What is percale bedding?

What’s the right pick for you? Renforcé, seersucker, damask, flannel, satin, or percale? With the wide range of fabrics available for bedding, it’s not always easy to choose the right one. Each fabric has its own particular characteristics; some are more suitable for the summer, as they feel cooler on the skin, while others are a better fit for the winter because they are such good insulators.

That said, the most important thing to consider when choosing the right bed linens are your own personal preferences. Do you prefer to sleep in snuggly soft bedding? Or do you prefer a fine, smooth fabric?

In this article we would like to help you make your choice and introduce you to a very special type of bedding, namely percale bed linen. So, what exactly is percale bedding and how does it differ from other fabrics?

 

Find the right bed linen for every season

Bed linen made of different materials can have a great influence on how warm or cool we feel in bed, as different types of bedding provide different degrees of warmth and regulate moisture better or worse than others. When choosing the right bed linen, you should therefore not only pay attention to its design and colour, but also to the fabric's weave and the material it's made of.

Due to the way they're woven, some fabrics are more suitable to be used as summer bed linen and others as winter bed linen. In the winter, most people prefer that their bed feel soft and fluffy. Firmer fabrics such as flannel bed linen or flanelle bed linen are best suited to this purpose.

In the summer, on the other hand, we should make sure that our bed linen is very breathable, so that the heat and sweat our body releases throughout the night doesn't acculumulate under the blanket. On hot days and nights, it's important that the bed linen provide a good temperature balance, otherwise we quickly start sweating  and wake up with an unpleasant feeling in the night. For the summer, bed linen made from Renforce, Seersucker and Linon is very suitable.

 

For which season is percale bed linen suitable?

Percale bed linen is very finely woven and feels noticeably softer on the skin than other types of bed linen. Due to its smooth surface, percale is often used as summer bed linen, but can also be used the whole year. Due to cotton's natural breathability, percale bedding releases heat to the outside in the summer, while the way percale is woven allows it to retain warmth inside during the winter. 

 

What is percale bed linen and how is it made?

The name originally comes from the Persian word pargalah and means cloth in English. Percale is extremely fine-threaded, medium-heavy and is woven densely. It is produced by means of the so-called plain weave. In the plain weave, the weft thread goes alternately over and under the warp threads. The type of weave is very regular, which is why the top and bottom sides of the fabric look identical. Fabrics woven with the plain weave are incredibly durable and resistant to fraying and abrasions.

Percale bed linen is characterized by exactly these properties. It is extremely durable and tear-resistant, but feels very soft on the skin thanks to the fine weave. Percale bed linen is mainly made from cotton fabric, but is also sometimes made from polyester or a mixed or composite fabric. Percale's smooth surface is particularly skin-friendly and is ideally suited as bedding for people with allergies.

The breathability of the fabric is only one of the percale bedding's special features. Apart from its use in bedding, percale is often used as a fabric for shirts or blouses and home fabrics. The most valuable type of percale are fabrics made from Egyptian cotton, which is called maco percale, and percale bed linen made of pure organic cotton.

 

How does percale bed linen feel?

Percale is comparable to Cambric or batiste. Cambric is also made using the plain weave and can be made from silk, linen, polyester or cotton. Compared to Cambric, percale is more densely woven and therefore more durable.

Percale has a light texture and is very breathable. In its natural state, percale has a dull surface, but chemical finishing can give the material a shiny finish. The smooth surface of percale makes printing on the fabric very easy. This is why you can find percale bed linen made with fine and detailed drawings.

Here you will find an overview of the most important properties of percale:

• Durable (because the material is extremely hardwearing)
• Breathable absorbs moisture very well
• Air-permeable (prevents heat accumulation under the comforter)

 

Percale bed linen made from pure organic cotton

When compared with conventionally-grown cotton, organic cotton has a number of advantages that you should consider when buying your next bedding item. A great deal of water is consumed to grow conventional cotton. Organic cotton, on the other hand, uses 40% to 90% less water because the farmers use a thicker humus layer. In addition, organic cotton is not a genetically modified plant. Genetically modified plants need more water than others and are hardier and more resistent than organic cotton. Organic cotton produces seeds from which new plants grow.

No chemical pesticides are used in the farming of organic cotton. 10 to 20% of the world's pesticides are used in the farming of cotton; generally, cotton fields are sprayed with these poisons about twenty times per season. The use of both chemical and synthetic pesticides is prohibited in organic farming, which is why organic cotton is hypoallergenic and does not cause any skin irritation.

When buying cotton items, you should therefore pay attention to the seal found on the packaging or label. Organic cotton is distinguished by the worldwide recognized GOTS seal and the seal "kbA" (= kontrolliert biologischer Anbau, which means controlled organic cultivation). Products that have been certified with the GOTS seal can be tracked by means of the item's certification number. The entire production chain is controlled, from cultivation to sale.

 

What makes maco-percale bed linen made from Egyptian cotton  so special?

Mako Percale is a type of luxury bedding fabric, so you can often find sheets or duvet covers made with this fabric in the best hotels of the world. So what makes Mako-Percal so special? Mako Percale is made from Egyptian cotton and is distinguished by many special features.

Egyptian cotton is a cotton fiber of extremely long staple length. The staple length is the  average length of the fiber. The longer the fiber, the thinner but also stronger the thread can be spun. This makes it not only more fine-spun than other materials, but also more resistant.

Egyptian cotton feels soft on the skin and has all of cotton's special properties of cotton: it is breathable and absorbs moisture very well.

 

Percale bed linen from Zizzz

At Zizzz, we cary bed linen made from percale. We promise you that this bed linen will provide you with an excellent sleeping environment. Our percale bed linen is GOTS-certified organic, so you can be assured that no pesticides or chemical fertilizers were used to grow it. 

We carry duvet covers, pillowcases and fitted sheets made from organic cotton percale. We have several matching colour patternns and a wide range of sizes available. If you try our percale products out, we're sure that you'll be convinced of their quality. At the same time, you can take comfort in the knowledge that your purchase contributes to the movement towards a more sustainable textile industry.