- Showing: Goose Down Duvets
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- 10 products
- prices from £80.00 to £155.00 (GBP)
Pure goose down is widely used to insulate your body from the cold whilst you sleep, the soft fully down clusters trap warm air from your body. Branded Goose Downs such as Siberian, Canadian, Hungarian and European sourced downs offer superior levels of quality, comfort, loft and cleanliness that other cheaper downs cannot match. Goose down and Duck down fills are very much the same in terms of quality although goose down fills tend to be slightly more expensive with a greater emphasis on down and less on feather fills. Duck Down is considered to be inferior to goose down and this if often reflected in prices that you can see online, this is not necessarily the truth though as you can buy European Duck Down Duvets with a cleaner, loftier and higher fill power rating that most goose down duvets from China.
Our 100% pure duck down duvets are ethically sourced in Europe and are environmentally cleaned using the latest techniques in steam cleaning, leaving a raw down that is superior in all aspects of quality and comfort but at a price that is much more reasonable and affordable. Duck down duvets are becoming more and more common now as prices for both downs are rising fast as demand increases, so you may want to look more closely at a duck down duvet as there are many bargains to be had.
They are then graded by a machine to create different fill power qualities. You don’t have to have a branded down filling to have a high-quality high fill power duvet, the branding is just a very good way of ensuring that the down is ethically harvested and traceable. The term European Goose Down and European Duck Down is derived from down that is sourced from several different designations within Europe but they can still be traced back to the individual farms but as they are a mixed variety they are classed as European, to determine there actual quality we then refer to the fill power test.
We are often asked is goose down white? The down can vary quite a lot from a greyish white to dark grey, this is age dependant and also the season plays a very important role in determining the colour as well. All shades of colouring do the same job, just because it says pure white it does not mean it is better than grey down, it is just more aesthetically pleasing to have white down rather than a darker down. Whiter down is more expensive just for this reason as white cotton duvet cases can show the darker filling in more contrast.
This is the most important question you can ask when it comes to knowing how good the goose down filling is? There is no other comprehensive test available, you cannot open the duvet to check its contents. You just have to trust that the filling inside conforms to the fill power test, this is another reason why we use duvets that are made in the UK or Europe as there is more accountability and more tests that the duvet manufacturers must strictly adhere to. Fill Power measures the loft of the down. They place a measured amount of down in cylindrical canisters and drop a set weight on the filling to see how well it rebounds. It is more technical than this but this is just a brief idea of how it works in principal. The larger and cleaner the down fillings the more rebound will occur giving you a higher reading of Fill Power under this specific set laboratory test condition.
The better quality of the down the longer lasting and more resilient the down will be over years of constant use. To give you an idea, our Siberian and Canadian Goose Down Duvets have a fill power rating in excess of 800 Fill Power, this is extremely high and is one of the best quality downs you can buy, our Hungarian Duvets start at around 750 fill power which is still industry leading in terms of cleanliness and quality.
This is also an extremely good question, steam cleaning is the short answer but be careful with some cheaper varieties as they also bleach the darker cheaper down clusters and feathers to give them an appearance of being white in order to get more money for them. This bleaching process makes them brittle and they do not last very long before breaking and just turning to dust as the bleaching makes them dry and chalky. There are a few factors set out below that manufacturers use to ensure the down is expertly cleaned:
Oxygen Test: Measures the presence of any organic body material, the lower the number from 1 – 30 the better, making the down more breathable.
Turbidity Test: Measures the amount of dust or foreign material that is present in the down, ranging from 20 – 1000. The higher the number the better the quality of the down, this is good for any allergy suffers to ensure you get a cleaner and more breathable goose down with less irritants present that can be breathed in. There are no minimum requirements for this test in Europe but most branded down manufacturers will ensure that this test is completed to a very high standard.
So just to recap, goose down is a superb high quality filling to use in your duvet. It is a fantastic insulator which is both light and soft and is good for allergy suffers. The high fill power large down clusters help regulate your body temperature no matter what the weather is like outside, both excellent in summer and in the colder winter months.
The vast majority of goose down and goose feather and down duvets come from China. Most department stores and supermarkets achieve low prices as they sell these duvets on mass which can be inferior in quality and filling. China as we know does not have the same stringent environmental testing and ethical procedures in place as we do here in the UK. This is the reason why we sell only duvets that are made in the UK or Europe to ensure that we are maintaining our strict ethical and environmental impact responsibilities.
If money was no object we would always advise you to choose a branded down, such as Canadian or Hungarian for example, as you can trace the down back to the actual farm where the goose are raised and even delve into the lifestyle and treatment should you so wish to have this information. With any other goose down filling this would not be possible as they are mass produced in large Chinese factories where you really do not know what you are getting, some down pillows for instance have been known to have a mix of both duck and goose downs.
Siberian Goose Down is a branded down that refers to down that is sourced within Europe, around Poland and Hungary to be more precise and not actually from within Siberia itself. They brand it as Siberian as they only use the finest and largest pure down clusters that have an exceptionally high fill power rating, so Siberian is just to give it a better sounding and impacting name to denote such a quality than the usual goose down fillings.