of the sharing a duvet.
I was mildly sceptical but we were willing to try anything for a decent nights sleep. We selected two 10.5 tog duvets and two x 100% Egyptian Cotton white sateen striped duvet covers sets.
So, I am going to start with a little bit of feedback before we undertook the challenge. With our last sleep of sharing the existing large duvet I made a conscious effort to observe the kind of sleep we had, knowing I was going to be drawing comparisons after trialing the BLD extra large single duvets....
First of all, the large duvet we had just isn't wide enough for the Emperor sized bed. It isn't wide enough to cover over the sides when the bed is made which is aesthetically irritating. Secondly, Wilson, my partner is a duvet hogger! He likes to bunch a load of duvet into his chest and under his chin which leaves me with very little duvet. I then end up pulling it all from under him to share it out which inevitably wakes him up. Every time one of us turns over we pull the duvet with us and take it from the other and so it goes on, totally exhausting.
I am very excited and intrigued to see how this new system affects our night's sleep.
Two duvets one bed
I took a few photos of what the bed looks like with our new bedding. The extra large single duvets are plenty wide enough for our emperor bed and the bed looks cosy and far better dressed than before. I'm sure this would work for anyone having the same problems but sleeping in a super king size bed or king size bed. Take the challenge!
One week of sleeping with the "new system or the Scandi way with our two extra large single duvets, it's been an absolute revelation! We absolutely love it. I can't tell you how much of a game changer it has been for us both.
Every single night has been the best nights sleep both of us have had as long as I can remember. Often I go to bed before my partner but often end up being woken and disturbed when he gets into bed by yanking on the duvet and getting comfy then that's me awake for hours. But now, he just slips under his own duvet with zero disturbance to me and I don't even know he's there.
It's hard to explain too that it's had a really bizarre physiological effect too, knowing we each have our own space and duvets, that feeling of "this is mine" and I'm going to have MY OWN great sleep and that kind of gives us peace of mind and a really positive feeling before we even get into bed that we know we are going to have a lovely nights sleep and as such we really look forward to going to bed for that reason rather than, desperately wondering how many times I'm going to be disturbed tonight etc.... the amount of time we have had the duvet war during the night and then wake up irritable with each other because " it's your fault I had a rubbish nights sleep" then the day ensues negatively. Now we are waking up happy and rested and we are 100% convinced it's because we have our own duvets!
Staying cool at night
One evening for example, Wilson was really hot and bothered so he was able to arrange his duvet on and off him so it was entirely comfortable for him whilst I was normal temperature so I didn't have to notice him kicking the duvet about. I mentioned earlier that Wilson loves to bunch his duvet into his chest and under his chin which used to deprive me of enough duvet. We don't have this predicament of the middle part of the bed being too hot and there being nothing you can do about it, we can just open our middle side of our own duvets and it's immediately remedied without bothering the other person.
Honestly we have raved about these duvets every single night, it's like we've found a cure, or BLD has. I can't express how happy we both are with them, amazing, such a simple concept with such enormously positive effect!. I can say without any doubt that we will not be going back to our big shared duvet after this, no way!
I love the quality of the duvet covers too, they really have that gorgeous hotel look and feel. They have washed and ironed beautifully and SO much easier to put back on as opposed to wrestling that gargantuan old one.
I honestly thought this was going to be the emperors clothes, how completely wrong I was!
Thank you BLD
from Helen & Wilson (the happy couple)
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