What do they call duvets in america

In Australian English, a duvet is also called a doona. In American English, it may be called a comforter ; however, a comforter is usually a slightly different type of bedding that is not as thick, does not have a cover, and is often used over a top sheet. In the US, comforters could be the same as the trad British duvet, but equally they might be thinner, more like a padded quilt, and not always used with duvet covers — some are instead dressed with top sheets.

I want to know if comforter is mainly used in American English, and duvet is basically used in British English, and quilt is commonly used in both to refer to the thing that people use to sleep in? American friends, take it from us. As far as the top covers, All are used to snuggle under when it gets cold, but the main differences are in the thickness and weight. What is a comforter?

Typically, a comforter is a thick, quilted, fluffy blanket that is used to keep you warm. Great info, though, as usual! I've suggested so many of your poststo people; they're great!

Bedspreads are not the American equivalent to comforters. My family has had ones made of corduroy and others made of plain cotton. When I was living in Florida, I bought one made of crocheted cotton lace over a cotton liner a Vanna White special and I've seen, and owned, them as just crocheted cotton without a liner.

And eyelet embroidery. And heirloom quality, homemade embroidered linen. It depends a lot on the climate and cultural heritage. But I did mention bedspreads! And I remembered the point I was going to make: British people need to think about togs and change their duvets seasonally because their houses are less temperature-control l ed than US ones.

I would say that most of the British, and those of British-descent around the world, would say DOO-vay. Not DOO-vet. Yes, it's part of the pattern I discussed back here. Should've mentioned that in the post!

I wonder if, with sufficient motivation, I could have written an entire book on this subject. When duvets first became common in the UK, which I would guess from my childhood memories would be in the seventies, they were generally known as continental quilts. Very exotic!

Thinking back to those days reminds me of electric blankets - pretty common then. Were they known in the USA? I suspect earlier widespread use of central heating would make them less needed in America. They went underneath the bottom sheet, and were put on an hour or so before going to bed so it was warm when you got in.

The ones I knew had to be switched off before you got in, but there were others that could be left on while you slept. Oh, another thing I could have written about! In my experience, US electric blankets are things you put on top of you with the top sheet between you and blanket. In UK, they're more common under you--under the bottom sheet. I've had both and consider the under-sheet version nicer, but I wouldn't want to sleep with wires all the time.

Many UKers still warm their beds in winter with a hot water bottle. These are curiosities in the US. Electric heating pads are used more in the US for the other use of hot water bottles: relieving aches.

Oh, and on the term tog, and duvets in general, the pretty definitive British explanation of them nowadays is comedian Rhod sic Gilbert's famous rant about buying a duvet www. Since you've stolen a march on us Aussies regarding "doona", let me mention "manchester". This is generally used as a generic term for bed clothes plus towels, and for the section of a department store that sells them.

The term is not necessarily known to everyone in Australia: the comedy show "Kath and Kim" had an episode where Kath was bewildered when a shop assistant told her she would have to go to Manchester to get a certain item.

The word may have a flavour of retailers' jargon about it. I miss tog ratings here in the US - how are you supposed to be able to compare the warmth of duvets from different companies? Our I've bought duvet sets from Target and they did NOT include the duvet itself.

For a long time one of the few places where I could find duvet covers in the US was at The Company Store - and they were are expensive. US: At one time, anyway, electric blankets were considered hazardous shock risks when used under the bottom sheet, weren't they? And that's with just v of electricity.

I find "Bed Clothes" an interesting choice for linens. I'd never think to say that, as bed clothes are what we in our house call pajamas, as in, "Go put on your bed clothes, it's time to settle down. Who says that? It's "bed sheets", people. Anything else is wrong. West Coast US, for the record. Almost American - Americans don't need tog ratings because they traditionally adjust temperature by adding or removing sheets, blankets, quilts or comforters, not by switching to a different duvet.

Summer nights usually require only a sheet. The down comforters sold by a lot of old school online retailers, e. Land's End tend to be 'naked,' it's just the basic white down blanket that needs a duvet.

I would never call the down comforter itself a 'duvet,' to me that's the inside! For Almost American, we use the term 'fill power' to discuss the insulating capacity of down comforters. Good luck! My Scottish friend, who was at boarding school from the age of 8, calls them downies, which seems to be a contraction of eiderdown. It was a "continental quilt" when it arrived in Australia in the 70's, too. But then a company called Kimpton started selling it as a "Doona", and the name became generalised to all brands.

I'm British and duvets came from the Continent. When I was growing up in the s and s, we had two flat sheets, two or three blankets and a cover, possibly an eiderdown - an eiderdown is like your quilt and not often washed. Here in Germany there aren't all these discussions of how many togs in the duvet.

When I was a boy, everybody I knew had two sheets and a number of woollen blankets that varied according to bedroom temperature. These were all tucked in when you made the bed. In colder seasons, we might have an eiderdown over these. This was made of down or down substitute sewn up in cotton.

Unlike a feather bed it was stitched all over to keep the filling evenly distributed. It was of the same size as the top of the bed, so was not tucked in. Hotel rooms and some private bedrooms would have a bedspread over everything. This was big enough for the edges to fall down at the edges but was not tucked in.

Its primary function was to keep the other elements in place. If it was heavy, it wasn't so much to add warmth as to keep the eiderdown from slipping away.

The word counterpane was still around — if only on the radio favourite dancing on the ceiling click to hear ; I never understood what it meant. The word quilt was also around, but in our house it wasn't really understood. My mother made what she called a patchwork quilt for my bed.

The idea presumably came from American quilts, but my bed was an assembly of simple squares of knitting in different colours. Many hotel beds have most or all of the elements of my childhood, but I don't often use the same terms to describe them. There have been so many changes since then, that I tend to fall back on the general term cover.

My wife grew up in Soviet Russia and, although as bilingual as you get, uses blanket to refer to anything warm that goes into a duvet cover. PS A viral joke that caught my father's fancy and never let go: — Eiderdown — She's been down three times!

Further west e. Personally, I always think a doona sounds like some sort of kitchen implement: it's a very hard, solid-sounding word. A friend passed on this discussion of togs and bedding on Would I Lie to You? UK, I've never heard "duvet" pronounced with a t, but always doo-vay. I assume because it entered the language relatively late. In any case, my family refer to ours as quilts and they have quilt covers. Bryn You're right of course. As a boy I didn't know what satin was.

As an adult I didn't really care. I always assumed the French pronunciation DOO-vey or similar and it's the only pronunciation I remember hearing having lived in several parts of the UK. I guess in my mind it ties back to the "continental quilt" that I remember hearing in my teens when the rest of my family switched to using them.

At the time I slept in a sleeping bag whether camping or home on a bed. To me late 50s, BrE, southern , "Bedding" refers to everything that goes on to a bed to enable me to sleep in it; the sheets and pillowcases are generically called linen I wish!!!

Usually poly-cotton, as who has time to iron? And a bed-spread is what goes on top of the bed in the day time to keep it free from dust. It is removed at night and folded up - personally, I only ever put ours on our bed if we are not going to sleep in it that night, but then, I am lazy.

At school, one had to put them on every day, and then fold the sides up so the cleaner could sweep under the bed! But it was very often so cold in the dormitories ice inside the windows in the mornings! We had two blankets provided by the school, and were expected to bring a travelling-rug and an eiderdown see David's excellent description above to be added as needed at night. Incidentally, the sheets we had back then were flat, and each week you discarded the bottom sheet that you had lain on it, and the pillowcase, went to the laundry , put the previous week's top sheet over the mattress and under-blanket, and used a fresh top sheet and pillowcase that came straight from the laundry and were very starched!

Most comfortable, really Like many, I didn't much care for duvets at first, and only really started using them regularly when I married, but thirty-mumble years later, I'd hate to go back to sheets and blankets. Mrs Redboots - people wear clothes I thought. Beds wear covers. Obviously, I was wrong. In my British youth my bed had an eiderdown satin or shot silk on top, cotton underneath over the blankets, and a bedspread over that during the day.

A comforter was a muffler or scarf, of the long knitted variety not the square silk sort. Nowadays in Australia, as noted, doonas are more or less universal, with or without intervening sheet.

PS, long live the hot water bottle, couldn't get through the winter without it once a Brit Thanks for the wonderful blog, Lynne, I enjoy it so much. It's one of those oddities of international trade that in the UK we borrowed the word duvet from the French where it means "down" as in feathers - perhaps because pioneers had been introduced to the thing itself on ski-ing holidays in France or the German equivalent didn't sound as good?

They were only thin because the central heating was kept on all night in the cold winters it's still very unusual to do this in the UK. Covers could be made up from sets of sheets - I could not find ready-made covers in Canadian shops. The earliest known use is dated a before One man even claimed he had spoken to an American who had never even heard of the word 'duvet'. Meanwhile a British woman questioned why more people in the UK didn't sleep with a single blanket, tweeting: 'I don't understand why in the UK we abandoned blankets just around when we all got central heating and could finally live without duvets.

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