Why we stopped selling cotton sheets

For our first six months we sold cotton sateen sheets alongside the linen ones. Same Lithuanian mill, same stonewashed finish, both single-fibre.

We stopped selling cotton in May 2024 because every customer who bought linen for the first time stopped buying cotton from anyone, ours or otherwise. The linen sheets did three things the cotton sheets didn't do as well:

1. They stayed cool in summer. Linen breathes. Cotton sateen, however high the thread count, doesn't breathe — it shines, which is its other selling point, but the smoothness comes from the weave being airtight. Linen's slight irregularity is what makes the airflow.
2. They got softer with use. Cotton sateen is at its softest the day you take it out of the box. Year three it's slightly less soft. Linen is at its softest at year three.
3. They lasted. Our linen sheets are designed to be replaced after 8-10 years of weekly washing. Our cotton sheets, at the same thread count and same finish, were lasting more like 4-5 years.

We could have kept the cotton in the catalogue and let customers choose. We chose to take it out because it muddied the message. Linen is what we recommend; selling cotton next to it implied the choice was a matter of preference. It isn't — for a sheet that's going to live with you for a decade, linen is better.

Mateo