Images of artfully crumpled linen sheets on a cool, low modern bed in a minimalist bedroom are all over glossy mags, Instagram and Pinterest. It’s an inviting look, casually styled (it actually would have taken quite a long time!) and effortlessly chic. But linen sheets aren’t all about Insta shots, there are so many more benefits to sleeping with linen. It’s soft and luxurious, low maintenance and lasts forever. They will certainly outlast cotton sheets and as time passes and cotton wears and looks shabby good linen will get better with age. Linen is so durable and long lasting because the fibres are made up of many cells packed together which makes them about two to three times stronger than cotton’s single-celled strands. It gets softer because washing strips away the pectin in the strands. The low maintenance bit is helped by the fact that linen is supposed to look artfully crumpled, so that’s the ironing taken care of – and linen breathes, the fibres aren’t as tightly woven as cotton and have a hollow core, and this makes it highly air permeable and heat conducting, which means it naturally regulates temperature and keeps you warm in cold weather and cool in hot weather. It can absorb up to 20% of its weight in moisture before feeling wet so can wick moisture away from the body and keep your skin feeling fresh and cool – helping you sleep comfortably and deeply.

On the downside, it has poor elasticity which makes it wrinkle easily but that’s actually an Instagram positive so doesn’t count. More of a disadvantage is that it’s difficult to weave as the fibres are easily broken. So, manufacturing is laborious and time-consuming, the machinery has to run very slow and production costs are twice as high as cotton.