How often should you change your bed linens? It’s important to keep your bedroom clean in order to get a good night’s sleep. This is due to the fact that the mites, bugs or bacteria that like to hang out in our bed linens can cause allergies or skin irritations that keep us awake at night.
In addition to washing your bed linens regularly, it's of course also important to wash your duvet and air out your mattress. But what exactly do we mean by “changing your duvet cover regularly” mean? In this article, we answer the question of “how often to change bed linens” and give you a few tips on how you can improve your sleep quality in the long term.
Why should you change out your duvet cover?
At first glance, your bed linens may still look as good after a few weeks as they did when you first put them on your bed. The problem is that mites and bacteria are not visible to the naked eye and only become visible under a microscope.
As we spend several hours in bed every night, we should make sure that our mattress and bed linen are kept as clean as possible. At night, we release one to two litres of sweat on average; in the summer, this number can be even higher. After about ten years and 30,000 hours of sleep, our mattress will have absorbed up to 1,800 litres of sweat.
How often your bed linens should be changed depends on how much you tend to sweat in your sleep, your sleeping habits and how warm or cold it is at night.
Mites in your bed linens
Mattresses and duvets are often considered the perfect breeding ground for mites, with the reason for this being the fact that mites love the dampness and warmth our beds provide them. There can be around 1.5 million mites in our beds; exposure to their faeces is thought to be one of the main causes of house dust allergies. Another reason why our beds are so attractive to mites is their diet, which consists mainly of dead skin cells. Huge quantities of these are found in our beds and bed linens.
To reduce the number of mites in your bed, you should air your bed properly every morning after you wake up. Fresh air can help kill mites living in the mattress and covers. Likewise, extreme heat or cold are fatal to dust mites. This is why you should wash your duvet covers and cuddly toys in the washing machine at 60 degrees. You can also put pillows or cuddly toys in the freezer for 24 hours, because mites cannot survive this extreme temperature. Finally, you might consider whether anti-mite bedding is a good fit for you.
Bedbugs
Bedbugs can multiply unnoticed in the bedroom for a long time and are usually only noticed when their bite marks appear on their victim’s body. Bed bugs are active at night, hiding behind wallpaper or heating pipes during the day. Only one female bed bug by herself can cause an entire infestation, as she can bear up to 300 offspring. Although bedbugs can’t severely harm our health, we should nonetheless do our best to keep them from our bedrooms.
Typically, we only notice a bedbug’s bite after a few days. In the worst case, they can cause allergic reactions, such as blisters. Bedbugs don’t transmit diseases themselves, but they can bite several times and cause severe itching. Like mites, bedbugs can be killed with the help of intense heat or cold. However, you should always seek professional help in case of an infestation, as these pests breed very quickly and can only be eradicated with industrial-level products.
How often should you change your bed linens?
In general, you should change your bed linens every two to three weeks. Those who sweat a lot at night or are ill should change their sheets once a week. In addition, making the switch from winter to summer bed linens can also help reduce night sweats.
Each time you change your bed linens, you should make sure that you wash them. The temperature at which you wash them depends on the material the covers are made of, so you should always make sure to read the washing instructions first. Cotton bed linen, such as beaver, terry or pure cotton should be washed at 60 degrees. Linen can be washed at 40 degrees in the gentle wash programme. The maximum temperature at which silk should be washed is 60 degrees. Be sure to use a fine or silk detergent on silk; heavy-duty detergent should never be used. Microfibre can be washed at 60 degrees, just like cotton.
How your sleeping habits affect your bed linens
Some people prefer to sleep undressed at night. In this case, your bed linens are in direct contact with your skin, thereby absorbing even more sweat. As a nude sleeper, you might ask yourself “how often should I change my sheets?” In this case, you should change your bed linens every week to keep them as clean as possible.
You should change your bedding weekly if you are allergic to house dust, if you sleep in the same bed with your pet or are a smoker. Likewise, if you like to eat your breakfast in bed, you should also change your bed linens more often.
For babies, the bedding should be changed every week or even more often. If you air your bed out in the morning, it should be left unmade at first, because mites love made-up beds. Made beds offer a better breeding ground than unmade beds. If the bedding is shaken out, the mites will be moved down and buried under the blanket. These are perfect conditions for mites to reproduce undisturbed in enclosed and dark rooms.
It's best to fold back the blanket in the morning and leave it unfolded. This is the best way to dry out your bedding. When exposed to plenty of light and air, mites dry out and die.
Tips for better sleep:
- When buying your bed linens, make sure that the fabrics are breathable and comfortable to sleep in. If fabrics made from purely natural materials aren’t an option, fabrics with a high proportion of natural fibres are the next-best choice.
- Choosing a duvet with the right thermal class for you can also help you avoid overheating and excessive sweating at night.
- Air out your bedroom daily
- Before going to sleep, you should air out your bedroom again, or you can sleep with the windows open.
- You should make sure that your mattress doesn’t retain moisture. Spring mattresses are particularly suitable here.
Natural fabrics for better sleep at Zizzz
Natural fabrics such as pure cotton, satin or percale make particularly good duvet covers, bed sheets and pillowcass, as they can absorb moisture and regulate body temperature. We not only offer duvet covers made of percale, silk and cotton, but also bed sheets and pillowcases.