Small double beds need season-appropriate and right-size bedding to ensure the most comfortable night’s sleep, whether you’re making a guest bed or your own.
The good news is that high-quality bedding doesn’t cost the earth, and you can usually find fantastic deals on duvets, pillows, and bedding sets.
Of course, the trouble lies in figuring out the best bedding and what you should buy to maximise your comfort and bedroom style.
Join us below for tips to achieve just that.
Bedding sets for double bed
Your bedding set will dictate the style of your bed and how it feels.
- Materials
100% organic cotton, 100% cotton, and 100% Egyptian cotton are the best materials for bedding sets. They are soft, wash well, and get better with age, whereas polyester bedding is scratchy and never softens.
Brushed cotton is another good winter option, but if you crave something lighter, linen and silk are good options, albeit for a higher price.
Duvets for a small double bed
Your small double duvet should be seasonal with a filling you like the feel of.
- Seasons
Seasonal duvets include all-season, summer, and winter. All-season duvets are the ‘one duvet to rule them all’ with a 10.5 tog rating. They are a happy medium but can struggle to keep you cool or warm in extreme temperatures.
Most people do better with a summer and a duvet. Summer duvets are 4.5 togs, providing around three times the warmth of a sheet. Winter duvets are 13.5 togs or above, giving you a thick, extremely warm duvet for freezing nights.
- Fillings
The most popular duvet fillings you can get are hollowfibre, chopped microfibre (feels like down), down + feather, and wool.
The synthetic fillings are hollowfibre and chopped microfibre. These are polyester derivatives – spun yarn for hollowfibre and cloth for chopped microfibre. These fillings are warm, lofty, hypoallergenic, and affordable.
Wool duvets and down + feather are natural fillings. Although they have animal cruelty associations, modern versions have strict processing controls that ensure the animals that make the materials are well cared for.
Pillows for a small double bed
Your pillow should not come as an afterthought – after all, it’s the only thing that supports your head to keep your spine in the best position.
Pictured: (Pair) Silentnight Quilted Duck Feather Pillows, Priced £64.99 from Bedstar.
- Firmness
Pillows come in soft, medium, medium-firm, and firm.
Soft pillows are useless except for front sleepers – if you’re a front sleeper, one soft pillow will do, or you can sleep with no pillow.
Medium pillows are too firm for front sleepers and too soft for back and side sleepers – however, you can double up with two pillows to make them suitable. Sleeping with two pillows is fine, provided you are comfy.
Medium-firm pillows are best for back sleepers because they allow some compression without being like rocks. Firm pillows are best for side sleepers because they keep your head in a parallel position to your upper back.
- Fillings
The best filling for a pillow is memory or latex foam.
Latex foam is firm and responsive, meaning it bounces back immediately and won’t have any sagging even after thousands of hours of sleep – look for a pillow with a medium-firm rating and holes for breathability (or latex gel for cooling).
Memory foam is not a responsive material, so it retains its shape and moulds to your head, making it perfect for side sleepers and those wanting a hugging feel.
You can also get hollowfibre pillows, which are cheap and cheerful, and down and feather ones, which are expensive but very airy. The downside to down and feather pillows is they can feel scratchy, especially when the feathers stick out.