What Retailers Need to Know about Top of the Bed

Just as the clothes make the man, the top of bed product makes the bed. And as with fashion, there’s a bedding choice on the market for every consumer’s style. Are you a classic dresser who wears fresh, crisp button ups and ironed slacks? Try a fitted bed cap or a tailored bed skirt. Do you feel right at home in a tux or a formal gown? Dress your bed with layers of opulent comforters and coverlets, and pile it high with beaded and embroidered pillows. On the weekend, do you don a comfy sweater and worn-in jeans? Your bed might like a quilted spread and a couple of feather pillows in chenille shams.
Current top of the bed trends give retailers and consumers many choices: foofy or starched? Custom or ready-made? Traditional or avant garde? At the recent Las Vegas Market, FL&LS spoke with top of the bed producers about their take on trends and predictions for current hot sellers.

Shapes

Shari Hammer, owner of SIS Covers, sees the top of bed market going in two main directions. On one hand, “I see it going very formal and decked out. They’re decking out a bed with 10 or 15 pillows, the whole package. But I also see it going very sleek and kind of minimalist.” SIS is taking the minimalist road. “Contemporary furniture is really big right now, so contemporary top of the bed is a big thing.”

Arthur Viente, Director of Sales for Legacy Linens, does a more opulent, layered look. He sees his company going the high design direction. “What we’re finding in our experience is that people don’t have the time to do the design as much as they want. People want everything finished, so they don’t have to work through the whole design process– they can see it, understand it, and go. We try to give them a finished look. We’re really a designer look without the headache.”

Products

Duvet covers

Duvet covers are one of the hottest products for top of the bed right now. “We’re doing duvets mostly,” said Hammer of SIS. “The insert is buttoned all the way around the duvet cover, so in a sense it’s like a bedspread, just not quilted. It’s buttoned together internally. We have buttonholes on the insert, and we have buttons on the duvet cover on the inside. So they can remove it and wash it, but it stays in place.”

Mary Lou Rath of CottonBelle also emphasizes duvet covers. “We do coverlets, duvets and inserts. Sometimes people use a duvet without the insert.” She stresses the importance of helping consumers consider the weight of the fabric when they’re choosing bed covers. Lightweight bed toppers are popular, especially in warm climates.

Bed spreads/comforters
A typical bed set from Southern Textiles builds off of a basic comforter. “The ensemble comes with the comforter and skirt, and then there’s usually two Euros, two shams and then a few decorative pillows,” said Vicki Fil, Director of Product Development.
Hirsha Lodhia of Shamiana does mostly pillows, but has also seen success with a quilted bedspread. “My bed in the bag has two free shams, it’s reversible, it’s washable, and it’s one-size-fits-all, so it’s really a great deal,” she said. “People go crazy about this, because it’s uncomplicated, there’s no shams or bedskirts,” and no need to custom-create a longer drop.

Bed caps
A bed cap is a fitted bed covering that slips down over a mattress. The corners and edges are sewn to precisely hug a bed’s curves. “We do a lot of bed caps,” said Hammer of SIS. “It’s a real fitted, tailored, clean look, because we do a lot of platform beds.”

Sheets
Some manufacturers include sheets with the top of bed category while others do not. SIS does include sheets with top of bed. “I know that I personally like my sheets to match my bedding because you see them,” Hammer said. “We brought out our own line of sheeting because we wanted to choose colors that work with the fabrics in our line.
So we’re putting together the whole total bed, from what you actually sleep on to what you cover yourself up in. We can also put the sheeting on the back of the duvet cover if the custo-mer wishes.”

Bed skirts
Even on the more “foofy” beds, there was hardly a ruffled bed skirt to be seen at Market. Southern Textiles does nicely tailored bed skirts with a few wide pleats, as does Legacy Linens.

SIS is seeing bed skirts fade a little, “I think because bed frames now have real nice side rails and the box spring is not visible so much anymore,” Hammer said.

Pillows

Pillows from Shamiana

Pillows are the highlight of bedding accessories. “People buy pillows four or five times a year without guilt, so it’s the price point that has to be competitive, and it has to be fun,” Lodhia said.

Traditional pillow shapes are still popular, and there’s an explosion of non-traditional sizes as well. Boxy shapes and masculine styles are quite popular. “Of course the traditional, Euro, queen, because that’s industry standard, and everybody likes those on their beds,” Hammer said. “As far as toss pillows, we’re doing a lot of bed bolsters that fit the whole bed.”

“Box corner is my favorite,” Lodhia said. “And then the oversized 22-inch. The 22 tends to do well in the sofa business because it’s a little bit bigger, and then the box is more of a clean, modern look.”

Rath of CottonBelle likes to help consumers think about the functionality they need from their pillows by asking them questions. “Do you read in bed, do you have low back pain, are you hanging out on your bed?”

Legacy Linens showed some different looks in displaying pillows, with some stacked up on top of each other and not just in front of each other. This look has been cropping up in high-end design magazines as well.

Colors

Forecasting
The fabric companies all go to the same source, Hammer said. “I think it’s the Color Marketing Group. When I go to a fabric market, the fabric designers are all on the same page. Their designers know exactly what’s happening in Europe and in apparel. It’s amazing how every mill has [the same offerings] – you know, it’s blue and brown this year, then it’s purple and green. Everyone’s on the same page, it’s so global.”

“Sometimes fashion doesn’t indicate what’s going to happen in home,” Lodhia said, “so I don’t really follow clothing fashion too much. I get influenced by Europe.” One place she likes to look for inspiration is the color story introduced at the Interior Lifestyles show. “Once I know what they’re doing, I get on it very fast. I don’t take all of it, I just take what I think will work for me. You have ways of finding out what’s happening, and then I do what’s in my gut.”

Trends
“There’s always a few trend colors,” Fil of Southern Textiles said. “Tiffany blue is supposed to be one of them. I keep hearing purple. The spa blue is still there. Mocha and anything is around. Mocha and pink, mocha and orange, mocha and blue. I’m seeing a lot of neutrals. We saw a lot of grays at the fabric show.”


Ensemble from Southern Textiles

“Orange, chocolate, cranberry red,” Lodhia said are trend colors.

Pat Dortch of Carriage House, which makes upholstered beds and bedding to match, said, “They’re doing our beds mostly in solids and in more neutrals and earthies.”

“Chocolate and browns are huge,” Rath said. “Earthy kind of looks. Brown and green, brown and blue, the green is still very big.”

Traditional colors will always be in style, Fil said. “There’s always going to be trends, there’s always going to be fashion, there’s always going to be color, but then you’re always going to get the people who want your basics, your traditionals, your more contemporary looks, but in a really clean, simple ensemble that is more neutral than anything else. Because obviously you can build your bedroom around something more neutral.”

Fabrics

“Everything goes on top of the bed,” Hammer said. “Upholstery fabric, woven jacquards, heavier fabrics. We’re seeing cotton prints, just sateen sheeting, lightweight. We’re seeing a lot of microfiber. There’s not any one standout. The microfiber, as with furniture, is so easy to maintain – it’s washable, a lot of them are stain-repellant. So it just makes sense in the bedroom too.”

“We still do a lot of the suedes,” Dortch said, for beds and bedding. “We got into some linens, which we’re doing well with, and then we do some damask. Still, I think the strongest are the suedes.”

“Sheen” is an important word in bedding fabrics. “What you see here is a lot of sheen,” Fil said, “and that’s what we saw from a lot of the companies at Showtime [the High Point textiles show]. They didn’t call it shine, they didn’t say it was shiny, they
didn’t call it metallic, but they did call it sheen. The fabrics have a lot of sparkle to it.”
Feel is as important as look in fabric. “The other thing we saw was texture,” Fil said. Their gray, black and white bed (page 19) combines several different textures. “There’s the sheen and shininess and slipperiness of the comforter and then there is a suede fabric, and then sort of the waffle weave of the Euros, and then the shams and then the
decorative pillows.”

Rath also believes that “Texture is still king! A printed cotton is nice, but you want to feel something – the microfibers do it, the chenilles do it, and they’re washable. You can dry microfibers in the dryer, and if anything, they just get softer and softer.” CottonBelle also uses some washable faux silks and is doing a lot with indoor/outdoor fabrics, which are perfect for sunrooms, patios and rooms with large windows. These fabrics resist fading, weather and even pet mischief.

Lodhia uses poly silk in her bedspreads, and in the pillows, she uses primarily dupioni silk from India and linen.

Fil said Southern Textiles does well with basics, like cotton duck and twill. “We’re
trying to get the high fashion looks without the luxury types of fabrics. We do a lot of polyester shantung. You can actually get the look for quite a bit less.” That ultimately translates to value for the consumer.

Upholstered Beds

Upholstered bed from Carriage House

Beds themselves are dressing in fine fabrics. But when you already have an upholstered headboard, what do you put on the bed?

“We got into doing some bedding to go on top of our beds and we just assumed that people would be very matchy-matchy,” Dortch said. But he found that people liked to mix and match. “I thought they’d be buying more sets. We’re seeing people buying their bed as a unit and buying their bedding as a unit. People are looking ahead and saying, down the road we’re going to want to change the bedding anyway, so let’s get a bed that we like the color of and we know we’re going to live with.”

Southern Textiles makes a headboard upholstered in basic muslin, and then they sell slipcovers that match their bedding ensembles. “Some people prefer to do a plain slipcover if they’re doing a bold pattern on the comforter,” Fil said, while others match the headboard slipcover exactly to the comforter. FLLS