Flax™ Linen Flat Sheet — White

You know the hour. At about three you wake, and the sheet is stuck to the backs of your legs. You kick it off, you get cold, you pull it back, and twenty minutes later you are damp again. The room temperature is not the cause, because you have tried the window. The sheet is. Smooth cotton percale and anything with a sateen finish lie flat on the skin, and once a film of moisture sits between the two, the contact is complete.

Flax™ is woven to do the opposite. The flax is spun with its slubs left in, the thick and thin irregularities a cotton mill would comb out, and the weave is left open. That gives a surface of thousands of tiny ridges, so the fabric touches you at points and not across a plane, and air moves in the gaps. The flax fibre is hollow, wicks about a fifth of its own weight in moisture and releases it quickly, so sweat is drawn off the skin and does not stay against it. That is the whole mechanism, and it is structural: no finish is involved, so nothing can wash out.

It has already been stonewashed, and that is the difference between linen you like and linen you put up with. New, unwashed flax is stiff and scratchy and needs a season of laundering to break in. This sheet has had that done: it is tumbled with stone before shipping, so the fibres are broken in and it leaves the bag soft, matte and heavy in the hand. It goes on softening, because flax is one of the few fibres that improves with washing and does not pill or thin.

This is the white. It is not the blue-white of a hotel sheet: with no optical brighteners, it is a soft, warm white that sits quietly beside oak, plaster and oatmeal. It will crease, as it should; a linen sheet that lies perfectly flat has had something sprayed on it. Four bed sizes, one flat sheet in each pack, and a plain double-turned hem all round.

Machine wash warm at 40°C on a normal cycle, alone or with other white linen, and do not overload the drum, because flax needs room to move if it is to keep softening. Use a mild liquid detergent at no more than the stated dose; grains of powder lodge in the weave and dull it. Use no fabric softener and no chlorine bleach: softener coats the fibre and undoes the wicking, and bleach weakens flax and in time yellows it. If it ever needs brightening, a little oxygen-based whitener is safer than chlorine. Tumble dry low, take it out slightly damp and put it straight on the bed, which is the best pressing it will get. Line drying also works, and sunlight keeps the white clean. If you have to iron, do it damp on a medium steam setting, though most people stop after the first month. It will crease, as it is meant to.

100% French flax linen, stonewashed, in a soft warm white with no optical brighteners. Plain weave with the slub left in and a plain double-turned hem on all four sides, with no elastic and no fitted corners. Sold as one flat sheet per pack; pillowcases and duvet covers are not included. Sizes are for the finished sheet and not the mattress: 150 × 230 cm for a single, 180 × 220 cm for a double, 220 × 240 cm for a king and 240 × 260 cm for a super king. Because it is washed and not pressed, small differences in shade, slub density and hem length between pieces are normal.