I finally found a bed I didn’t lose any sleep over

Sometimes – when I’m bored in a budget meeting, or waiting for a prescription at the chemist, or looking at another depressing graph about COVID-19 cases – I like to daydream about the best sleep of my life. For a long time, I thought it was at the Six Senses hotel in Portugal’s Douro Valley, regarded as the oldest wine region in the world.

The offerings of the region undoubtedly contributed to the soundness of my slumber on that glorious night in 2017, but research afterwards revealed that, in fact, the hotel chain prides itself on the quality of its beds. “Did you ever wonder how your hotel mattress was made?” a self-identified “sleep doctor” asks in a featured video on the Six Senses website. Not really, but now that you ask, I’m listening.

Their beds feature a handmade mattress and topper from a solar-powered factory; a latex layer from the world’s only certified-organic rubber plantation; something called “three chamber pillows” from Germany (where else?), and sheets made with eucalyptus fibres – because koalas know all about good sleep.

My Six Senses experience was recently superseded by a night at Dukes hotel in London, which dates back to 1908 and is tucked away down a cobblestoned alleyway in the heart of Mayfair. The hotel is old-fashioned enough to offer stays “tailored to female guests”. Known as “Duchess rooms”, they include a fruit basket and glossy magazines on check-in.

Dukes also has a proud lineage when it comes to drinks: Ian Fleming is said to have invented James Bond’s martini, shaken not stirred, at its charming slip of a bar. But by the time I arrived, on a balmy June evening after a show in the West End, the bar was shut, the lobby was quiet and I travelled up to my room in one of those old-world, cage-cab lifts which bring to mind Agatha Christie novels or the movie Amélie.

Being in central London, the bed took up most of my room, which was either discreetly opulent or slightly boring, depending on your decorating taste. What a bed, though! The unassuming beginning to my stay was forgotten when I sank into it. Does anyone do no-nonsense luxury quite like the British?

The unassuming beginning to my stay was forgotten when I sank into it. Does anyone do no-nonsense luxury quite like the British?

Needless to say, the Dukes hotel’s website does not feature any videos of sleep doctors and there is no information at all on the bed’s various components. That would be gauche. Without any names of linens or mattresses to track down, I’ve been left to cobble together a re-creation of the Dukes experience on a decidedly non-aristocratic budget.

Which is why, watching a show on Netflix the other day, I found myself thinking that the charcoal-coloured sheets a spy spilled out of would work nicely in my life. On another show, the natty blanket on a detective’s bed got me thinking not about whodunnit, but the perfect amount of puff in a duvet.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that I’ve developed an obsession with bedding at a time in my life when, with little kids underfoot, I get very little sleep. It’s a case of making every hour count.

But as I bide my time before making a big purchase, two quick fixes have improved my bedroom routine. The first is to try to read something before bed that isn’t about inflation or monkeypox. The second is the oldest trick in the book: making the bed in the morning so you can pretend you’re somewhere else – the Douro, or Mayfair – in the evening.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.