Last night at eleven the porch thermometer still read seventy-nine, the air felt like a damp washcloth, and Pepper had given up on the dog bed entirely to sprawl on the cool hardwood by our closet door. I lay there under a sheet with the ceiling fan going, thinking that the beagle had the right idea, and decided it was time to finish the summer bedding switch I had started in May and then forgotten about.
Our bedroom is at the back corner of the house, and it holds the day's heat longer than the rest of the rooms. We already did the big things over the last year: blackout curtains went up in all the bedrooms last summer, and the ducts in the attic were sealed last July. Those helped more than anything I'm about to describe. But how a bed feels at midnight is its own question, and that comes down to fabric.
The swaps that made a real difference
1. Percale and linen instead of sateen
For years we slept on a set of sateen sheets someone gave us as a wedding gift. They are lovely in January. In June they feel like sleeping inside a raincoat. Sateen is woven to be smooth and dense, which also means it holds warmth against your skin.
I now rotate between a cotton percale set, which is crisp and matte, and a linen set that I saved for over a couple of months. The linen took several washes to soften and still wrinkles the minute you look at it. I've made peace with that. It dries fast, it never feels clammy, and on humid nights that is everything.
2. A cotton coverlet instead of the duvet
The duvet goes into a storage bag on the top shelf of the hall closet from late May to October. In its place is a lightweight cotton coverlet folded at the foot of the bed. Most nights we only pull it up around four in the morning, when the air finally cools down a few degrees.
3. The mattress topper came off
This was the one that surprised me. We had a memory foam topper on the bed, and I hadn't noticed how much heat it held until I took it off on a whim. The first night without it, the bed felt firmer and noticeably cooler. It's rolled up and leaning in the corner of the closet now, waiting for November.
4. Linen pillowcases, even with cotton sheets
If you only change one thing, change the pillowcases. Your face is where you feel the heat first. I bought two linen pillowcases by themselves before I committed to the full set, and they were the reason I decided the set was worth it.
The ones that didn't matter much
- "Cooling" pillows. We tried one with a gel layer. It felt cold for about ten minutes and then felt exactly like a pillow.
- A bamboo throw. Soft, pretty, and in practice just one more thing on the floor by morning.
- Freezing the sheets. Lila's idea, from a library book. It was fun for her and lasted about four minutes. She is seven now and very committed to experiments, so I let her keep notes on it.
Small habits that go with the fabric
Changing the bedding helps most when the room isn't already a sauna by bedtime. A few habits we keep through the summer:
- The blackout curtains stay closed from about noon on, since that side of the house gets the late sun.
- The ceiling fan runs counterclockwise, on medium, and only while someone is in the room.
- I make the bed loosely, with the top sheet folded back, so it isn't trapping the day's warmth.
- Sheets get washed weekly in summer and dried on the line when the pollen is done for the year, which it mostly is by now.
We also put in a new thermostat this month, which I'll write about once we've lived with it through a full bill cycle. For now I'll just say that cooler fabric means I'm less tempted to fiddle with it at night.
A note on cost
None of this has to happen at once. The pillowcases were about $30 for the pair. The percale set was around $60 on sale. The linen set was the splurge, closer to $140, and I bought it in pieces as I found them discounted. The coverlet came from a thrift store for $12 and needed a single wash. Everything else was free: taking something off the bed instead of adding something to it.
Tonight the forecast says seventy-eight at midnight and a chance of a thunderstorm, which around here never cools anything off as much as you'd hope. But the linen is on, the duvet is on the top shelf, and Pepper may yet decide to come back to her own bed.
