New Comforter Wrinkled and Not Fluffy?

A comforter can sit inside of its packaging for months before it arrives at your house. During this time the material may have wrinkled and the fill has compressed. What you end up with is a wrinkled, stiff, and compressed comforter that you don't want to sleep under.

There are a few steps you can take to break-in your new comforter. These steps will help remove wrinkles, add fluffiness to the comforter and make it thicker and softer to sleep under. Be sure to try all these tips before you return that new comforter.

Be sure to check the care instructions for your comforter before trying any of these.

New Comforter Wrinkled

Wrinkles happen to all materials if they are stored in a compact enough space. Even wrinkle-free shirts will wrinkle if they kept in a tight enough space for long periods of time. I've certainly went on vacation, over-packed my bag and found that all my "wrinkle free" clothes were wrinkled when I got to my destination.

This is true of comforters. A new comforter can be stiff and wrinkly. It may feel cheap and probably is not something that you look forward to sleeping under.

Your bed is the focal point of your bedroom. You don't want the bed looking wrinkled, especially if you have guests coming over.

There are a few ways to help break in your wrinkled comforter.

Do Not Iron

Before anything else, note that you should not iron a comforter. A duvet cover is fine to iron, but a comforter's filling can be ruined by the heat of an iron. You may get rid of the wrinkles, but you might also melt or damage the comforter itself.

Spray and Sooth

This is a gentle method and is a good first step to getting wrinkles out of a comforter. Step one is to just make the bed with the new comforter. Spreading the new comforter on your bed will help even out the material and will stretch it a little.

Next, get a spray bottle and fill it with distilled water. Spray a mist over the comforter. you do not want to soak the comforter. Once the comforter is damp, use your hands to pull on all the edges of the comforter to make it tight. Then use your hands to rub our the wrinkles on the comforter. Think of a wax-on wax-off motion that you may have seen in the Karate Kid movie.

This works well, but might not get rid of the most persistent wrinkles.

Hit The Shower

You can do something similar to the above by hanging the comforter in the bathroom while you take a hot shower. The steam will help dampen the comforter, easing some of the wrinkles. Do not put your comforter directly into the shower or wet it in other ways. You are looking to lightly dampen the comforter with the steam, not to get it wet.

Dry It

Read the care instructions on your comforter. If they say that you can use an automatic dryer for your comforter you can try to place the comforter into the dryer with a wet wash rag or hand towel and a couple of tennis balls.

The water from the wet towel will evaporate while in the dryer, loosening the wrinkles and the tennis balls will help shift the comforter around to remove the wrinkles.

Again, be careful with this method and do not use a heat setting higher than your manufacturer recommends.

Sleep With It

This is a slow method, but will not damage your comforter. Sleep under your comforter. Your body naturally releases heat and moisture through the night. This will help loosen the wrinkles in a new comforter.

You can take it a step further and sleep with a wet dish towel under your comforter. The heat from your body will make the moisture in the towel evaporate, moistening the comforter and releasing the wrinkles.

Buy A Steam Cleaner

You may have noticed that the main way to get rid of wrinkles is to get your comforter damp and warm. A steam cleaner does exactly that. You can then use your hands to smooth out the persistent wrinkles. This is the most effective way to get wrinkles out of your comforter.

New Comforter Too Thin And Stiff

When you get a new comforter, you want it to be fluffy and soft, not hard and compact. But again, due to packaging, your comforter may look thin and hard. A thin, compact comforter will not keep you was warm as a thick comforter.

Comforters work by creating little air bubbles that keep warmth from escaping. The fluffier a comforter is, the more of these air bubbles it can hold. An overly compacted comforter will not be efficient in keeping you warm.

Here is how to make a new comforter thicker and softer.

Shake It Up

Some comforters simply require you to physically shake them. Pick up the comforter by one end, and shake it around. Loosen all the fibers inside the comforter. If you notice any sections of a comforter that are clumped together, use your hands to massage them loose. You want the fill of the comforter to be evenly distributed.

Dryer And Tennis Balls

This is similar to the above method of getting wrinkles out of your comforter. Only this time, there is no need for a wet towel to go into the dryer.

What you do is place a few tennis balls into your dryer with your comforter and set it to the air-only setting. This is the setting where on heat is produced. This will shake up your comforter while the dryer spins and blows. The tennis balls will be thrown into the comforter, breaking up any sections that are clumped together.

You can place a sock around each tennis ball to make sure that the lint from the tennis ball does not get onto your comforter. Otherwise you may end up with little green flakes on your comforter.

This is a method that I like to use on down sleeping bags too.

Hang It Up

Hanging a comforter on a clothes line for a few hours on a sunny and windy day is a great idea. The sun will help kill off mold and bacteria that may be trying to grow on the comforter, and the wind will pass through the comforter, shifting and unclumping the fill of the comforter.

As you see, when you need to unclump a comforter you are looking to shift the fill around and break up the bigger pieces. This is done by moving the comforter around and allowing air to pass through it.

No matter which of these methods you use, know that a new comforter will get softer and more comfortable as time goes on. The more you use it, the more it will break in and the more comfortable it will be.