Winter duvet shopping usually starts with a number. You remember the tog on the duvet you've got, you remember lying under it either cold or sticky, and you want the next one to fix whichever it was. If you've settled on wool, the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Wool Duvet in Warm is the heaviest single-layer duvet in Woolroom's Deluxe Washable range, and the one it sells to colder sleepers: 500gsm of traceable British wool quilted into an unbleached organic cotton percale cover. It fills the gap between a winter wool duvet that has to go to the dry cleaner and a synthetic one you can throw in the machine, because this is winter-weight wool that goes through a home wash. Lie under it with the light off and the weight reaches you before the warmth does, a flat, even press along the whole of you with nothing plump about it.
There are two choices to make here, the weight and the wash, and Woolroom sells an answer to both. On weight, the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Light has 200gsm and is for hot sleepers, the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Medium has 350gsm and is the weight most heated bedrooms need, and the Woolroom Deluxe Washable 3-in-1 All Season costs more and poppers a 200gsm and a 350gsm duvet into 550gsm, more wool than this one carries. On the wash, the Woolroom Classic Wool Duvet in Warm has the same 500gsm of the same British wool for less money, and it's dry clean only. Buy the Classic if you'd rarely wash a duvet, which is most people. And whichever Warm you buy, treat it as about a 10 tog, whatever Woolroom's 11 to 14 rating says. It runs cooler than its number: plenty in a heated bedroom, short in a cold one.
Buy this one if you feel the cold, sleep in a bedroom where the heating stays on through the night, and need a winter duvet you can wash at home in January. One owner in that position calls it right for December to March, and another has stopped waking up cold. Skip it if your bedroom goes properly cold once the heating clicks off, because the owners it lets down are mostly cold sleepers who met it in cold weather. Skip it too if you'd only ever air a duvet, since then you're paying for a wash you'll never use.
Thin out of the bag, heavy on the bed
Expect the unpacking to worry you. A wool duvet this warm is far slimmer than a down or hollowfibre duvet sold for winter, because wool is dense and keeps its warmth in a thin layer. Owners who opened the bag and thought there'd been a mistake mostly found it toasty once they were under it, though one went back to their old duvet after two cold nights. The weight is the other surprise. A double weighs about 3.4kg and a super king 4.9kg, and all of it lies flat along you instead of standing up in a puffy layer, so you feel the duvet on you all night.
The quilting keeps it that way. It's stitched tightly enough that the wool stays where it was put, so nothing slides down and gathers at the bottom of the cover, and one owner finds it easier to get into a cover than their old synthetic because it's so solidly held together. That same tight stitching is why it won't drape. One owner wanted the filling to fall over the body the way a blanket or a down duvet does and found the quilting too tight to allow it, and another missed feeling snuggled in on a cold night. If you like to wrap a duvet round your shoulders, this one stays across the top of you.
Whether you like that weight is personal. I love my weighted blanket, so I'm with the owners who want to feel a duvet lying on them, and one of them had hoped the Warm would carry even more. At the other extreme, a couple slept under it for one night, called it far too heavy to be comfortable and put it back in its bag. In between is the owner who says it stays put on the bed and her husband can't drag it over to his side. If nearly five kilos across a super king sounds like being pinned down, buy the Medium and keep a blanket for January.
Owner after owner says it arrived with no sheep smell at all. Two did notice the wool: one found the smell strong at first and then it went, and the other likens it to sleeping in a barn, which they'd once have thought odd and now find relaxing. If your nose is sensitive, open the bag in the morning instead of at bedtime, so any woolly whiff has a day to fade before you get in.
Is it as warm as a 13.5 tog duvet?
Not by the number, and I wouldn't buy it expecting it to be. One owner who swapped from a synthetic winter duvet put it at "more like 10 tog than 14 tog". Another found it lighter on the body than a normal 13.5 tog duvet and just as warm. What the tog number leaves out is the damp. A polyester duvet keeps you warm partly by trapping your damp along with your heat, and wool lets the damp out. You sleep under less insulation and wake up drier. The Woolroom Classic Warm has the same 500gsm and sleeps the same way, so read its number the same way too.
That trade-off is the reason to buy wool at all. If your 13.5 tog polyester leaves you clammy by morning, swap it for wool, and get the wool from Woolroom. One owner who left goose feather for it used to go to bed cold and then overheat, and says that has stopped. Another left a synthetic duvet that had them waking up sweating. Swapping like for like on the number is where it goes wrong, so plan on a 10 and decide whether your bedroom needs more than that.
In a cold house, owners add a blanket on top
The owners who find the Warm short tell the same story. One says her house is cold and she gets cold easily, and doesn't expect it to be enough on its own in winter. Folding it double is how another gets through the coldest nights. For a third owner it wasn't warm enough for winter without an extra quilt on top, so they call it well made and keep it as a good three-season duvet. Even an owner who calls it lovely points out that "they don't make a warmer duvet currently", so a blanket goes on in winter.
They're right about the limit, and it's why I treat the Warm as a heated-house duvet. If the heating goes off overnight and your bedroom turns cold, a wool blanket over the Warm is the cheap fix and the All Season is the duvet I'd buy instead. At the other end, the odd owner still finds it too warm now and then, which tells you how much of the job the bedroom is doing. I'd keep the room cool and let the duvet do the warming, which is what this weight does well when the radiators are on.
Warm, Classic Warm or All Season: choosing as a cold sleeper
If you feel the cold and the house stays heated overnight, any Woolroom Warm is the right weight, and the choice comes down to washing. The Classic Warm has the same wool and the same warmth in plain cotton, and it goes to a dry cleaner instead of into your machine. Give it a few hours on the line whenever it wants freshening and the lack of a machine wash won't cost you anything.
Pay for this washable one only if the duvet will need washing in the middle of winter, wherever it's used. One owner bought theirs for a camper van because it packs away and stays easy to keep clean. A dog on the bed is another reason, and one owner's dog finds hers very snuggly. A child's winter bed is the third, and if the child runs warm, the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Medium is the same washable wool at 350gsm.
The Woolroom Deluxe Washable 3-in-1 All Season is for a different problem, a room that goes cold, and it costs more. Fastened, it carries 550gsm against this duvet's 500, and in summer it comes apart into two lighter duvets. Owners find its poppers can let go overnight and leave the halves bunched in the cover. In a heated house I'd skip that faff and buy one Warm. In a cold room, the extra wool is the point. And if your bed takes an emperor duvet, the Warm stops at super king, so the All Season is the warm Woolroom duvet in that size.
Washing nearly five kilos of wool at home
Washable doesn't mean easy. Woolroom bathes the wool in a chlorine solution, which smooths away the tiny barbs on each fibre. Left untreated, those barbs are what knot together and shrink in warm, churning water. Even treated, the duvet wants the wool programme at 40 degrees, wool detergent, the spin turned down below 800rpm and a line to dry on, never the tumble dryer. At this weight every one of those rules costs you something. Wool soaks up a lot of water, and a spin that gentle leaves much of it in, so a super king comes out of the drum far heavier than the 4.9kg that went in.
Check your machine's load rating against those weights before the first wash, not after. One owner says theirs fits an 8kg drum. Then plan the drying, which is the hard part on a winter duvet: the day it needs washing is likely to be cold and damp, and wool this thick takes far longer than a sheet to dry through. Start it in the morning, hang it out for as long as the weather allows, and feel the middle of it before it comes in, because the edges dry first. Follow the rules to the letter, too, because one owner says theirs shrank when they finally washed it.
Four sizes, cut a little generous
The Warm is sold in four sizes. A single measures 135 x 200cm (53 x 79 inches) and weighs roughly 2.4kg, and a double 200 x 200cm (79 x 79 inches) at 3.4kg. A king is 225 x 220cm (89 x 87 inches) at 4kg, and a super king 260 x 220cm (102 x 87 inches) at 4.9kg. There's no emperor in this weight. Measure your covers before you order, because several owners found the Warm bigger than the cover it was meant for. One double came up about 8cm too big each way, and a super king rolled over at the edges inside a brand-new cover. Choose a cover with a few centimetres to spare.
Getting it in takes some muscle at the bigger sizes, and one owner calls it hard work for a small person. While you're wrestling it, read the label. The wool is British and traceable to its farm, and the duvet is hand-crafted in the EU. That second half catches some owners out, since everything else about it reads as British.
What to buy instead
For a bedroom that goes cold at night, buy the Woolroom Deluxe Washable 3-in-1 All Season: it costs more, and fastened together it carries more wool than this duvet does. Run only a touch cold in a warm house? Then buy the Woolroom Deluxe Washable Medium: it carries 150gsm less wool, so it sits lighter on you and is far less work on washing day.
And if you feel the cold in a heated house and won't be washing your duvet at home, buy the Woolroom Classic Wool Duvet in Warm. It's the same 500gsm of British wool and the same warmth as this one, for less.
