Making a Swedish bed
This one comes from you. People keep asking how a Swedish bed is made.
Prompted, as these often are, from the comments. The recurring question is what goes on a bed here and in what order.
No claim to speak for the country. But what gets built here is plainer than the American version, and different again from the beds in German relatives’ houses, where the duvets have always struck me as unusually thick and unusually short.
With the house empty after Christmas I washed all the bedding, and photographed one of them going back together.
Layer by layer
The base. The thing underneath everything, wearing a stretch cotton cover that goes in the machine. The English name for it defeats me; a box spring is the nearest equivalent.
The bed skirt normally covers the base and hangs down the sides. I make my own version of this rather than buying one.
The overlay mattress goes on top. This one is about 2 cm (¾ in) thick; you can get thicker. The double bed upstairs has one nearer 5 cm (2 in).
A washable pad over the overlay: a thin quilted flat cover with elastic straps across the corners. These get washed every second or third time the sheets do.
A sheet, flat or fitted, over the pad.
Then pillows, and a duvet.
The part that surprises people
Each person gets their own duvet, even in a double bed. No shared bedding, no tucking anything in at the sides.
It makes the bed quicker to make, it settles the argument about who takes the covers before it starts, and it means one side can be a different weight from the other.
That, more than anything else, is what makes it look simpler.