Oh, Gentle Readers. Anyone who says the pandemic is over hasn’t stopped by my house recently: 3/4 of our household is COVID-positive right now. I have been spared so far, but I fear my luck can’t last forever. Sigh.
ANYway, for obvious reasons, BEDS have been very much on my mind. Beds and the pillows that adorn them.
Some people don’t like too many pillows on their beds, and that’s fine. But some sort of decorative pillow situation on a bed is necessary. Therefore, here are a few tried and true formulas that might help.
KING BED: 3 Euro pillows + a lumbar
(A lumbar is a short, long rectangular pillow. The dachshund of the pillow world.) Euro pillows are quite large: 26″ square. It takes 3 of them to fill a king bed, and then you don’t need much else.
Many off-the-shelf bedding sets offer Euro shams to match the duvet cover, which makes Euros an easy, affordable pillow option. Then take the money you just saved and spend it on a custom lumbar pillow to pull it all together.
QUEEN OR FULL BED: 2 or 3 large pillows, with or without one smaller pillow in front
The large pillows could be Euro-sized, as described above, or they could be 22″ or 20″ square. The pillow in front of those just needs to be smaller — square or rectangular. (Or a bolster, but more about those later.)
TWIN BED: Anything goes
Seriously. From a single pillow to a whole pile, you have maximum flexibility with a twin bed. And if you have 2? They can be different!
SLEEPING PILLOWS: Flat or standing up?
The rules used to be inflexible: position your sleeping pillows upright and then stand the decorative pillows in front of them.
But times have changed, and now I actually prefer the sleeping pillows to be flat, with the decorative pillows standing guard in front.
WHAT ABOUT BOLSTERS?
Those are the round tube-like ones. Don’t worry about them. They’re cool, but don’t waste precious brain space on those ;)
The bottom line? Fear highly transmissible viruses, Gentle Readers. Do not fear pillows.
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, DC, with offices in St. Michaels, Maryland and Middlebury, Vermont. Our style? Where classic and modern hang out and drink gin.
