The Truth About Thread Count

The Truth About Thread Count

So the time has come to purchase new bedding and you are off to the internet to find a good deal on comfortable sheets.  You see some recognizable brands offering premium sheets that are 230, 310 and 600 thread counts.  They are made from cotton or cotton sateen or even cotton percale.  Well before you place and order and check out, you run a Google search for thread count and find that there are sheets offering 900 thread count, 1200 thread count and even some small ‘luxury importers’ offering 4000 thread count Egyptian Cotton Sheets!

Now before you go stir crazy wondering when bed sheets became harder to figure out than computer specifications, I’ll give you the basics so hopefully you don’t get lured into paying more because thread count doesn’t always follow the mantra ‘bigger means better’.

First off the definition of thread count is the number of individual horizontal and vertical threads in a square inch of fabric.  If you have 150 horizontal threads and 160 vertical threads your total thread count is 310.

The concept is very simple to understand and you can get very nice products that are 230 and 310 thread count that are comfortable.  If you want a higher end product getting sheets in the 600-800 thread count range will get you sheets comparable to what a lot of luxury hotels use (hotels mostly use higher thread count sheets not because they are more comfortable but because they can stand up to repeated heavy washing found in a commercial environment).  The issues with thread count really begin to arise when you begin to get over the 1000 count mark.

It is important to note that no standardized monitoring process exists to evaluate claims by manufactures as to the thread count in the sheets they produce.  In other words there is no system in place to say that a thread is deemed as this width and therefore more of those threads equal a higher thread count.  Textile companies have realized this and marketed their items based on the filament count (individual strands that make up a thread or fiber).  Taking our above example the same 310 thread count sheet with 4 filaments per thread could be marketed and sold as a 1240 count sheet!

When buying sheets many retailers use the thread itself, not the filament when selling sheets.  You should be able to find a wide range of 180 to 600 sheets that will fit any budget, be warm and be very comfortable.  If you see larger thread counts just think to yourself how large is that thread if there are 3200 threads in a square inch of a sheet?  The answer is that the threads in sheets with thread counts that are above 800 are not very large.  And, having many small threads often makes a sheet more coarse feeling.

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