Heartbreak Hotel Sheets
Hotel sheets --They're supposed to offer the same sleep experience you enjoyed at the finest hotels, where you’ve spent anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to several month’s of mortgage payments. Don’t be tricked into thinking you’re buying the sheets you enjoyed at an expensive hotel! Aside from the superficial hem treatment -- two or three parallel rows of white or pastel piping – “hotel sheets” purchased from brick-and-mortar or Internet retailers are not the same as a luxury hotel's. If you’re buying a flat and fitted sheet in 100% cotton, you're not buying genuine but, instead “Heartbreak Hotel” sheets.
That enigmatic feel
First: genuine hotel sheets are not 100% cotton! Rather, they are a blend of 60/40 cotton and polyester. The polyester content ensures genuine hotel sheets are no-iron -- and I don't mean merely “wrinkle resistant” or “wrinkle-free”! Hotels require sheets that don’t wrinkle after hundreds of wash and dry cycles. Cotton-polyester blends can also endure months of daily washing in extremely high temperatures. Like steel, which lasts forever, these sheets won't tear, crease or rip when laundered in freight-car-size laundering machines. Genuine hotel sheets require polyester! They are never 100% cotton. See for yourself during your next hotel stay: the sew-in label will indicate cotton-polyester blends.
Omitted fitted!
Second: you’ll never find contoured corners or elastic in a genuine hotel sheets. Yes, hotels don’t use fitted sheets! The reason? Elastic used in the corners of regular fitted sheets would deteriorate after weeks of daily, high-temperature laundering. Eliminating fitted sheets also reduces complexity: instead of separate flat and fitted sheets, hotel sheets are interchangeable. Bottom sheets are tightly-tucked flat sheets with "hospital corners" to keep them taut and non-bunchy. This adds flexibility, simplicity and efficiency while reducing a hotel’s sheet inventory by half. Can you copy hotel sheets at home? You could use two flat sheets but practically every poly-cotton sheet is sold in a set. You'd need to buy two sets and you'd end up with unused fitted sheets and a very high cost.
Why are genuine hotel sheets so comfy? Isn’t 100% cotton supposed to give a superior sleep experience? After all, genuine hotel sheets are made from a polyester blend and have been washed hundreds of times! Part of the hotel experience comes from the bed-making, where the sheets are tucked in so tight you can barely climb inside. Hotel sheets seem practically nailed into the bed when you try to get in!
Can we bring the hotel experience home?
But there's more to the exceptional comfort of genuine hotel sheets then the making of beds. Genuine hotel sheets retain a crisp, well-made feel that's impossible to replicate at home. Only objective scientific tests of hotel sheets will solve this mystery! Perfect Linens will soon analyze sheets from the country’s most popular hotels. Very soon we will identify the source of that exceptional feel you get from genuine hotel sheets. Sign up for an upcoming e-book, “Truth in Textiles: Hotel Sheets” where we’ll tell you how each hotel's sheets feel to the touch… and where you can buy sheets that will give you that “genuine hotel sheet sleep experience” -- even when you’re sleeping at home.
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