Between the sheets: lots of single-bed sheet sets sell for around $30, but chances are they'll disappoint you. (Test: sheets).(Product/Service Evaluation)

Publication: Choice (Chippendale, Australia)

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Australian Consumers' Association

How do you like it in bed? Crisp and cool, soft and cuddly, fluffy and warm, or silky smooth? Or perhaps you don't care one way or the other, as long as your sheets fit, don't pill and keep their size and colour wash after wash. That's what we set out to find out with our latest test of 18 plain-dyed polyester/cotton and pure cotton bed sheets. (We tested single sheets to keep our costs down; they're also available in other sizes.)

DO THEY FIT?

Buying the right-sized fitted sheet that fits comfortably around a thick mattress can be a problem. The average mattress you buy today is thicker than it used to be, probably around 32 cm to 35 cm deep, though you can get luxurious pillow-top models that can measure up to 45 cm--and, at the other end of the scale, particularly firm 26 cm deep ones.

It's not that you can't get a fitted sheet that fits around a thick mattress; you just have to make sure the claimed measurements on the packaging match your mattress size--and allow a little for shrinkage. For more on size, see What to look for, far right.

In our test, most of the flat sheets' measured sizes corresponded more or less with their claimed measurements. Two (COTTON HOUSE and DAVID JONES) were a fair bit longer than claimed, which shouldn't be a problem, and one (SHANNON) a bit shorter. We found more variation between the claimed and measured size of the fitted sheets, where good fit is much more important.

The DAVID JONES and SHERIDAN fitted sheets were a little shorter and narrower than claimed, but 2 cm deeper. The DICKIES and SHANNON fitted sheets lost nearly 5 cm and 6 cm respectively in length in the shrinkage test, and the DREAMTEX--though much bigger than claimed before the first wash--shrank by an astounding 9%, which left it 9 cm short of its claimed length. Most other sheets tested just shrank slightly (between 0.5% and 2.5% in length and width).

DO THEY PILL?

According to the industry, pilling is no longer a common problem with bed sheets, unlike in the past when, quite commonly, you bought good-looking sheets only to discover after a couple of washes that they'd formed little hard lumps of tangled fibres...

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