BambooLux™ - Cooling Sheet Set

Bamboo sheets are easy to love and easy to ruin

Read the reviews on any bamboo sheet set and you'll find the same arc. The first two weeks are rapturous. Then somebody's seams start fraying, somebody else pulls a wrinkled heap out of the dryer, and a third person finds a stain that wasn't there before.

Almost none of that is bad luck. Viscose is a fine, smooth fibre, and it has specific things it doesn't tolerate — heat, bleach, oil-based detergent, being washed with towels. Most sellers won't tell you, because it's easier to print "easy care" on the packaging and let the returns happen later.

We'd rather tell you. The sheets are genuinely excellent. Here's what they do, and here's what will wreck them.

You kick the covers off at 2am, then get cold

Cotton holds warmth against you and absorbs moisture without moving it anywhere, so heat builds up until you throw the duvet off — and then you're too cold ten minutes later. Viscose derived from bamboo works differently. It pulls moisture off your skin and lets it evaporate, so the heat has somewhere to go before it becomes the thing that wakes you. The fabric is also thin enough to drape against you without an air gap, which is why it feels cool the moment you get in rather than after you've warmed it up.

The corner that pings off at 4am

Modern mattresses are thick, and most fitted sheets were cut for thinner ones. The corner lets go, you wake up on bare mattress, and you spend a minute in the dark hauling it back on. These have 16-inch deep pockets with elastic running the whole way around rather than just at the corners — the difference between a sheet that grips the mattress and one that's balanced on it.

The four things that destroy bamboo sheets

Every bad review in this category traces back to one of these. None of them are hard to avoid, and nobody tells you before you buy.

Follow those four and the set outlasts the cotton sheets you're replacing. Ignore them and you'll be writing one of the reviews we mentioned at the top.

About wrinkles, since everyone else claims there aren't any

Viscose creases. It creases less than linen and more than a polyester blend, and if you leave it sitting in the dryer it will crease a lot. Take it out while it's slightly damp and put it straight on the bed and most of it falls out on its own. We're telling you this because "wrinkle-free" is printed on half the sheet sets in this category and contradicted by their own reviews, and you'd find out in a week anyway.

The specifics

Sheets this good are worth the four rules. We'd rather you know them now than find out in the comments.