We first met Madame Sweat (Mary Futher) through her posts on Instagram where she shares her expertise and insights on modern hygiene etiquette for grooming, hosting, home, and travel. A clean beauty industry maven and product developer who founded kaia^® naturals, Madame Sweat’s mission to provide hygienic solutions to everyday body issues like sweat and odor aligns with our goal of helping our customers create hygienic beds—the first step towards a great night’s sleep.

Madame Sweat Answers the Age-Old Question: Is Thread Count Marketing B.S.?

Her answer is yes and no. In a recent Instagram reel, Madame Sweat shared the “sweet spot” for thread count and her choice of down etc sheets for her bed. We loved what she had to say.  

Madame Sweat’s Recommendations for Thread Count and down etc Sheets

Whether thread count is marketing b.s. is a complicated question for which Madame Sweat offers a simple solution. She recommends you take the safe road and choose sheets in the range of 200 and 600 thread count. Over 600, she believes things get dodgy as manufacturers use poor quality threads so they can market a higher thread count.

She liked down etc as soon as she noticed we sell to major hotel chains, which means, at 300 thread count, our sheets go through a lot of washing and bleaching in hospitality conditions, so you get durability along with comfort and beauty.

Create a Hygienic Bed with down etc

Madame Sweat is singing our song when it comes to hygiene. As our roots are in hospitality bedding, creating a hygienic bed for sleepers, whether they’re in a hotel or their beds at home, has been our consistent mission. We focus on building a hygienic bed from the mattress up.

Even if you don’t have pets or children climbing in and out of your bed, you need to protect your mattresses and pillows. Face it, we all sweat and drool when we sleep. We also shed skin cells that attract dust mites, spill food and drinks, and suffer the occasional accident or illness. Unprotected, your mattress and pillows can become soiled very quickly.

By preventing these contaminants from reaching your mattress and pillows, you can extend their useful lives and protect your sleep health and well-being. That’s why we strongly recommend consistent use of a waterproof mattress pad and zippered pillow protectors.

We also recommend regular laundering of your sheets even when there is no obvious stain or odor. Sweat, drool, dead skin cells, and cosmetic products, in addition to spilled food and drinks, accumulate on your sheets, creating fertile ground for dust mites and bacteria that can aggravate allergies and make you unwell. 

Maintaining a clean bed means washing your sheets (and this includes your comforter/duvet cover) at least once a week, particularly if you shower in the morning, sleep in the nude, or have kids or pets jumping in bed with you. In between washes, you may want to let your bedding breathe while you get ready for your day so that any moisture from the night before has evaporated before making the bed for the day. 

Wash your down etc sheets on the warm setting and tumble dry low. Remove your sheets promptly from the dryer to minimize wrinkling. Be sure to wash linens together and separately from towels as the roughness of the towels can be tough on your linens. Additionally, they dry at different rates with terry taking more time to dry than linens.

There’s no doubt she knows where we’re coming from. Madame Sweat addresses the same concerns regarding the effects of menopause on sleep as we do, recommending rituals like warm baths and herbal teas to create a bedtime routine to support falling and staying sleep. She goes one step further and addresses the side effect of increased body odor that may accompany the hot flashes and sweats that occur as women go through menopause. Maintaining a hygienic bed, which includes protecting your pillows and mattress from night sweats and regularly laundering your sheets, can help to address one side effect of menopause.

Get Hygienic with Madame Sweat

Madame Sweat’s talent and expertise lie in creating hygienic solutions for problems with which we deal every day. You can find answers to all of your body hygiene problems on her kaia® naturals website from products she has developed for everything from excess sweat to ingrown bikini line hairs available on her “the House of Hygiene” blog, which provides a modern guide to hygiene etiquette and solutions for “unsexy” body taboos.

If you’re like us, you’ll want to see more of Madame Sweat. Here’s where you can find her:

Website: kaia naturals

Blog: The House of Hygiene by Madame Sweat

Instagram: @madamesweat

Pinterest: kaia naturals/clean beauty's profile

Facebook: kaia naturals

Tik Tok: madamesweat

We look forward to helping you to create a hygienic bed for a great night’s sleep.

-The Team at down etc

Read more:

Why Do You Need a Waterproof Mattress Pad and Zippered Pillow Protectors?

Everything You Need to Know About Choosing and Caring for Your Sheets

Can Meopause Disrupt Your Sleep?

About down etc

For over twenty years, down etc has worked with hoteliers and professional housekeepers in hotels around the world to provide pillows and bedding that will offer hotel guests memorably great sleep. Through our retail website, we seek to provide products that will result in the same quality sleep for our customers at home. We believe in the restorative power of a great night’s sleep, whether at home or away.

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