Sleep More Soundly with These Sweat-Busting Sheets

Catching quality Zs is vital to our health: Not only can lack of sleep cause impairment similar to what people experience when they've knocked back a few drinks, but it's been linked to health issues like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, among others. It can be particularly challenging to get adequate shut-eye in the heat of summer, when sheets and blankets feel like the enemy and it's not unusual to wake up clammy in a puddle of your own sweat.

That kind of situation inspired Eugene Alletto to found BEDGEAR in 2009. When Alletto’s son was having sleep issues due to allergies, he discovered that the only mattress protectors available were vinyl, which made his son overheat while he was trying to sleep. So Alletto went to work creating his own bedding that would keep people at the perfect temperature for snoozing, no matter what the season, and allow for maximum recovery.

To BEDGEAR, sleep isn't just a period of rest, it's an activity—so it's fitting that the company found inspiration for its products in exercise. “Eugene determined that the performance fabrics like we wear to exercise could be engineered to provide functional benefits in bedding products,” Shana Rocheleau, VP of Strategy at BEDGEAR, told Mental Floss via email. “It was this key insight that spiraled into the wide performance products offering BEDGEAR has today.” The line started with mattress protectors and has since grown to include mattresses, pillows, sheets, blankets, and more.

All of this sounded very intriguing to me: I live on the top floor of my building, and temperatures in my apartment regularly hit 80 degrees—so I’m accustomed to waking up a sweaty mess in the middle of the night (at least before we put in our window air conditioning units). I was eager to see if the company's Dri-Tec Performance Sheets—which promise to "help you sleep cool and dry to ensure maximum recovery"—would help me get a better night’s rest, and BEDGEAR sent me some to try out.

According to Rocheleau, every product in the company’s line is designed chiefly with one thing in mind: air flow. “Air flow is essential to maximum sleep comfort and getting the most recovery out of the time you have to spend in bed,” she says. “When your body gets overheated, you will begin fidgeting, [but] when you sleep at the right temperature, with bedding layers that balance your body heat with your room environment through optimized air flow, [it] makes it easier for your body to follow its natural circadian rhythm of dropping two degrees at night for cellular rejuvenation, and reduces sensations of restlessness.”

To that end, when designing its products, “BEDGEAR’s product development team focused on designing a fabric that could aid in controlling humidity by keeping moisture away from your body with breathable fabrics,” Rocheleau says. “A less humid environment allows your body to cool down more quickly.”

The company doesn’t do thread counts (which it says are complicated, can be misleading, and might not actually help you sleep better, anyway) but instead uses CFM, or cubic feet per minute, “the speed at which air flows into or out of space,” Rocheleau explains—a standard unit of measurement in the HVAC and vacuum industries. Their highest performance sheets, the Dri-Tech Lites, have a CFM rating of four (736 cubic feet per minute); Dri-Tec, the sheets that I tested, have a CFM rating of 3 (407 cubic feet per minute). By comparison, Poly-spandex knit sheets (125 cubic feet per minute) and 100 percent cotton sheets with a 1200 thread count (3.89 cubic feet per minute) both have a CFM rating of zero.

BEDGEAR's product development team spent six years developing and perfecting the Dri-Tec sheets. They're made of a polyester material that evaporates moisture and expels heat, and are also equipped with ventilated mesh hems and side panels, which have a 3D structure that keeps air circulating. “Your sheets should enhance your sleep, not disrupt it by making you feel trapped by heat and/or fabrics,” Rochleau says.

Users rave about the Dri-Tec sheets ("So these sheets have 100x more airflow than traditional sheets!!! Holy cannoli!!!"), and I wasn't disappointed, either. The sheets are incredibly soft; they don’t get wrinkly or cling to you when you sleep, and yet they’re designed to move with you. (My partner and I are both restless sleepers, and I’ve found that I’m disturbed by his movements less with these sheets that I was when we were using cotton ones.) You hardly notice them, which is sort of the point. Plus, the fitted sheet has a band that keeps it securely in place, no matter how much you move around. (If only it were possible to add a similar feature to the top sheet to prevent sheet stealing.)

But best of all, since we started using the Dri-Tec sheets, I haven’t had a sweaty wake-up once. Which is not to say I haven’t woken up (I have two cats who love to climb all over me when I’m sleeping), but when I did, I noticed that I wasn’t sweaty at all.

BEDGEAR’s sheets are definitely more expensive than most of what you’ll find at Target: Depending on the size and type, they can run up to $280 a set (which is on par with the high thread count sheets from other brands). But according to some estimates, we spend up to a third of our lives sleeping, or trying to sleep—so if snoozing is a struggle for you, these sheets might be worth the investment. You can find their products on BEDGEAR's website or at retailers around the country.