Are Two Duvets Better Than One?

Do you suffer from zero duvet at night? Do you wake up to find your partner has stolen all the covers and left you clinging to the far edge of the bed freezing? I know mine does. I am, allegedly, an unashamed duvet hogger, a stealer of covers, a thief in the night. I can’t help it. I don’t even know I’m doing it. Which is his excuse for snoring. The bed can surely be a sleeping battlefield can’t it?

So is the answer to each have your own duvet? This is the Scandinavian solution to this modern dilemma. big bed, two duvets, peace at last. Or is it?

First let’s go back to the origin of the duvet itself. They first became popular in the UK in the 1970s when Sir Terence Conran became the first person to sell them in his newly opened Habitat store on The King’s Road. He had first discovered them in the 1950s when he was in Sweden. In bed with a girl. He found himself (and the girl) lying on the mattress with a strange eiderdown cover on top of them and no sheets or blankets between him and it.

Some years ago I interviewed him about it for a story for The Independent: “People do credit me with bringing the duvet to Britain,” he said. “I had been in Sweden and given a duvet to sleep under. I probably had a girl with me and I thought this was all part of the mood of the time – liberated sex and easy living. It was wonderful that when you came to make the bed it was just a couple of shakes.”

I still think it was very sweet of him that, after a night of liberated sex and easy living, he remembered to make the bed at all.

When Habitat first sold the continental quilt, as it was then known, many were reluctant to give up their sheets and blankets. So they were sold on the ease of making the bed rather than the sleeping aspect. Habitat adopted a slogan – the 10 Second Bed – accompanied by a series of explanatory illustrations.

Initially, the store sold more singles than double as they were regarded as something that was better for children than adults. But might we now be coming full circle?

Leaving the territorial battles aside, many of us find that we are living with someone who operates in a completely different micro-climate. One likes it hot, the other prefers an icy blast through an open window. One turns the heating on, the other follows behind turning the thermostat down. And on it goes.

Apparently 61 per cent of the UK complains of feeling tired due a bad night’s sleep and 45 per cent of us endure sleepless nights so our partners can sleep comfortably. Add to that the fact that two people in a standard double equates to about the same amount of space as a baby has in a cot and you can see why we have problems.

So this weekend only – 27 and 28 January – in store only  – IKEA have asked me to tell you that you can be more Swede by picking up two single duvets, IN DIFFERING TOGS if you so wish, for the price of one. That’s £40 for two duvets as part of their TOG-ether bundle.

I have suggested this to the Mad Husband, self-proclaimed victim of cold bedrooms and duvet stealing. He is not convinced. I think we shall try it. I shall report back.