At 62, I had done up every room in the house except the one I spend a third of my life in
At 62, I had done up every room in the house except the one I spend a third of my life in
Six things the Reader's Retreat set got right that my tired old bedding got wrong, from a woman who is not a fashion writer.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have never once sat down to write about bedding. But last weekend the clocks went back, and I found myself in bed by half past eight with a cup of tea, looking round my bedroom and thinking how tired it all was. The front room has had new curtains. The kitchen has been redone. The spare room was painted for the grandchildren. My own bedroom still had the same beige duvet cover I bought in a sale years ago. So this is not a review. It is a woman who finally did her own room, saying so.
What I found is from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and it turns out they do bedding too. It is a whole collection of quilted bedding sets, and mine is the Reader's Retreat: rows of old book spines in warm library colours, burgundy and bottle green and gold, with a cream border of embroidered-look roses. A quilt and two matching pillow shams. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
A quilt covered in books. At 62. Read on.
Here is how it happens, and I suspect it happens to most of us. We spend on the rooms other people see. The bedroom is just ours, so it gets whatever is left, and we tell ourselves it does not matter because we are only asleep in there. But it is the room we start and end every day in, and in the long dark evenings it is where a lot of us read, rest and finally have a bit of peace.
I had been making every room nice for visitors, and the one room that was only mine looked like a waiting room.
The Reader's Retreat is the first bedding I have owned that makes me look forward to going up at night, and having slept under it since it arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The afternoon it came. I could not wait to put it on.
A complete set, done in minutes
It comes as one quilt and two matching pillow shams, so there is no hunting for things that go together. I threw the quilt over the bed, slipped my pillows into the shams, and the whole room looked finished. Ten minutes, and my bedroom looked like someone had thought about it.
Transformed my bedroom in minutes. The pillow shams match perfectly and it looks so cosy.
Margaret W., BeestonA design with a story
Rows of old book spines in burgundy, bottle green, navy and gold, with roses and a lovely cream border. It looks like a library on a winter evening. I have always been a reader, and getting into bed under it makes me smile every single night.
Up close. The book spines, the gold bands and the roses on the border.
As a book lover I adore this. Everyone who sees it comments on it.
Jean D., ArnoldCosy without being heavy
It is a lightweight quilt, cosy on cooler nights without feeling heavy on top of me. Now the evenings have drawn in, I sit up in bed with my tea and my book under it and I do not want to come out.
Lovely and cosy without being too warm. Perfect for this time of year.
Pauline M., HucknallSoft, quilted stitching
The whole quilt is stitched in channels, so it has a soft, padded, textured finish. It feels like a proper quilt, not a flat duvet cover.
The padded quilting and the roses running along the edge.
Beautiful quilting and a lovely soft feel. Much nicer than I expected for the price.
Sheila K., Long EatonIt goes in the washing machine
It machine washes on a cold, gentle cycle and can go in the tumble dryer on low. No dry cleaner, no fuss. That mattered more to me than I expected.
Washed it already and it came out lovely. So easy.
Brenda R., CarltonForty designs, and a lovely gift
Mine is the Reader's Retreat, but the collection has forty designs, from flowers and birds to cosy cabins and Christmas, all the same price, in Single, Double, King and Super King. I have already bought my sister one for Christmas.
Wrapped up for my sister. She does not know yet.
Bought one for myself and one for my daughter's spare room. Both look wonderful.
Christine A., West BridgfordThis, against my tired old bedding
Most of us have a bedroom that gets whatever is left. I know, because mine did for years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A beige duvet cover from a sale years ago
Pillowcases that never matched
A room that looked like a waiting room
Flat and plain
Somewhere I only went to sleep
Rows of book spines in warm library colours
A quilt and two matching shams
A room that looks finished
Soft, quilted and padded
Somewhere I look forward to every evening
About the price
The Reader's Retreat set is £84.95 at the moment. It was £170.00. Every design in the collection is the same price, whichever size you choose.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that with the autumn sale on the most popular sizes are going first, and once this batch has gone it can be a long wait for it to come back. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and after weeks of sleeping under it, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered one for my sister. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
If your bedroom is the one room you have never done for yourself, I would start here. Not because you need more things, but because you deserve to end each day somewhere lovely. Go and have a look while your size is still there.
Caroline
The 3-Piece Quilted Bedding Collection
- One quilt and two matching pillow shams (pillows not included)
- Soft quilted stitching across the whole quilt
- Lightweight, cosy on cooler nights without feeling heavy
- Machine washable on a cold, gentle cycle
- Single, Double, King or Super King
- Forty designs, all the same price. Mine is the Reader's Retreat
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The most popular sizes are going first.