You would think that at my age I'd know what kind of bedsheets to buy. But I'm constantly buying the wrong ones. Grrr. I just bought a beautiful-looking set for the spare bedroom. 300-thread count, 100% cotton, labeled "wrinkle-resistant", felt wonderfully soft to the touch in the store and a lovely shade of blue. I just washed them, according to the instructions. They came out rough, a different shade of blue, and so wrinkled that I will be embarrassed to put them on the bed. But I have no choice. Now that I've washed them, I can't take them back to the store. And with more houseguests coming, I have to use them - I tried to iron the pillow cases but even that didn't make them look much better.

I had cheap sheets on that bed and the other spare bed - both sets WERE wrinkle-free and much softer, despite also being 100% cotton and a lower thread count than these new ones. We do have Egyption cotton on our own bed - they're luxuriously soft, but too expensive to get for this spare bed. When I touched these new ones in the store I thought they felt close enough.

So what do you recommend? What blend of materials and thread count makes for the softest, most carefree sheets? I want my houseguests to sink into softness without the hassle.

Eagle Heart, Ralph Lauren makes some nice sheets that are high threadcount and wrinkle free and affordable. I also purchase sheets from an online website called Domestications. http://www.domestications.com I love the selection and the sheets feel wonderful after washing. I buy egyptian cotton at the highest threadcount I can find.

Thanks Vicki! That's a great site...it even ships to Canada, which many online companies don't do. I'll explore further. It's more expensive by the time they add the exchange rate, duties and shipping costs, but I can already see that there's a wider colour selection than any of the stores I've been into here at home.

It turns out that I can return these sheets, even though I've already washed them.

EagleHeart
I have purchased some great sheets from Tuesday Morning, if you have any of those stores in your area.
My favorite sheets are egyptian cotton or pima cotton in a high thread count (400 to 600). You pay lots more upfront, but they last forever. Also, overstock.com has lots of linens and I have found some great buys there.
Happy sheet shopping.
Anno

Anno, I had forgotten about overstock.com. Thanks for the reminder.

We have Tuesday Mornings in Baltimore. For htose of you who aren't familiar, it's a discount store. You get better quality items at much less expensive prices. You never know what you'll find, but it's fun to dig through.

I've always been told that the higher the thread count, the better the sheet.

Vicki since buying once from Domestications I won't buy bedding anywhere else. I have had some now for four years and have washed them hundreds of times and they are still soft and wrinkle free. Eagle I highly recommend their catalogs.

When hubby came home from work yesterday, I showed him the wrinkled sheets, but he wasn't overly concerned. He thought they were still very soft and comfy, and that his daughter wouldn't even notice the wrinkles. I still had my doubts, but since the pillowcases were the most wrinkled, I rewashed them today, hung them outside to dry and they came out much better. I did three sets of sheets in the same load - the others came out fine, but maybe these new ones just got all tangled up inside the other sheets and that's why they were so wrinkled.

That Domestications site is very tempting. By the time you add the duties, shipping and exchange rate to ship to Canada, they're just too expensive for spare sheets, but I've bookmarked that site for future sheet-buying for OUR bed...I really like the colour choices!

A while back when I bought sheets, I found the Egyptian cotton with a high thread count (I forget the exact numbers, but it was around 500-600 I think). Very expensive.

When I washed them, they came out wrinkled, but they were very soft. They were too soft. They felt downright slimy on the bed. I decided I like crisp better than soft.

I'm thinking next time I will look for cheaper crisp sheets.

smile

The crisp sheets leave marks on my skin. Seriously. When we sleep in hotels, sometimes the sheets burn and chafe me all night. It was such a relief to finally find the Egyptian cotton sheets for our bed several years ago. They were a high thread count, and purple (do you know how hard it is to find purple sheets here in Canada? Impossible! I think I finally found them on Amazon.com and ordered them through a friend in the States.) After 5-6 years of regular washing, they still look and feel fresh and soft.

We tried putting cheap sheets on both spare beds. One set only lasted a few washes before the elastic wore out, the other set hurt my niece's skin, so we gave them away and bought some better quality sheets for her bed. These new sheets will go on the other bed, the one that hubby's daughter uses when she comes to visit. She likes the softer sheets too.

Up here in the north country, we have to have two sets of sheets - summer and winter. The winter ones are warm, cuddly polar fleece-type material. My nieces love snuggling down into those when they visit.

This is too much. I've never heard on sheets hurting anyone until last week when we had a similar conversation at the beach. One of the gals talked about how a set of sheets rubbed her skin raw. Then I hear Eagle say the same thing. I must either have some tough skin, or soft sheets, but I didn't think I had either.

Have you tried LandsEnd.com? At one time, we had an pillow top matteress. I could not find sheets ANYWHERE that would fit the mattress even when the description on the sheets said they were deep pocket sheets....not! LandsEnd.com is where I found sheets to fit. They did not shrink after washing. In winter time, we use the flannel sheets purchased from landsend too......Ohhhh, how snuggly warm and cozy they are!

Dotsie, I read an article in Reader's Digest in a doctor's waiting room many years ago (and have wished many times since that I had photocopied it) that talked about "super-senser" people, particularly people with heightened tactile senses. As I was reading the article, I became quite excited, because it could have been written about me. It was the very first time in my life (and I had to be in my 30's by that time) that anyone anywhere understood that sock seams DO hurt to the point of almost not being able to walk, and bedsheets DO rub the skin raw, and some materials DO scratch me to the point of bleeding. It was such a relief to see someone finally validate my super-sensitivity as being real and not (as I was constantly accused of being) symptomatic of a hypochondriac.

But I haven't read anything about it since that article. "The Highly Sensitive Person" by Elaine Aron deals with the same sort of thing, but I remember that the RD article particularly hit home.

Eagle, when I accidentally get socks with seams, I always wear them inside out! Sometimes you can't see the seams when they're in a package.

Eagle, I buy sheets called "sateen". They are soft, even when washed. They will wrinkle some but I don't get too worked up about that anyway - I feel good just to have them clean. I think the last ones I got were about 300 thread count. As with most fabrics, they come out pretty good if not over-dryed. I can usually find them on sale at department stores.

Flipperjo, this last set I bought were 100% cotton sateen, 300 thread count. They're much softer than the old sheets that were on that spare bed. I think they came out so wrinkled because I had three sets of sheets in the dryer and the new ones may have gotten tangled up. When I rewashed the pillowcases and hung them outside to dry (which I'm not allowed to do because of our condo rules), they came out very nice. We've decided to keep them, because they ARE soft, and with the duvet over the sheets, who will notice the wrinkles anyway?

Eagle, do I see a condo fee coming? Are they very strict?

Hopefully of you go into a condo you don't get neighbors like Dianne has....geesh!

We live in a condo townhouse complex. It's like a regular townhouse but we pay condo fees, which cover things like snow removal, mowing, garbage disposal, water usage, parking (with plugs for winter). We have a small partially-fenced-in back yard.

Yes there are some strict rules...hubby was on the condo board for a couple of years and we discovered how necessary it was for most of the rules. We're allowed to hang clothes out to dry, but only if we have the appropriate set-up and don't use the fences. Because we're on a corner lot, we CAN'T set things up according to the rules, because all of the cables and wires for all of the houses in our row go right through our backyard. So we can't dig holes, which we would need to do to install the right poles. So hubby fixed up a make-shift clothesline which we use to dry heavy stuff like towels and jeans. It's breaking the rules, but we hope that the condo board understands our predicament - and understands that in this day and age, it's important (and our civic duty) to do our part to save on energy usage.

Eagle, happy dreams on the soft sateen! and don't sweat with nightmares about the wrinkles!

I just made a duvet out of two sateen flat sheets. We sleep under the duvet, no top sheet, european style. So comfy!

flipper, you really sleep in style!

I try, Dotsie! Mom just gave me her and Dad's bedroom set that I've had refinished. It is done and waiting for me to pick up. That will be the great finishing touch to my bedroom. The set is vintage danish modern manufactured in 1959. Mom actually still had the pages for the set out of the store product catalog,a typed page describing the finish and the original price tag so I got that, too!

Sheets...hmm...I like pretty. But I have found that the Ralph Lauren ones seem to last longer and even their pillows are my fav's...

Can I include another topic here?

Let's talk mattresses...for one thing, they are on sale every day of the year. Have you ever noticed that?

But would someone tell me how you KNOW which brands to buy? I need new ones for two beds in my house. Stay with me a sec. When I visit the casino's, I get the best sleep of my life. The mattresses are heavenly. I went so far as to inquire about them and it seems they are pillow-top and I forgot the brand name. Anyway, anybody here bought any new ones lately? Ones where you didn't have to sell a kidney to pay for them? How the heck do you determine soft, hard, medium, etc...?

JJ

Your question reminded me of the fairy tale Goldilocks, where the bears were describing the beds mattresses, one was to hard, one too soft and the other if memory serves me right was just right....Know any bears to take shopping??? LOL
No seriously JJ, the pillow tops are the best and most comfortable, all the major Casinos here use them too. Not sure wat stores you have there but as you say they all have sales.

JJ, We use to have a pillow top mattress. I think it was more like a pillow top and a pillow bottom with a mattress in between. It was very thick mattress and very comfy! The brand was Simmons Beauty Rest. We had it fot pert'ner 20 years too. The only problem was finding sheets to fit that thick of a mattress, and Landsend was the only place I could find those sheets. Now, we have a therma pedic mattress that we replaced the old beauty simmons with a number of years ago. I don't like it as well as the beauty rest. It is not as comfortable.

Did it cost you an arm and a leg? I'm not asking for the price, just if you thought it was reasonble...and WHERE you bought it? I hate making these types of purchases...

JJ

The pillow top we bought at Montgumery Wards(sp?) and paid around $700.00. The Therma mattress we bought from a local mattress factory store and paid close to $1000.00, which I thought was waaaaay to high. I hate it when you save for months to buy something and then are disappointed. I guess the reason I don't like it is because it feels too warm to me after I lay there awhile. I don't need to be warm at this time of my life! But...Alot of people like the therma and won't have anything else once they sleep on it. My husband likes the therma and says its comfortable to him, but didn't think it was worth the extra money we paid neither.

for a quick pillow-top mattress:
our mattress is worn out, too, but we can't afford a new one right now so I bought one of those memory foam mattress pads - about 2 or 3 inches thick. It was $150 but well worth the money - I'm sleeping much better and didn't have to pay for a new mattress.

How smart! Where do you get those Flipperjo? Wal-Mart? K-Mart? Sears?

JJ

Have any of you bought the feather beds for the top of your mattresses? We've purchased a couple for two of our college aged kids at Linens and Things. They seem to make a difference. The kids like them.

JJ, I got the topper at Herbergers. I think I've seen them at Target, too. Actually, I think most places have them by now.

Dotsie, we had a feathertop, too. It was really comfortable but after a while I had to "fluff" it every night because it got so packed down. It wasn't the best one on the market, but not the cheapest either.

Someone mentioned sheets for thick mattresses. When I used the feather topper I had a case for it, like a big pillow case - that on the topper and the duvet on the comforter served as our sheets. I kept a fitted sheet on the mattress and when it was time to change the sheets, I would just flip the feather topper. When both sides were soiled I washed both the cover and the fitted sheet. Sounds like a lot of hassle but it really wasn't and making the bed was a snap.

I get a catalog that specalizes in those extra fit sheets for thick mattresses, I can't remember the name and can't find an old catalog right now but one should be coming before Christmas, and I will post the name. They are very reasonable and also carry the mattress toppers that are just like a pillow top mattress. Darn I hate when I can't remember something....

You can always get good sheets at Bed Bath and Beyond, or Linens and Things - actually Target has had a 300 count set very reasonable for some time now. They do wrinkle up, though, in the dryer - best to hang them out if you can (goodness, the fresh scent alone makes up for a lot of woes...). Stay away from the percale, even if it means less wrinkes. They make pills in time (that doggone polyester) and are scratchy then. All cotton sheets have gotten VERY expensive lately, you can find them from 80 to over 400. for qs sets. They make some from Bamboo now, avail. at Target and Bed Bath and Beyond, I understand they are very soft yet cool (important!) and launder very well - also are a low-impact renewable resource. Anyone with the bamboo fabric sheets out there, give a shout out for your comparison!

judym, I haven't seen the bambbo sheets, but will look for them. I have one last trip to Linens and Things to do with my daughter before she leaves for college so I'll check them out. Sounds odd, but then again, we eat animals and that totally freaks me out. Why not sleep on bamboo? What's next?

I've never heard of bamboo sheets either. My granddaughter (5) will appreciate that! She's half Chinese and loves all things Chinese. She'd be so tickled and delighted to be sleeping on bamboo sheets...of course, they'd have to be made out of LUCKY bamboo.

Thanks Flipperjo and every else, too..for all of the good info. Sounds like Target and Linens and Things are in my future!

JJ