Best duvets – tried and tested duvets for keeping you warm when temperatures drop

The best duvets can add a little more luxury to bedtime, helping you to transform your bed into a place to cosy up and retreat to after a long day.

A good duvet can also mean you get a better night's sleep by keeping you warm when temperatures drop, without causing you to overheat in the middle of the night.

Tried and tested by the Ideal Home team, we’ve slept under a whole host of the best duvets on the market – including options from Simba, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis & Partners, Soak & Sleep and many more bestselling brand names – to find the duvets that are worth the investment. 

Whilst you're upgrading your sleep comfort, it's worth having our guide to the best mattresses on your radar too, but when it comes to finding the duvet of your dreams, this page has all you need to know to score yourself a more peaceful slumber.

How we test

You'll find the general principles of how we review products at Ideal Home on our how we test page, however, there's only one way to test out the best duvets on the market, and that's to do some snoozing on the job! 

The Ideal Home team has put multiple bestselling duvets from a whole range of brands to the test for this guide, sleeping under each option every night for at least a week to rate each duvet's performance, warmth, breathability, ease of care, and taking into consideration price points to compile our edit of the best-in-class.

Best duvets 2024

Whether you want a winter duvet to keep you snug as temperatures plummet, you're fed up with overheating during the night and are looking for a more breathable duvet, or you're looking to invest in a duvet that will add some real luxury to bedtime, we've rounded up the best duvets to shop in this guide.

Best winter duvets

Best all-season duvets

Best wool duvets

Best feather and down duvets

How to choose the best duvet

Spend some time looking for a new duvet and you'll soon realise there are a whole host of options available. To help you choose the best duvet for your needs we've broken down the basics of duvet shopping below, from understanding tog ratings to working out what duvet filling is best for you.

In fact, deciding on which duvet fill best suits your needs is one of the key factors in getting this purchase right first time. From hollow fibre to goose down, synthetic to natural, the array duvet fillings available can be a little overwhelming, which is where we're here to help.

What is the best duvet filling?

The best duvet filling for you will depend on your sleep and care requirements. If you want a warm yet breathable duvet, then wool is your best friend. If you want an affordable duvet or one that can be bunged in the washing machine and washed at a high temperature then you'll want a synthetic duvet.

We've broken down the pros and cons of most common duvet fillings below.

Wool – in our opinion, wool is a bit of a wonder fibre in terms of duvet fill, and one of the best duvet fillings you can opt for whether it's summer or winter. Insulating, breathable, temperature regulating, hypoallergenic, durable, a sustainable and renewable resource, and bio-degradable at the end of the product's lifespan, it ticks a whole lot of boxes when it comes to the best duvet fill choice. 'Wool works in perfect harmony with your fluctuating temperature', says Chris Tattersall, sleep expert and managing director of Woolroom, 'it also helps to alleviate sleep prohibiting allergies through its exceptional moisture management'. However, not all wool duvets can be washed, so it pays to double-check the manufacturer's care instructions.

Another popular natural duvet filling is down, or, a more affordable mix of feather and down.

Down – long thought of as the Holy Grail of duvet fillings, down creates a plump, squishy and super soft duvet. This natural fill is also far more breathable than a synthetic option, making for a cooler sleep. However, sourced from either duck or goose on an industrial scale, the fill can raise concerns about animal cruelty and won't be the right option for vegans. Look for fill that is certified to be a by-product of the food industry, with Downpass or Downafresh accreditation that denotes ethically sourced and traceable feather and down. Generally, down duvets also aren't machine washable, and will need more plumping, and that luxury feel comes with a luxury price tag to match.

Feather and down – a more affordable alternative to pure down, a feather and down fill bulks out down's fine softness by adding some larger feathers into the mix. Goose feather and down tends to be the most luxurious mix, with duck feather and down the more affordable (yet often a little lumpier) alternative. Generally speaking, the more you spend on a feather and down duvet the better the quality, with some cheaper options resulting in escaped down and feathers that stick through the casing.

If you're looking for a duvet that's more affordable and/or easier to care for, and that can be washed at high temperatures then you might also want to consider synthetic fillings. These duvets are filled with manmade fibres, like polyester and polyamide that are made from petroleum-based plastics. 

Hollowfibre – the cheapest duvets you can buy tend to be made of hollowfibre. Made of polyester wadding, hollowfibre fill is dense but lightweight. A hollowfibre duvet is affordable, easy to care for as it can generally be washed at high temperatures, and is anti-allergenic, which makes it a popular choice for kid's bedding. However, over time this duvet fill is most likely to flatten and become lumpy. Synthetics can also cause overheating and night sweats as the plastic polymer fibres aren't breathable and reflect body heat back towards the sleeper, and neither production or disposal at the end of the duvet's life span (plastic is non-biodegradable) is good news from an environmental point of view.

Microfibre – the 'luxury' version of hollowfibre, a microfibre fill is made of much finer strands of polyester resulting in a very lightweight duvet with a, yes, more luxurious feel. Some compare microfibre to the feel of down, but it has the upside of not running the risk of animal cruelty. However, again, being made of synthetics, the environmental impact of production and disposal is a concern. Like hollowfibre, microfibre can also cause overheating.

What duvet tog is best?

Duvet tog is a measure of how effectively a duvet insulates heat and therefore how warm it will keep you during the night. Duvet tog ratings range from 1 tog to 15 tog, with higher numbers offering more warmth. 

Although you can get duvets in almost any tog rating, the most common togs are 4.5 tog which makes a great summer duvet weight, 10.5 tog which tends to be the best bet for autumn and spring, and 13.5 tog which offers good winter warmth. 

Obviously, it isn't always convenient to have a different duvet for each season, so the middle ground of the 10.5 tog duvet is one of the most popular options. 

Another solution is to opt for an 'all-season' duvet. This consists of two separate lighter tog duvets that can be joined together (usually by way of press studs) to make a warmer winter duvet. Most commonly an all-season duvet will include a 4.5 tog and 9 tog duvet that can create a 13.5 tog duvet once combined, or a 4.5 tog and 10.5 tog duvet that will create a warmer 15 tog combination.

Read more in our guide to what tog duvet to buy as well as finding out when is the right time to switch to a summer duvet.

What size duvet do I need?

Although it will mean spending a little more, and may depend on your bed frame height and style, we'd generally advise sizing up with your duvet, especially if you sleep with a partner. 

That means that if you have a single bed you should opt for a double duvet, on a double bed opt for a king-size duvet, and if you have a king-sized bed then opt for a super king duvet. (And if you're lucky enough to be the owner of a super king bed then you might want to try and track down an emperor duvet, although they are a harder size to find). 

Opting for a duvet that's the size up from your mattress will avoid one partner accidentally pulling the duvet off the other during the night, and keep you both warmer in bed by offering enough fabric to tuck around both your bodies rather than the duvet tenting between you both and allowing in draughts.

FAQs

What's the highest tog duvet?

The highest tog duvet you can buy is usually 15 tog, although we have seen some all-season duvets (where two separate duvets of differing togs are combined into one warmer duvet) offering a combined warmth of up to 18 tog. 

That said, personally, we think 13.5 tog remains one of the best winter duvet weights, with some finding 15 tog can retain heat a little too much during the night and lead to overheating.

Emily Attwood, founder of sleep-brand scooms agrees, ''We’d always advise a 9 tog to 13.5 tog for the winter months as this is ideal and will keep you warm. If your house is always on the warmer side, then a 9 tog duvet would probably suit you better throughout the winter months, and you wouldn’t want to go any higher. This will prevent you from overheating which can disrupt your sleep.'

As well as investing in a heavier duvet, when winter rolls around you could also consider adding one of the best electric blankets on the market to your bed in order to achieve a cosier night's sleep. More energy-efficient and cost-effective than turning the central heating up at night, an electric blanket can cost as little as a few pence per hour to run.

What duvet is best for winter? 

After much testing, we think 13.5 tog is best tog duvet for winter, with most of our testers finding 15 tog can retain heat a little too much during the night and lead to overheating. 

Duvet 'tog' ratings are a measure of how effectively a duvet insulates heat and therefore how much warmth a duvet offers. Tog ratings range from 1 – 15 togs, with higher numbers offering more warmth and therefore making the best winter duvets.

We'd also highly recommend a wool-filled duvet for winter. Wool is naturally thermoregulating which means it insulates to make things cosy whilst remaining breathable to avoid overheating or night sweats. Feather and down options also trap heat well, and feel super luxe, but our hot sleepers found them a little less breathable in our testing process. 

What tog duvet is good for all year use?

If you’re struggling to work out what the best tog duvet is to see you through summer heatwaves and plummeting winter temperatures then an all-season duvet could be the answer. 

An all-season duvet is made up of two separate duvets of differing togs – one lightweight and one midweight – that can be attached together into one single heavyweight duvet or used separately. The idea being that you can mix and match to ensure you have the perfect weight duvet for spring, summer, autumn, and winter. 

This makes an all-season duvet a super useful addition to your year-round sleep set-up. The only downside being that you will need space to store whichever duvet you aren’t using, and – seeing as you’re basically investing in two duvets – an all-season duvet is generally more of an investment, albeit a worthwhile one.

Duvet vs comforter: What is the difference?

Although a mostly American term, a comforter is the word for an extra thick, sometimes quilted blanket which is intended to drape over beds for extra warmth in winter months. While a duvet has a thick natural or synthetic filling inside an outer bag which is used with interchangeable covers to protect it. A duvet is typically a lot more lightweight than a comforter due to its pillow like fillings.