Why you should trust us
As part of our research for this guide, we interviewed Shannon Maher, an assistant professor in the Home Products Development department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and former product designer for The Company Store.
She helped us with our testing strategy and gave us useful information
on bedding fibers and construction. We then looked closely at customer
reviews on various department store and home bedding sites.
As a sleep writer at Wirecutter, I’ve written many guides, including those about blankets, flannel sheets, and robes. I’m a quilter and quilt designer with more than a decade of experience making, washing, and using blankets and other bedding. I know what well-made bedding should look and feel like, and I know how to create a cozy, comfortable bed.
As a sleep writer at Wirecutter, I’ve written many guides, including those about blankets, flannel sheets, and robes. I’m a quilter and quilt designer with more than a decade of experience making, washing, and using blankets and other bedding. I know what well-made bedding should look and feel like, and I know how to create a cozy, comfortable bed.
Duvet vs. comforter
If you’re looking to cover your down or down-alternative comforter,
you may be confused by the term “duvet cover.” Technically, a comforter
is a covering that’s sewn shut, usually comes in a pattern or color,
and doesn’t require a cover—think bed-in-a-bag bed toppers. A duvet is
plain, usually white, and often filled with down. It’s inserted into a
duvet cover (which can be easily washed) to keep it clean. But
“comforter” and “duvet” are generally used interchangeably in the US,
according to FIT’s Shannon Maher. Regardless of what you call your down
or alt-down blanket, you should encase it in a duvet cover.
Consider fabrics before choosing a duvet cover
Many of the duvet covers we recommend are made from cotton sateen
or percale sheeting fabrics. It’s worth considering which type you like
before deciding on a cover (or sheets, for that matter). As we explain in our guide to cotton sheets,
sateen fabric has a silky/slinky quality that will appeal to people who
love supersoft textures. Percale is crisper, cooler, and has a slightly
rougher texture. One is not better than the other, it’s more about your
personal preference.
While most people are familiar with the feel of percale and sateen sheets (even if they don’t know them by name), linen is a less common bedding fabric. The coarser texture can be polarizing—some people adore it, others find it too scratchy. If you don’t mind texture or wrinkles (linen will never stay smooth unless you iron it), you may like linen; it’s one of the most breathable fabrics we’ve tested, and great for both summer and winter use. Flannel, on the other hand, is what you’ll want for frigid winter nights. If you tend to overheat, though, this fabric may be too warm.
While most people are familiar with the feel of percale and sateen sheets (even if they don’t know them by name), linen is a less common bedding fabric. The coarser texture can be polarizing—some people adore it, others find it too scratchy. If you don’t mind texture or wrinkles (linen will never stay smooth unless you iron it), you may like linen; it’s one of the most breathable fabrics we’ve tested, and great for both summer and winter use. Flannel, on the other hand, is what you’ll want for frigid winter nights. If you tend to overheat, though, this fabric may be too warm.
The warmest, coziest cover: L.L.Bean Ultrasoft Comfort Flannel Comforter Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: On super cold nights, L.L.Bean’s Ultrasoft Comfort Flannel Comforter Cover will boost the warmth of your bedding and, unlike sliding between icy percale sheets, the fleecy fabric will warm up your toes quicker than any other cover we tried. Made from long-staple Portuguese cotton flannel, the Ultrasoft is one of the softest and warmest covers on this list. It’s made from the same material as our favorite flannel sheets, which were a clear winner for their plushness, coziness, and reasonable price. We’ve been long-term testing the sheets for two years, and they get softer with every wash. The cover was the favorite of my dog, Hamilton, who looked crushed when it was time to swap it out during testing.
Next to our budget pick from IKEA, the Ultrasoft is the most affordable cover on our list. It comes in eight solid colors—plus check, stripe, windowpane, floral, and tree prints—which is more options than many flannel covers we researched. L.L.Bean’s one-year return policy is among the most generous we’ve found.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: The corner ties—which are supposed to hold the duvet in place—are the weakest of any we tested. They began to rip loose from the cover with just a little shaking and tugging. The flannel itself is so good that we think it’s worth adding a few extra stitches yourself or getting some duvet clips—padded fasteners that secure the corners of your duvet and cover together. Because of the way the ties are sewn in, the corners on this cover aren’t perfectly square and crisp, but for a fluffy winter duvet, we didn’t mind the rounded corners. We also found the colors and prints a little dull—we wish they were more modern.
Sizes: twin, full, queen, king
Material: cotton
Colors: eight solids and five prints
A crisp cover in modern prints: Brooklinen Classic Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: Brooklinen is one of few bedding brands we’ve tested that offers prints, and they’re the most modern prints we’ve seen. The Brooklinen Classic Duvet Cover comes in 15 colors and prints that are sophisticated—no cute animals or fruit here—but still fun. The prints tend to change frequently (as they did while we were working on this guide–the matchstick model we photographed is no longer available), but we’ve tested three different Brooklinen prints, and we’ve liked them all better than the homey ones offered by L.L.Bean. We’ve recommended the solid version of this cover since 2016, and during two years of long-term testing we’ve been impressed with its overall construction. It’s still one of the softest, most comfortable, and sturdiest duvet covers we’ve tried.
The Classic Duvet Cover is made of the same smooth, long-staple percale fabric as Brooklinen’s Classic Sheets, and both are Oeko-Tex certified. Like the sheeting you’d find in a nice hotel, the fabric feels pleasantly cool and crisp. It’s a perfect mid-weight cover—lighter and softer than the durable L.L.Bean 280-Thread-Count Pima Cotton Percale but sturdier than the delicate Authenticity 50 (and, also, slightly less soft).
Flaws but not dealbreakers: It looks a little more rumpled out of the wash than the L.L.Bean percale, but the wrinkles are minimal overall. Also, the cover we tested in 2016 was made with long-staple Egyptian cotton, but now Brooklinen’s site simply says “long-staple cotton.” It’s hard to feel the differences between a new cover and one that’s been washed and used for several years, so we’ll have to long-term test the new one to see if it’s as durable.
Sizes: twin, full/queen, king/California king
Material: cotton
Colors: seven solids and eight prints
A hard-wearing percale cover: L.L.Bean 280-Thread-Count Pima Cotton Percale Comforter Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: If you have small kids or pets in the house, we recommend the L.L.Bean 280-Thread-Count Pima Cotton Percale Comforter Cover. This cover is made with the same fabric as our top-pick percale sheets, which we’ve been testing and recommending for four years. We’ve tried two of these covers, and the fabric, seams, and button closures survived our shake tests, my dog’s playful chewing and dirty feet, and lots of abuse from my kiddo (including spilled chocolate milk). The covers still look great after frequent washings. We doubt that some of the more delicate covers we’ve tried would hold up as well.
Percale isn’t as soft as sateen (like our pick from Cuddledown), and the L.L.Bean cover is denser and feels crisper than the other percales we recommend here, but we’ve still found that it’s cool to sleep under. It barely wrinkles out of the dryer (only the Cuddledown and the Restoration Hardware percale wrinkled less), and whatever rumples it had smoothed out easily on the bed.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: The ties were the weakest of any we tested—one tore free of the cover during our shake tests. Although L.L.Bean does offer eight colors and three varied prints, we wish they were more modern. Still, in 2018 we tested the sunny yellow and loved how it brightened the room, so it’s possible to find a color to love here.
Sizes: twin, full, queen, king
Material: cotton
Colors: eight solid colors and three prints
Colorful, silky sateen: Cuddledown 400 Thread Count Sateen Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: The sumptuous Cuddledown 400 Thread Count Sateen Duvet Cover makes it easy to create a luxe-looking bed—its slinky, subtle sheen looks more elegant than far pricier fabrics, and it’s one of the softest covers on this list. Only our splurge pick from Restoration Hardware is as soft (but not as silky), and it also costs more than twice the price. The Cuddledown is made with the same fabric as our upgrade sateen sheets pick—the satin weave is smoother and silkier than percale, and wrinkles less than any other cover on this list. We’ve been testing the sateen sheets for years, and the fabric doesn’t disappoint. Cuddledown’s fabric even held its own against $1,000 luxury Italian sateen sheets we recently tested.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: Because sateen packs more threads into its weave than percale, it’s also heavier. This is one of the weightiest covers on our list, which some sleepers prefer, but if you have a fluffy, light duvet (like our upgrade pick from Feathered Friends), this cover may weigh it down. Be aware that the color choices on the website aren’t photographed, they’re Photoshopped, so they look flat and lifeless—they’re much more vibrant in person.
Sizes: twin, full, queen, king, queen oversized, king oversized
Material: cotton
Colors: 23 solids
A light-as-air, American-made percale cover: Authenticity 50 A50 Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: If bedding often feels too heavy on your body, the Authenticity 50 A50 Duvet Cover will help minimize the extra pounds. We recommend the A50 sheets, a very lightweight percale, in our guide to the best sheets for summer because they’re light, breathable, and sturdily constructed. Some of our duvet cover picks, like the L.L.Bean flannel and the Cultiver linen, weigh more than 5 pounds before you add the insert. The Brooklinen and Restoration Hardware covers, two other lightweight options, each weigh about 3 pounds. The A50 cover weighs just 2 pounds (1 pound, 15.9 ounces by our scale), and it’s still comfortable and warm to sleep under during moderately cold nights.
We also appreciate Authenticity 50 because everything on this cover, from the buttons to the corner ties, is made in the United States. The fabric is Supima cotton, the highest-quality long-staple American-grown cotton available, and the covers and sheets are made in the company’s South Carolina factory (we were getting a cover for testing just as Hurricane Florence was set to arrive—the company’s staff and facilities were thankfully all unharmed). It’s a high-quality cover, homegrown.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: Because the cover is so light, it may not be as durable or as warm as others on this list, but the majority of the warmth comes from your duvet anyway. We’re long-term testing this fabric and will provide an update on durability. If you prefer crisp hotel-like bedding, this isn’t it—the fabric is softer than the other percale covers from L.L.Bean and Brooklinen. And, it comes in only three colors, one of the smallest selections of all our picks.
Sizes: twin/twin XL, full/queen, king/California king
Material: cotton
Colors: white, gray, light blue
A luxurious linen cover: Cultiver Linen Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: If you love the breathable feel, coarse texture, and casual look of linen (it wrinkles much more than cotton), you’ll love Cultiver’s Linen Duvet Cover. It’s made with some of the best linen we’ve tested—it’s supersoft and smooth, and doesn’t seem to have the durability issues of other linen bedding we’ve tried. The cover is moderately priced for such high-quality fabric, and it comes in 17 colors and prints. Linen is the best fabric to have on your skin if you tend to overheat, and this cover is breathable but warm.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: Only 12 of the solids are made of the linen weave we tested and recommend for linen sheets (an undisclosed difference for the sheets, too, that we found while testing for this guide). The indigo, indigo stripe, ash, and pinstripe duvet covers and sheets are all woven to feel more like a chambray (similar to denim, but lighter), and they are rougher, stiffer, and a bit heavier. The natural color, which is mentioned on the company’s website, is undyed and also has more texture. We recommend only the softer linen in the remaining 12 colors, and the fact that Cultiver doesn’t disclose that difference on its website is a problem. However, we’ve tested enough linen to know how hard it is to find good linen bedding that lasts (one of our editors has used Cultiver’s linen sheets for two years now with no problems) so we think the 12 colors in the original weave still deserve our recommendation. Because it’s an investment, you can (and should) order color swatches if you’re not completely sure about the color and texture. This cover also isn’t available in a twin size.
Sizes: queen, king
Material: linen
Colors: 15 solids and two stripe prints
The best budget linen: IKEA Puderviva
Budget pick
Why it’s great: The Cultiver linen cover we recommend is softer, but IKEA’s Puderviva cover is fantastic for its price. It’s smoother than other pricier linen we’ve tested and it’s leaps and bounds better overall than our other budget contender, IKEA’s Dvala, a stiff cotton percale that wrinkled to the point of frustration. This cover is a little more expensive, but it’s worth it if you want to try linen bedding or just need to pick up something well-made but affordable for your guest room. Although the Puderviva did wrinkle (it’s linen, after all), it didn’t have immovable creases that an iron or steamer would struggle with, and it wrinkles less than the chambray-style Cultiver cover we tested.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: It’s not very soft, and certainly rougher than our more expensive Cultiver linen pick, so we recommend layering this cover over a cotton top sheet, instead of using it against your skin.
Sizes: twin, full/queen, king
Material: linen
Colors: white, natural, and dark gray
A reversible cover: Casper Cool Supima Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: Moods change. Casper’s Cool Supima Duvet Cover is the only reversible cover on our list, so if you don’t want the same color all the time, you can flip your duvet for a whole new look. All of the choices are neutrals, and most color pairs combine light and dark. Some days you might feel like an optimistic sky blue, and others you may lean more toward a powerful storm cloud. You can have both here.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: At 3 pounds 11 ounces, it’s the heaviest percale cover we tried, perhaps because it has 400 thread count, compared with the 280 of the L.L.Bean cover (meaning more threads are packed into each inch of fabric). It’s also made with smoother, higher-quality Supima cotton—which may be why it feels thinner and cooler than the L.L.Bean cover. It’s fairly wrinkly and may need some pressing out of the dryer. The corner ties are a different style than those of the other covers we’ve tried—they’re snaps instead of ties—which means they won’t work for duvets without corner loops
Sizes: twin/twin XL, full/queen, king/California king
Material: cotton
Colors: white, white/dark gray, navy/medium blue, light blue/medium blue, light gray/dark gray
As comfortable as a soft button-down: Restoration Hardware Ultra-fine Lightweight Cotton Duvet Cover
Our pick
Why it’s great: If you like the soft, smooth feel of sateen but love the fineness and light weight of percale, the combed-cotton Restoration Hardware Ultra-Fine Lightweight Cotton Duvet Cover is the best of both worlds. This percale weave is as soft as the Cuddledown sateen cover’s, but not as heavy. It’s not as lightweight as the Authenticity 50, but the cotton is cloud-like and breezy. When we initially tested the Ultra-Fine sheets a few years ago, we almost thought they were sateen because they’re so silky and soft.
Flaws but not dealbreakers: This cover lacks corner ties, so you may need to use duvet clips to keep a duvet from moving around, which is a bummer on a cover this expensive. Also, as with the Authenticity 50 cover, the Ultra-Fine cover’s fabric is delicate, so we don’t know how well it will hold up to regular use. We’ll be long-term testing it to see how it fares.
Sizes: full/queen, king, California king
Material: cotton
Colors: white, natural, light gray, medium gray, dark gray
How we picked and tested
Softness: We wanted covers that were soft enough to use without a top sheet, directly against the skin—most (but not all) of our picks met this criteria. A duvet cover should keep its softness after being washed and dried. We know from our years of testing that companies often add finishes to home textiles to give them shelf appeal, and once those are washed away you get a true sense of the fabric’s feel, so a cover should feel as soft or softer out of the dryer as it does out of the package.
Natural fibers: Natural fibers are more breathable and best for regulating temperature, so we looked specifically at covers made from high-quality cottons and linens. They do wrinkle and shrink more than synthetics, but they can also be washed on hotter temperatures (cotton can withstand more heat than linen), which is the best way to get them clean. If you tend to stain your bedding, choose white, the easiest color to wash on hot with bleach or OxiClean.
Solid construction: The best duvet covers have strong seams that don’t fray, they shrink minimally in the wash, and they have securely attached buttons, zippers, or snaps at the closure.
Inner ties: Not every cover we recommend has inner ties to secure the cover to a duvet, but most of them do—it’s a definite bonus for keeping the duvet from bunching up inside the cover. You can use duvet clips to keep them secure without ties (I’ve used this style many times over the years), but they can break easily, so invest in a few sets for backup.
A variety of colors and prints: A duvet cover is the first thing you see on a made bed so it’s often the focal point of a bedroom. We focused on covers with plenty of color options, and some with prints, to fit a variety of tastes and room styles.
Range of sizes: We looked for covers available in all bed sizes. Not every cover we recommend comes in every size, but there is enough variety here to find something that will fit.
Reliable brands: We pay attention to companies’ responsiveness, website navigation, inventory, return policies, and the quality of the bedding itself so that we’re confident that you will have the same experience we did. From our years of testing bedding we know the brands that are the most consistent—from their fabrics to their quality control to their customer service. No cover is perfect, and we’ve noted the flaws we found in our picks (and if they’re worth overlooking).
Since 2016, we’ve researched 37 covers and tested 15, all on a king-size bed. We measured them straight out of the bag, then again after a wash to account for any initial shrinkage. We compared all of the fabrics for smoothness, softness, pilling, and weight.
We washed and dried all of the covers without any fabric softeners, and with all of their closures fastened. We also left them in the dryer for a while after the cycle was finished. In everyday life, we’re not always right there to pull laundry out immediately, and we wanted to see how wrinkled and rumpled these covers would get. We also folded every cover after washing to see if the seams stayed straight and even—twisted seams and uneven sides can look messy on a made bed. Then we put each cover on our test duvet and laid it on the bed to see how it looked, and crawled under each to see how they felt as we moved around and (often) fell asleep.
How to get the right fit
The bedding industry doesn’t follow standardized sizes—the dimensions of a king-size comforter and king-size duvet cover will usually vary by a few inches from brand to brand. In 2016 I tested each duvet cover with a Macy’s Hotel Collection Primaloft comforter that measured 96 inches by 101 inches, and in 2018 we used our former budget pick, the Pacific Coast European Down, which measured 98 inches by 108 inches (both are now discontinued). All of the king-size duvet covers I’ve tried fit these king-size duvets, and filled them out well when I made the bed. However, as an active sleeper, I sometimes noticed the duvet pulling away from the sides inside its cover, even when using corner ties. A larger, fluffier duvet helped curb a lot of this movement in our 2018 testing. It’s not a perfect solution, but if you tend to get tangled in your duvet cover with no duvet in sight, try looking for a cover that’s slightly smaller than your comforter, so there’s less chance it will shift inside.The competition
Casper’s Weightless Cotton Duvet Cover
is lightweight (even lighter than the Authenticity 50) and cool. But it
felt thin and fragile, like it could easily develop holes from wear and
tear, and it wrinkled a lot—more than the other percales we tested. The
sheets version of this fabric might be nice (we haven’t tested them),
but we don’t think it’s durable enough for a duvet cover.
The Snowe Percale Duvet Cover is made from the same high-quality fabric as our upgrade percale sheets pick, but we noticed some major problems with quality control. The cover we tested had unsightly, visible remnants of white paper sewn into the back of the decorative hemstitching, which we think is leftover stabilizing paper that wasn’t properly removed during production. It didn’t wash out, and picking it all out with tweezers would’ve taken hours.
IKEA’s Dvala cover was our old budget pick, the best of a not-great group of low-priced covers. In 2018, we brought in a new one that made us reconsider our recommendation. The percale cotton felt thick and hot, and it wrinkled more than any other cover we tested, to the point that the creases prevented it from laying flat.
We hoped the Target Matelasse Medallion would be a good cover with more texture and visual appeal, and it looks lovely, but the cover feels heavy and unruly. It’s a full matelassé coverlet (which is a heavy thing) with a thin piece of sheeting on the back. Out of the package it was clear that the stitching wasn’t going to hold up—the buttonholes were already fraying. It also took about three hours to dry, more than any other cover we tested.
The Hemstitch 400 Thread Count Solid Cotton Duvet Cover is available from Target and Overstock, and it was one of the three moderately priced covers we tested. It’s a cotton sateen, which gives it a beautiful sheen. But it feels closer to a flannel than a silky sateen. It doesn’t have ties to secure it to a duvet, and it wrinkled significantly. The big stiff creases did not shake out and needed ironing. It wrinkled even more after sleeping under it, and we thought it made for an untidy bed. And after washing and drying, the seams on the cover were twisted, making it difficult to fold evenly.
The Target Room Essentials Duvet Cover fabric felt weirdly damp, even after I was sure it was fully dried. It also had the roughest texture, like a tougher flannel. This made it clammy to sleep under. It’s the only cover in the bunch that wasn’t 100 percent cotton—it’s a 60/40 cotton/poly blend. Maher told us that blends typically wrinkle less, but this particular one did not live up to that. Like the Hemstitch cover, this one didn’t fold quite flat after washing. The seams twisted and it folded unevenly.
The Snowe Percale Duvet Cover is made from the same high-quality fabric as our upgrade percale sheets pick, but we noticed some major problems with quality control. The cover we tested had unsightly, visible remnants of white paper sewn into the back of the decorative hemstitching, which we think is leftover stabilizing paper that wasn’t properly removed during production. It didn’t wash out, and picking it all out with tweezers would’ve taken hours.
IKEA’s Dvala cover was our old budget pick, the best of a not-great group of low-priced covers. In 2018, we brought in a new one that made us reconsider our recommendation. The percale cotton felt thick and hot, and it wrinkled more than any other cover we tested, to the point that the creases prevented it from laying flat.
We hoped the Target Matelasse Medallion would be a good cover with more texture and visual appeal, and it looks lovely, but the cover feels heavy and unruly. It’s a full matelassé coverlet (which is a heavy thing) with a thin piece of sheeting on the back. Out of the package it was clear that the stitching wasn’t going to hold up—the buttonholes were already fraying. It also took about three hours to dry, more than any other cover we tested.
The Hemstitch 400 Thread Count Solid Cotton Duvet Cover is available from Target and Overstock, and it was one of the three moderately priced covers we tested. It’s a cotton sateen, which gives it a beautiful sheen. But it feels closer to a flannel than a silky sateen. It doesn’t have ties to secure it to a duvet, and it wrinkled significantly. The big stiff creases did not shake out and needed ironing. It wrinkled even more after sleeping under it, and we thought it made for an untidy bed. And after washing and drying, the seams on the cover were twisted, making it difficult to fold evenly.
The Target Room Essentials Duvet Cover fabric felt weirdly damp, even after I was sure it was fully dried. It also had the roughest texture, like a tougher flannel. This made it clammy to sleep under. It’s the only cover in the bunch that wasn’t 100 percent cotton—it’s a 60/40 cotton/poly blend. Maher told us that blends typically wrinkle less, but this particular one did not live up to that. Like the Hemstitch cover, this one didn’t fold quite flat after washing. The seams twisted and it folded unevenly.
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