A mid-weight wool duvet for a cool room all year
Your bedroom suits a single mid-weight wool duvet, the middle weight most makers sell, kept on the bed through every season.
Updated .
In short: One mid-weight wool duvet in a cotton shell, aired rather than washed, can cover your cool winters and mild summers alone.
The band
| Row | Specification | Source |
|---|---|---|
| GSM | About 350 grams of wool fill per square metre, which is the medium weight in this maker's range | Woolroom, Classic Wool Duvet Medium |
| Tog band | Roughly 7 to 10 tog equivalent, given as a range because wool has no single fixed tog | Woolroom, Classic Wool Duvet Medium; Woolroom, duvet buying guide |
| Construction | Wool fill sewn into a woven cotton casing | Woolroom, Classic Wool Duvet Medium |
| Size | Match your mattress, since makers list each weight in the standard bed sizes | Woolroom, Classic Wool Duvet Medium |
| Care | Air it and spot clean it, and only machine wash it if the label says the wool was made washable | Down Under Bedding, wool bedding care guide |
Why the answers settle on this band
You landed here because your bedroom is cool in winter, 16 to 19°C by your answer, and your summers stay moderate. A winter room of 60 to 67°F matches the range Cleveland Clinic gives as the usual sleeping target for adults, which puts you in the middle band. A maker's weight guide says a medium weight can serve all year where the bedroom stays chilly in summer. With cool summers, the gap between the coldest and warmest nights is small enough for one duvet to span it.
The GSM and tog rows answer different questions. GSM is the weight of wool fill in each square metre, so a higher gsm means more wool in every part of the quilt. Tog is a heat-resistance reading taken on the finished quilt to a British Standard. Wool makers give a range instead of one tog, and one maker's buying guide calls it a "fluctuating tog equivalency" because wool breathes. That is why the tog row is a band rather than a point, and why a label's tog works better as a guide than as a promise. Our guide to converting GSM to tog explains how far any conversion can be trusted.
Airing and spot cleaning keeps the widest choice open, since most wool comforters are not made to be machine washed. Wool that can go in a machine has been treated, and one maker states that its washable fill is bathed in a chlorine solution to smooth the fibre's natural barbs. An unwashable duvet skips that step, and our guide on why most wool duvets stay out of the washing machine explains how to keep one fresh without it. If wool can itch you, the fill sits inside a woven cotton casing, as this medium duvet's listing shows, so cotton is what touches your skin.
What would shift the band
A warmer summer is the answer most likely to change this result. If the summer bedroom runs warm, a medium duvet is more than those nights need, and the band one duvet can serve gets narrower. Makers list light wool duvets for that season, and some sell a light and a medium duvet that join together with poppers for winter. Our guide to owning a lighter and a heavier duvet compares that setup with keeping one.
A colder winter pushes the other way. Cleveland Clinic treats a bedroom colder than that range as too cold for good sleep, and makers list warmer, heavier weights for rooms like that.
Trying the weight on your bed
Start with a thermometer. Keep one by your pillow for a week in winter and again in summer, and note the reading at bedtime. If winter falls below the range above or summer climbs past it, take the quiz again with those readings. On a label, look for the fill weight in gsm and the tog range, and treat the tog as a guide rather than a promise. Check the size against the mattress rather than the old duvet, and see our guide to how a wool duvet insert fits its cover if the bed is large. Then give it a few weeks. Waking warm with your feet pushed out means the weight is too heavy for the room, and waking curled up means it is too light.
Further on wool duvets
- How do you convert a wool duvet's GSM to tog?
- How is a wool duvet built, layer by layer?
- How do a wool and a down comforter differ from bedtime to morning?
Sources
Outside reading behind this wool duvet page, each entry marked with where on the page it is used.
- Woolroom, Classic Wool Duvet Medium (thewoolroom.com), used under “The band”; “Why the answers settle on this band”.
- Woolroom, duvet buying guide (thewoolroom.com), used under “The band”; “Why the answers settle on this band”.
- Down Under Bedding, wool bedding care guide (downunderbedding.com), used under “The band”; “Why the answers settle on this band”.
- Cleveland Clinic (health.clevelandclinic.org), used under “Why the answers settle on this band”; “What would shift the band”.
- maker's weight guide (revolutionwoolco.com), used under “Why the answers settle on this band”.
- British Standard (idfl.com), used under “Why the answers settle on this band”.
- bathed in a chlorine solution (thewoolroom.com), used under “Why the answers settle on this band”; “What would shift the band”.
- join together with poppers (thewoolroom.com), used under “What would shift the band”.
- warmer, heavier weights (thewoolroom.com), used under “What would shift the band”.