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Comment by bhaney | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't even aware duvets were still used outside of hotels. You guys don't just have sheets and a regular blanket on your bed? Is it a cultural/regional thing? They seem very annoying to deal with and I've never found them to be particularly comfortable, so I'm surprised so many people here seem to use them.

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You can have a much higher quality material for both inside and outside, and washing the cover is easier than a full comforter. You wash the inside more rarely with a duvet cover. You can also have one inside and many covers for variety of styles during seasons without having an entire room of the house for storing comforters

Vacuum bags are good for storing that kind of stuff compactly. My duvet and duvet covers semi-permanently live in one! The only kind of blanket I’ve found that is not too warm is gauze.

Haha amazing, I’ve now just discovered that some places don’t use duvets. I thought (naively) that it was worldwide…

Exactly, living in Europe, I've literally encountered the sheet+blanket combination for the first time a week ago, in a hotel. Duvets with covers ARE the norm.

Wait… you don’t use a sheet under a duvet? What do you wrap under yourself? Not the duvet, that’d be too thick, surely.

A sheet covering the mattress, then we lying on top, then the duvet covering us to varying degrees of area and precision depending on temperature and activity while asleep. My son snakes over and under the duvet several times along his body.

“Fitted sheet” (sheet with elastic on the corners, a little smaller than a same-nominal-size sheet) that covers the mattress, regular sheet, optional light blanket, comforter, optional quilt or something like that if it’s very cold. That’s standard bedding around here (US Midwest). This duvet-only (not counting mattress cover) stuff is wild to me. May have to try it.

With just one quadruple-thick blanket ('duvet') you are either broiling or freezing, with no ability to peel back or add just one layer at a time. Can't understand how anyone can be comfortable with that.

I usually just stick my leg out. Works every time. Maybe it's more a question about central heating? The temperature in my flat is in same 3-5 degree range most time of the year, so I only had to choose right duvet once.

I meant a second sheet between you and a duvet. Ofc there is another one covering the matress.

What? Heresy! ;)

The duvet cover is, in effect, the second sheet of which you speak ;)

Technically it is, but the ux is very different :)

I think it's regional. Growing up in the western USA, I never saw a duvet with a removable cover. Living in Japan/Korea, I've never seen people use the sheets+blanket arrangement in the home.

BTW, I first heard the word "duvet" as a teenager watching British comedy on PBS. I had to look it up in the dictionary.

Grew up in the Midwest. Unusual in my family and circles. I’ve known what they are since some time in my teens (there’s… a chance the film Fight Club’s actually the first time I both encountered the word and put together some idea of what it specifically meant, though I’d heard it before and thought it was just a fancy word for “comforter”) but we never had any, I’ve never put a cover on one, and I’ve never seen someone putting a cover on one.

Duvets are really warm, good in winter for cold houses without good insulation. Often they're as warm as three or four or even five woolen blankets, but much lighter. Four blankets on top of you is heavy.

I find them annoying in hotels though, where the rooms are usually pretty warm. They use relatively thin inners but they're still usually way too hot for the conditions.

My absolute favorite items in this world are my down comforters and duvets. I have a thick one for winter and a thin one for summer. Sometimes I have them both on the bed and use one as a snuggle blanket. Every night when I crawl in bed it is a form of catharsis like a cat making biscuits.

Most of the people I knew in Australia 10 years ago had duvets. I never even knew what a duvet was until I went to Australia. Moved back to the US and got one. I can only think of one other person I know here who has a duvet

Also we call them doonas.

Haha yeah I knew it as a doona before I knew it as a duvet.

What do others use then?

A comforter. It's like a duvet except you can't take the cover off.

How do you wash it then? Seems like quite a chore to wash something like that every week?

I've never seen anyone using a sheet and blanket to be honest. In Europe at least, duvet is the obly thing people have.

I grew up with sheets and blankets in the UK. Can't beat that tucked in feeling.

Depends on which part of Europe. In Spain, duvets weren't even a thing in the 80s, at least as far as I know. Everyone used sheets and blankets and/or conforters. The first time I met duvets was in foreign hotels, later Spanish hotels started using them too, and even later, laypeople started using them.

They quickly gained traction (Ikea probably had a big role there) and now both alternatives are common, although I'd say maybe duvets are already the most common.

The Spanish words for duvet and duvet cover (edredón nórdico, funda nórdica) are a testament of the fact that they used to be a foreign thing, here associated (I don't know if accurately or not) with the north of Europe.

I take it you're in a warmer climate, a regular blanket is insufficient for many months of a year here. Like growing up, I had multiple blankets and a duvet, and had similar in some less well insulated houses I've lived in. My current house is better insulated, so a duvet on its own is generally sufficient.

I don't know what you consider to be a warmer climate, but I'm in the midwest US and it goes from around -10°F to 110°F here throughout the year. The temperature outside has pretty much nothing to do with my choice of bedding though, because it's always within 1° of 67°F inside my home unless my HVAC system is broken.

I know a lot of places aren't as into complete climate control as we are around here, so it makes sense that those places would have different priorities when making bedding choices, now that I think about it. Thanks for sharing.

Here in scotland, uk, in winter, the interior temp of my house will drop to 16 or 17°C overnight, from its regular temp of 20/21°C during the day when the heating is on.

Outside temperature range round here is maybe -6°C to 24°C

I don't know what standards the RoW uses, but we have a TOG rating here for our duvets ... we have a 4 for summer, and 13 for winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tog_(unit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Scotland#Temperatur...

Hah, this is definitely a cultural thing. Except that I’ve visited the US, I wouldn’t even be aware that blankets were still a thing; when I was a kid in the 90s duvets had already largely taken over (Ireland is a blanket -> duvet country).

Someone should make a map colour coded with this.

I didn't know what a duvet was until I was an adult. Grew up with sheets and quilts in Appalachia.

There's some articles that discuss this switch. It may be a generational preference.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-millennials-aren-apos-t-...

That's funny, hotels are the only places where I see sheets and blanked being used.

None of the apartments I've lived in for the past few years have had a washer large enough to wash a king-sized comforter, so I use a duvet instead.

It’s pretty common in the UK. Maybe to do with the colder climate.

I didn't even know duvets were used in hotels. But the OP post did make me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJz8tVN7fg

Very common in Europe

Dude, a toasty hot duvet in a freezing cold bedroom far in the northern hemisphere is something you're missing out on.

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