David Roberts tweets a lot, and is pretty entertaining and informative on various subjects, but he is bizarrely wrong on this matter (as to whether top sheets are useful, or not.) You could only conceivably hold the view that a quilt cover alone is better if you lived in a permanently cold bedroom. In Brisbane, everyone probably spends 6 months of every year sleeping just under a sheet.
The innovation that I want to see in top sheets for double, queen or king sized beds is to have them made so that there is a lengthwise split in the middle from the top down to about 60 cm from the bottom edge, and the two halves overlap by about 30cm. This would allow one person to use their side to cover their body and (say - because this is how I sleep) pull the top over their head without pulling off the other half from their partner's body. Sure, you could achieve this by just putting two single sheets on the bed, but the precise arrangement doing that is always going to be fiddly.
Perhaps I should check if this sheet design has been patented.
Update: gawd - Google patent search shows many, many patents related to sheets. One is about half way to my suggestion, but the split should be longer. A lot of people have thought about sheets over the years...
Same for Sydanee except for females
ReplyDeleteNah the bit in the middle is negotiable, it's the bit at the side that causes the real problems when the other side pulls the blankets, and all of a sudden your arm or leg or whatever is sticking out in the air. I don't think your sheet plan will fix that.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand:
ReplyDelete"World peace achieved! Amazing design in bed sheet allows couples to have a better sleep together in the same bed. Feminists and men's rights activists around the world resign en masse, thanking a guy called Steve for his brilliant advance in bedsheet technology...."
I think the problem you note is actually the problem I am trying to address. (Partner rolls over, pulling sheet with them, leaving bits of you exposed on the side.) If you were just sleeping under sheets, my idea would surely help; if under a blanket, yes, the pull of a blanket may also drag the other side's split sheet a bit, but it might still work out easier to secure against the drag.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, you could apply the same split design to the blanket too - especially to cotton blankets. On top of both could be joint cover - to prevent unexpected viewers realising that although you are in the same bed, you're wrapped up in more-or-less individual sheet and blanket cocoons. People are probably going to view that as unromantic...:)