What do you sleep under?

[jducoeur]

One thing I've been noticing on our current trip is the different assumptions about how a bed gets covered.

In the US, you typically have (bottom to top):

• Boxspring
• Mattress
• Fitted bottom sheet
• Top sheet
• Blanket
• Quilt

The three top layers are optional, and you use whatever makes sense for the weather.

In Europe (at least, most of the places I've traveled, both hotels and AirBnBs/VRBOs), the custom seems to typically be to just have a duvet on top, and that keeps throwing me for a loop.

I mean, I kind of understand the appeal: when I was growing up, I invariably just used a quilt, year-round. I didn't learn The Way of the Hospital Corner until after getting married.

But I'm coming to the opinion that I like the American norm better, because it's more modular. In winter, I'll have all three pulled up; in summer, I'll just be using the top sheet. Right now on our trip, I'm finding the duvet typically just a little bit warmer than I want, at least during part of the night.

No idea whether I'm typical or weird this way, but the difference has been catching my attention.

(Tangent: posts of more than 500 characters are going here, but short microblog-length entries about our vacation are going on my Mastodon, using the same #europe2024 tag as here.)

Comments

[matildalucet]

I have toyed with switching us to two duvets so we each can hog exactly one; I'm a tad concerned that I might try to take both in my sleep. (Sleeping Me is inconsiderate and appears to like to wrap bedding completely around my body in the winter, regardless of who else thinks they're sharing.) OTOH, I'm not sure I'm up for wrestling a duvet cover on and off with any frequency, and once the sheets/blankets/quilts are changed, it takes me less than a minute to make the bed up.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, while I prefer the top-sheet in general, one of the interesting details of our hotel in Copenhagen was that they gave us individual duvets. Which was then spoiled by the fact that they, for no reason I can fathom, made the bed with the duvets folded sideways on the bed, so it took us ages to figure out how the heck to get into bed...