Review: Should You Sleep with Casper's New Line of Sheets and Pillows?

The new rule of startups: Take the mundane, and turn them into objects of desire. Must-have (or at least want) productsthat put name brands behind the anonymous appliances and fixtures that have long filled our homes and lives. We now have Nest thermostats, Hue lightbulbs, and, of course, Casper mattresses.

By simplifying the mattress-buying experience from a used car-esque ordeal to something more akin to ordering an Uber (just one product to buy, and it magically shows up at your house), Casper has rapidly grown into an industry-changing force that is now seeing its share of direct-sales imitators. Lets put it this way: Its not uncommon for me to hear a startup described as Casper for X. The question now: Can Casper repeat this mattress trick on another product category: Bedding.

The company recently released a set of sheets and pillows (or, more accurately, pillowin keeping with their choice-free aesthetic, there is just one model) that ithopes will join the mattress in your bedroom. And while its generally not good journalism to get in bed with a company you are covering, I spent the past few weeks sleeping with the new Casper products to see just how they stacked up. First, the pillow.

As mentioned, there is just one model, though it comes in two sizes: standard ($75 a pop) and king ($85). Prior to using the Casper pillow, I tended to rely on a combination of very soft pillows, mixed with very firm memory foam models. Typically, I would sleep with the soft pillow placed on top of a firmer one, so as to elevate my head and provide extra support.

Coincidentally, the Casper model actually aims to create this exact experience with a single pillow, which is composed of firmcore surrounded by a softer shell (the company describes this approach as dual pillow or pillow-within-a-pillow). The result is actually quite comfortable. I found the microfiber filling did a good job of keeping its shape, and its soft-meets-firm build especially successful as a hug-to-the-chest body pillow and a between-leg support for side sleeping (a use case where I find traditional memory foam to often be so hard as to be uncomfortable).

Now to the sheet set. As a longtime Airbnb host who finds himself repeatedly washing sheets as new guests arrive, I have firsthand experience with how poorly constructed sets handle repeated runs through the wash. Although I only tested the Casper sheetswhich are made from a cotton percale weavefor a few weeks, I attempted to simulate this semi-abusive use case by running them through the wash dozens of times (to avoid being wasteful, I made sure to wash other clothes as well).

Unlike some of the cheaper sheets Ive used in the past, doing so resulted in no noticeable discolorations or changes in fabric consistency or texture. The sheets have a thread count of 200a number that Casper claims strikes the ideal balance between comfortable quality, and not impeding airflow (the theory being that a 600 thread count sheet is too tightly drawn to let air move in and out). And while the sheets certainly appeared to be breathable, the fact that I tested them in the winter means I can'tdraw any conclusions about their performance on mucky mid-summer nights.

Bottom line: These things are really nice. While thebedding world may not be quite in need of ashakeup as the notoriously scammy mattress industryand the fact that there are currently only two color schemes (youve currently got an all-white and white-with-grey-trim as your choices) might keep them from fitting with some specific decors I would recommend both products as a Goldilocks option that shouldwork for most people. And, hey, if they dont work for you, the company does havea fairly painless return process.