You know the morning: the sheet comes off for the wash, and the duvet you sweated into all night goes straight back on the bed, because there's no washing it at home. If that sounds like your house, here's the duvet for it. Woolroom sells the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Wool Duvet in Light direct, and it's 200gsm of British wool you can trace to the farm, stitched inside a cover of unbleached organic cotton percale and rated by Woolroom as equivalent to 2 to 5 tog. This is the summer duvet and the lightest in the washable range, there for anyone who wants wool thin enough for June that can still go in the machine after a bad night. The Light is the weight I'd choose for hot nights and night sweats. Turn over under it and it moves with you as one thin, flat layer, with a crisp rustle from the cotton that one owner says took a couple of nights to stop noticing.
Most hot sleepers don't need the wash, though, and I'd send them to the dry-clean twin. The Woolroom Classic Wool Duvet in Light has the same 200gsm of wool in the same warmth band and costs less, and if you wake clammy instead of soaked, an airing on the line does everything a wash would. The heavier washable weights are for people who aren't running hot. The Woolroom Deluxe Washable Medium carries 350gsm and is the one to keep on all year in a bedroom with the heating on. The Woolroom Deluxe Washable Warm carries 500gsm, which to my mind sleeps closer to a 10 tog than its number. The Woolroom Deluxe Washable 3-in-1 All Season joins a 200gsm half like this one to a 350gsm half with poppers for winter, and those poppers can come undone overnight.
Don't buy it if you feel the cold, because no amount of washing turns 200gsm into a winter duvet. Don't buy it either if you want a thick, fluffy duvet to burrow under. This one lies flat on the first night and stays flat.
The wash is for nights that soak the duvet itself
Clamminess under a synthetic duvet is exactly what wool fixes, and I'd buy that wool from Woolroom. But clammy means a damp sheet and a sticky back, and a duvet that gets aired now and then copes with that. The washable Light is for the step beyond. Plenty of owners bought it for hot flushes and night sweats, and one who used to wake up wet through says that with this duvet they slept through the night without a soaking for the first time in a long while. When the sweats are that heavy they reach the duvet as well as the sheet, and that's the bed I'd want to strip and put through the machine the next morning, wool and all.
Children's summer beds come next. One parent bought it for a four-year-old and says it isn't too heavy for him, and another's nine-year-old loved it. A child's bed is the one most likely to need stripping in a hurry, so that's a bed I'd buy washable every time.
Then the household with an allergy. By Woolroom's own account its wool duvets have Allergy UK's Seal of Approval, and where someone at home is allergic, I want every layer on the bed able to go in the machine. This one can.
Is the washable Light cool enough for a hot sleeper?
For most hot sleepers, yes. Owners who run warm say it keeps them cool where their old summer duvet didn't, and one with hot flushes says it has helped with the sweating and yet they still feel warm enough, which is exactly the balance a summer wool duvet is for. Another says their partner slept better on the very first night and has done ever since.
It has a ceiling, and the owners who hit it are worth hearing. One owner who bought it to sleep cooler found it uncomfortably warm and has put it away to use in winter. Another finds it lovely on cooler early-summer nights and too warm on the warm ones they bought it for. One woke "bathed in sweat", something they hadn't done in ages, and was puzzled to see it recommended for the menopause. A wool duvet stops a hot night feeling sticky. It doesn't cure night sweats, and if yours come with other symptoms, see your GP.
There's nowhere lighter to go, either. This is the bottom rung of the washable range, and one owner was disappointed to find the extra-light option below it had been discontinued. If 200gsm is still too much in a heatwave, more shopping won't fix it. I sleep naked, always, so on a close night the duvet is the only thing left to take off. Take this one out of its cover, sleep under the empty cover, and put the Light back in when the weather turns.
Thin, flat wool wanders inside its cover
The practical complaint that comes up most with this duvet is about the cover. The Light is so much thinner and flatter than down or hollowfibre that it has room to move inside a duvet cover, and owners describe it slipping down from the top in the night and ending up folded over at the sides and the foot, with one shaking it out every morning. One owner found the corners rounded, and with nothing square to push into the corners of the cover, it moves about. Others say theirs stays put all night, so not every bed has the trouble, but I'd plan for it.
Plan for it like this. Check the size against your covers before the first night, because it has come up both too big and too small: one owner had to let out the seams on their single covers, and another's king didn't fill a king cover. Push the top corners right into the cover's corners and do up every fastening, then give it a shake from the foot end when you get up. If your covers are white, pick another colour. The cotton is unbleached, and one owner can see its natural colour through a white cover.
Two of you under it? Order the size above your bed. A flat wool duvet hardly drapes over the edge of the mattress, so at the bed's own size whoever turns over takes the spare with them. This is one place the washable range is the only answer: the Light comes as an emperor, 290 x 235cm (about 114 x 93 inches), so a couple in a super king bed can size up too, where the Classic range stops at super king. Buy the cover in the new size as well.
Spread it out on the bed the day it comes and look along the quilting. One owner's arrived with most of the wool stitched into a wide band down the middle, and that's a fault to send straight back. If it smells of sheep out of the bag, leave it on the bed with the window open for a morning; one owner found that was all it needed. Read the label while you're there. The fill is British wool, the duvet is put together in the EU. That came as news to a few owners, who had pictured the whole duvet being made in the same country as its wool.
At 200gsm it's the easiest weight to wash
Woolroom gives the wool a bath in what it calls a chlorine solution. That takes the natural barbs off each fibre, and without them the fibres can't lock together and felt in a drum. After that the routine is short. Use the 40-degree wool programme and a wool detergent, turn the spin down under 800rpm, then dry it on the line, never in the tumble dryer. The Light is the least work in the range to put through it. A single Light weighs 1.5kg dry against 2.4kg for a single Warm, and a double Light 2kg. There's 150 grams less wool in every square metre than in the Medium, so there's less to lift out wet and less to hang. One owner calls it easy to wash.
Because it's a summer duvet, it spends the winter in a cupboard, and the wash before it goes in is the one I'd never skip. Put it through at the end of the warm months, let it dry right through, then fold it into the storage bag it arrives in, which one owner was glad to find would do for the winter. Never vacuum-pack it, because Woolroom rules that out for this duvet.
What to buy instead
Most hot sleepers should buy the Woolroom Classic Wool Duvet in Light: 200gsm of the same wool, summer warmth to match, for less, freshened on the line instead of in the machine. If you're only a touch warm at night and the radiators are on, buy the Woolroom Classic Wool Duvet in Medium and keep it on all year. Choose this washable Light when the duvet itself gets soaked, when it's going on a child's summer bed, when someone at home has an allergy, or when you need an emperor.
