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High Quality Bed Linen at a good price?

Holdfast

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Bit of an odd topic I guess, but any suggestions on where to find high quality bed linen at a decent price?

I found a UK online source for 200 Thread Count Frette for under £40 per double bedsheet which seems reasonable, but I was looking for a higher TC if possible. I've found some non-name higher TC sheets for cheaper prices, but I suspect the mills producing them may not be as good as for Frette or the other big names.

I don't mind sourcing from the US if needed, but my googling isn't proving very productive. Knowing the sybarites that populate this forum, I wondered if anyone here knew a good source?
smile.gif


Oh, and while we're at it, if you know a good source for high quality towels too, I'd be interested in that as well.
 

Brian SD

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Originally Posted by Holdfast
Bit of an odd topic I guess, but any suggestions on where to find high quality bed linen at a decent price? I found a UK online source for 200 Thread Count Frette for under £40 per double bedsheet which seems reasonable, but I was looking for a higher TC if possible. I've found some non-name higher TC sheets for cheaper prices, but I suspect the mills producing them may not be as good as for Frette or the other big names. I don't mind sourcing from the US if needed, but my googling isn't proving very productive. Knowing the sybarites that populate this forum, I wondered if anyone here knew a good source?
smile.gif
Oh, and while we're at it, if you know a good source for high quality towels too, I'd be interested in that as well.

I've had good and bad experiences shopping online for high quality bed linens. I've had some 500TC sheets that felt suffocating, and some 350TC sheets that pilled after 3 (delicate) washes. If you feel confident about the brands there, www.overstock.com is a US-Based site that has steeply discounted bed linens. Ultimately, I went for some 200TC Ikea bed sheets that have been only getting softer, and haven't pilled even after a lot of harsh treatment. At full retail, they were not even half the price of the "high quality" high-TC sheets I bought off of Overstock.
 

Holdfast

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^ Thanks Brian.

I'll keep an eye on Overstock to see if they get some new stock (their current stock doesn't have the plain white flat sheets I'm after in a name I recognise). Your variable experiences with online sources is precisely why I'm asking here - I suspected as much!
confused.gif
 

pejsek

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Your best bet, of course, would be to find high quality goods that somehow fly under the radar (so not much sense in trying to score a bargain on Porthault or Pratesi). And there are many of these in the world of bed linens. I've never found Frette to be all that impressive. There's also a great deal more to bedding than thread count; the quality of the cotton itself is at least as important. One of my favorite sheet sets is by an Italian company named Ygle--a bad name and no mass market cachet, but they are phenomenal luxurious sheets with a correspondingly high retail price. They also come in very plain designs (which you seem to be looking for). I'll bet if you waited it out on ebay you could get a set for a song. Another potential bargain would be sheets made by Chambers, a now vanished division of Williams Sonoma. These were often extremely nice bed linens from some of the top European makers sold under the Chambers label. Williams Sonoma Home sometimes has some good sheets on sale and I would imagine they ship to the UK.
Of course, bedding is just like shirts and suits: 4 or 5 sets in good rotation and properly cared for could easily keep you going for 15 years or more.
 

Holdfast

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Thank you pejsek - I am indeed looking for very plain designs and have a similar plan to get a few excellent sets for a good rotation. My knowledge of bed linen is admittedly miniscule beyond a few names so all advice is welcome. I've made careful note of the makes you suggest. Thank you.
 

GQgeek

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What's your budget?

The problem with frette online is that for the nice stuff you can never get a matching duvet cover, shams, and sheet set.

The 200TC Frette isn't particularly soft and I'd avoid it. They're workhorse sheets for hotels.

I'll tell you this, I once spent about $400 on a duvet cover, sheet set, and shams at the linen chest for their egyptian cotton 450tc sheets. They're total crap. I only bought them to satisfy an immediate need for something better looking than the miss-matched sheets i was using at the time. They've never gotten as soft as I would have liked and the colors tend to run when I iron them. For that reason, I don't think I'd order the unknown brands with high threadcounts I've seen on overstock. TC isn't everything.

There's a store here that will make a duvet cover and sheet set for about 1-1.2k CDN. While not cheap, the cotton is of a much softer variety than the stuff I got at Linen Chest. That, to me, is still a good price, especially considering the price you'd pay for a brand name stuff like Frette or Pratesi, in which that would be less than the retail price of the duvet cover alone.

What you'll get it definitely more plain, but they make their stuff using a good selection of very fine fabrics. The price I'm quoting was for 600TC long-staple cotton (can't remember if it was egyptian, specifically). I'm sure you can find a similar store near you.
 

Holdfast

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Budget - definitely hundreds rather than thousands of pounds sterling per a set of 2 flat double sheets (I hate fitted sheets) & 2 pillowcases. No need for duvet cover. It's more about getting a luxurious feel rather than a budget to be honest, but like most things in life, if I can get at a good price, I'm happiest.
 

GQgeek

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Originally Posted by Holdfast
Budget - definitely hundreds rather than thousands of pounds sterling per a set of 2 flat double sheets (I hate fitted sheets) & 2 pillowcases. No need for duvet cover. It's more about getting a luxurious feel rather than a budget to be honest, but like most things in life, if I can get at a good price, I'm happiest.

Well even for 300 quid, you could get a very nice sheet set. I'm not sure what brands they have over there but the ones I got were made from fabric by St. Geneve. I compared to a bunch of other fabrics at the time and these were the softest and most luxurious feeling. The ones I got were 600TC if i recall correctly. But agian, I felt a lot of different 600TC fabrics and they're not all equals. You'd be surprised (or not) how much better some can feel than others. You can go in to the higher thread-counts as well, but in general I think the ply just increases. They don't necessarily become any softer.

What I did notice when I buoght my sheets at linen chest (the cheap 450 TC ones) was that they felt softer in the packaging than after I washed them. I'm not sure but they might treat the cotton with something to give it that better feel until you wash it.
 

StevenRocks

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Costco has some really nice 500TC sheets these days, no matching accesories though.
 

A Y

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Your shirtmaker could probably make you some from nice shirting materials, but it won't be cheap. Carl from CEGO had some pillow cases for sale a while ago, IIRC.

--Andre
 

itsstillmatt

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We had some linen sheets made by a woman in Utah named Kara DiOrio. I think that they are as nice as any that I have seen. THey are not cheap, but I can't remember what they ran.
 

Horace

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Probably not high-end enough for you, but I just bought some from the Cuddleworth company (silly name) in Maine, and their flannel sheets were some of the best I've tried.
 

GQgeek

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Originally Posted by Andre Yew
Your shirtmaker could probably make you some from nice shirting materials, but it won't be cheap. Carl from CEGO had some pillow cases for sale a while ago, IIRC.

--Andre


Pillowcases, yes, but not sheets. The fabric they order isn't wide enough. I am thinking of having him make me pyjamas out of Alumos 170x2 Zephyr though! That stuff is so incredibly soft and light...
 

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