This is the 4th installment in our Guide to Modern Bedding series.

Here, we discuss several modern bedding brands available today.

We all have a couple brands that we swear by — ones that have stood the test of time and always come out shining. Throughout this Guide to Modern Bedding, we tried to delineate which qualities are essential to a bedding purchase (we’d vote for certain materials like Egyptian cotton) and which qualities involve tradeoffs (like thread- counts, finishing, and certainly aesthetics).

Here’s where the rubber meets the road, our favorite bedding brands and what makes them such, with an honest appraisal of not only what they are, but what they aren’t.

Dwell Bedding

The Dwell designers use graphic patterns and inventive color pallets to create exciting bedding that will define a room.

With Dwell, you can actually build your room around your bedding. Just choose a color in the pattern and run with it. It’s a chance to have fun.

We think the quality represents a solid mid-market option. Dwell uses 210-tc Egyptian combed cotton, and they do all their finishing in Turkey (again, a good mid-market source). The bedding dyed using reactive printing, so you get full pattern and color on both sides of fabric.

*Our recommendation* Dwell is a solid mid-priced line that you can buy with confidence and expect to last several seasons. And the designs will have anyone who enters your bedroom asking about your bedding.

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Unison

Unison is a new comer to the modern bedding arena – formed by Robert Segal + Alicia Rosauer with the vision that modern design can be a livable, breathable, everyday part of life. After four years of designing and living in Finland, they decided to bring their design sensibilities back to America. Robert and Alicia combine their extensive background of textile design and photography to create products that offer a minimalist style with emphasis on color and innovative print design.

Amenity

Based in Los Angeles, Amenity seeks to incorporate nature in all its beauty and comfort into everyday life with gorgeous, useful, high-quality goods. And they’ve succeeded: you can’t get much more everyday than prime-time TV, where an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” featured Amenity’s Twig pattern duvet.

Area

Area’s designer, Anki Spets, opts for natural, organic fibers like beautiful cottons and linens and designs around them, creating the quintessential modern bed of minimalist simplicity.

Area is known for its simple, basic materials. They use 200- to 300-tc sheets, and their fabrics consist of only natural fibers which make these sheets very easy to maintain and care for (even the linen lines) — so both the appearance and quality will last.

*Our recommendation* We love Area. If you want to rule out the very high-end luxury lines of bedding, Area is perhaps the best quality you can buy in the mid-range. And with classic styling that won’t go out of style, Area is the perfect line for those who want a little serenity in their bedroom.

Matteo

We believe Matteo bedding is the best luxury bedding on the market.

Make no mistake, this is a premium line. The cotton is the finest Egyptian. The sheets exemplify fine Italian finishing — the 250-tc Ado Saddlestitch line is crafted to feel softer and last longer than other sheets with twice the thread count. The 500- tc Eos Pintuck line exhibits what beautiful stitching, in its case, a “pintuck,” can do to create a fine luxury sheet.

Matteo custom sews each set in Los Angeles, where they hem all four sides of their sheets to produce a better look and more durability. Their fitted sheets are the only fitted sheets we’ve seen where the elastics go all the way around (like a shower cap), snap like a bow-and-arrow, and are enclosed by double-seamed fabric — again, producing a clean, luxury look that will last longer than most other sheets on the market. Matteo uses 12-14 stitches per inch to create their bedding — more than any other line we tested. This costs more to sew, but the sheets look better and last longer — much like a fine men’s shirt.

Before opting to carry Matteo, we compared it to Frette — a perhaps better-known luxury bedding line. Although Frette makes an excellent luxury product, in the end, we liked Matteo’s more modern styling, and it was a bit more competitively priced.

*Our recommendation* Matteo is not an impulse purchase. If you want to treat yourself to the best modern luxury bedding available, consider it. But first request some samples of the product so you can *feel* what we are talking about, or call us to chat about what makes Matteo different.

Fold

FOLD created a line of bedspreads and pillows that we think represent some of the most exciting bedding products on the market today. Their bedspreads are made of thin, quality wool or linen. You simply hop out of bed in the morning, pull the streamlined wool or linen spreads over everything, and presto, instant mod. The hand stitching and beautiful colors of this line speak for themselves.

*Our recommendation* FOLD doesn’t make sheets or cases, but if you are looking for something to cover up or reinvent an existing set, FOLD will do the trick. And we guarantee no one will have seen anything like it.

That’s it. Those are our favorite bedding lines, the ones we think demonstrate value. Choose one from this list, and rest assured that you will get more than what you pay for. Did we miss a line you like? Please list your favorite below, and let us know why you like it!

Next lesson: How to care for your bedding to make it last longer.