What is Thread Count and Does a High Thread Count Matter for Bedding?

We all love a little bit of luxury when we sink into our beds at night. One of life’s lovely little quirks is climbing into freshly changed, rich, luxury bedding.

But what makes good bed linen? And what’s thread count go to do with it?

What is Thread Count?

A little bit of lingo you may have heard a lot when shopping around for luxury linen, “thread count,” is definitely something to watch when buying bedding.

But what is it?

Technically speaking (bear with us, it does get less technical), “thread count” is the number of threads per square inch of fabric. So if you’re looking at a 500 thread count bedding set like one of ours, this means there would be 250 threads woven horizontally and 250 vertically woven threads in each square inch.

So that’s what it means. But what does it matter?

Well, a higher thread count is often associated with stronger weave. But the quality of the cotton is a massively important factor in this as well. Single ply cotton sheets with a 500 thread count will mean a strong piece of fabric with a soft finish.

What Thread Count Do I Need?

Once you get to thread counts over 400, you get into real luxury cotton bedding. If you start to get closer to 1,000 it’s always worth checking this is 1000 based on single ply cotton (rather than a marketing figure embellished by the use of multi ply and lower quality cotton).

In reality, we’ve found 500 to be a great number providing the cotton is the right quality. And that’s why we chose this thread count for our own bedding.

How Can I Tell The Thread Count?

Nobody’s expecting you to count threads with a magnifying glass! Generally speaking, retailers will include details of the thread count on pure cotton bedding as it is an important piece of information.

If the information isn’t there, then you can always contact a retailer and find out.

And of course, it’s always a good idea to check the retailer’s’ reviews to ensure real life customers are satisfied with the quality too. And we’re not just saying that because our customers love our bedding either. Honest!

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