Article 06 — Bed sheets
Measure the mattress, not the label
A fitted sheet that is too shallow springs off at the corners; one that is too deep wrinkles and slides. Three measures to take before you buy.
Bed sizes are not as standard as their names suggest. A queen from one maker is a few centimetres off another's, and mattresses have grown deeper every year: a pillow-top or a topper can add ten centimetres that no label on a sheet knows about. So buy for the mattress on your bed, not for the word on its label.
Three measures
Width, length and depth, with a tape, on the bed as you sleep on it: with the topper or the mattress protector on, if you use one.
Depth is the one people forget. Measure it at the side, from the bottom seam to the top seam, and at a corner too. A mattress slept on for a few years is often deeper at its edges than in its middle.
What the sheet needs
A fitted sheet needs a pocket as deep as the mattress, and a little more to grip underneath: about five centimetres. Too shallow and its corners spring off in the night; too deep and it wrinkles and slides.
A flat sheet needs to hang down each side by the mattress's depth, and then tuck under by about twenty centimetres. So it needs twice that added to both the width and the length of the mattress.
For a mattress 20 cm deep: a fitted pocket of 25 cm, and a flat sheet 80 cm wider and 80 cm longer than the mattress.
What to look for
Find the pocket depth on the pack.
It is often in small print on the back, or missing. If it is missing, ask; if nobody knows, the sheet was cut for a thin mattress.
Check the elastic.
It should run all the way round the edge, not only across the corners, so the sheet holds on every side.
Feel the corners.
They should be sewn with a proper seam, not simply gathered, so the pocket keeps its shape after washing.
Allow for shrinking.
Ask whether the cloth is pre-shrunk. Cotton that is not can lose a few percent in its first hot wash, and a fitted sheet that was just right is then too small.
Check the flat sheet's width, not only its length.
A flat sheet that only just covers the top of the mattress pulls out as soon as someone turns over.
Ask the seller
SKYDROTo take to the shop
Measure the mattress, not the label
Look for
Ask
Tick them off at the counter — ours, or anyone's.
What we do
We make the standard sheet sizes and cut to your own: single, double or queen, king, king plus, or your mattress's measure. Put your mattress's depth into Find my sheet size and it gives you the pocket and the flat sheet's drop; the Sizes & care card has every standard sheet.
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