Luxury Bedding Alert : Watch For Thread Count Scams.

Thread-count is an essential, concise figure to define the quality grade of a cotton fabric.

Forget all the technical info about thread count here. If you want to learn more check for it on wikipedia.

It has been used wildly as the main marketing tool for advertising luxury linens. The rush to the highest thread count took the whole industry by storm. Numbers were climbing rapidly from 600 to 1000 to 1200, 1500 up to an astonishing 1800 thread count ! 280TC seemed to be a pretty good quality grade only a few years ago while today it doesn’t sound so nice at all.

There’s really been such a substantial increase in fine linens quality in the past few years?

Not really!

First and foremost the highest thread count that can be technically achieved for sheeting fabric s is 1.000. Strange as it may seem, that is a matter of fact.

Secondly, such an high thread count can only be produced out of premium quality extra long staple Egyptian Cotton fibers spun into super fine gauge yarns. Only a few mills worldwide have developed proprietary technology to twist and weave those fine yarns into exceptional fabrics. The complexity of the production and scarce avialbility of the required raw materials make those fabrics extremely pricey.

And what about all those bed sheets available online or at retail stores showing incredibly high counts for ridiculously low prices? Well, it is most likely one of the two options below:

1) The thread count is true but it has been achieved using poor quality raw cotton fibers, thus giving thick uneven yarns that are woven into heavy fabrics manufactured into blanket-weight sheets. That’s not nice for sheets.

2) The thread count is somehow misrepresented referring to a metric system figure rather than to the actual number of threads woven into an American square inch.

Beware! Luxury linens scam alert.

On the other hand from a direct touch and feel experience of the actual product you will hardly notice any significant difference from a 600TC and a 1000TC. Quality performance and strenght do not show a tangible difference.

Price on the contrary will be higher as much as two or three times more.

It is big ticked purchase that should be carefully evaluated. Most of the times it’s not worth the extra cost.

Giacomo Rossi – main Editor at Belvivere luxury bedding