One Bed, Two Blankets: How My Husband and I Stopped Fighting Over the Covers at Night (2025)

I admit that I’ve been a cover hog my entire life, but it’s not (totally) my fault. I move a lot in my sleep—which I can’t control—so I’d often swaddle myself in our shared blanket throughout the night, leaving my husband out in the cold. Getting the covers back was never easy for him, and on the nights I went to bed earlier than he did, he’d have to wrestle them free, sometimes waking me in the process.

The morning I woke up wrapped in our shared comforter, warm and cozy, only to see him shivering under a too-small throw blanket usually reserved for the couch, I felt like an absolute jerk and decided it was time to find a solution. That’s when I finally suggested to my husband that we sleep with separate blankets.

My husband happily welcomed this new arrangement. We agreed that if we didn’t like the separation and wanted to be under the same blanket again, we’d simply switch back. But after just one night of sleeping the Scandinavian way, we knew we were on to something.

“The Scandinavian sleeping method allows you to create a sleep environment that works for you,” explains James Wilson, a sleep practitioner and educator based in the UK. This is especially helpful if you and your partner have different body temperatures, as my husband and I do. “As sleepers, we’re all different, so if we’re trying to buy a comforter that suits everyone in the bed, we often end up with one person being too hot or too cold.”

Sleeping Scandi-style solved our temperature differences literally overnight. With the freedom to personalize our respective sides of the bed with bedding that complemented our individual temperatures, we both immediately slept more comfortably. My husband, who runs hot, prefers to sleep in as little as possible, under a paper-thin blanket, while I’d rather wear a full sweatsuit with socks to bed and wrap myself, burrito-style, in a fluffy feather-down comforter. Before adopting the Scandi method, we’d always bicker over the bedding, eventually compromising with a blanket somewhere in the middle that neither of us actually liked. Now, we each sleep exactly how we want with the bedding we prefer.

Creating a sleeping environment that’s right for you in terms of comfort, support, and temperature is likely to improve the quality of your sleep, explains Wilson. It has certainly helped my husband and me sleep more soundly throughout the night, especially now that one of us isn’t left out in the cold night after night.

Letting go of the tradition of sharing a single blanket with your partner can feel surprisingly challenging, even when you suspect that switching to separate blankets could improve your sleep quality. Because the practice of sharing is so deeply tied to romance and intimacy, shifting to two blankets might seem like you’re letting go of that connection. But sleeping with your own blanket won’t block intimacy as long as you don’t let it.

“If [a couple] communicates about how they feel and what they are looking for from changing up their sleep environment, then it can bring them closer together, reduce arguments, and increase intimacy,” Wilson says. “Our partners become a lot sexier when we have slept well.”

Though I was the one who suggested that my husband and I start using our own blankets, I still hesitated a bit at first, worried that changing our bedding would also change our relationship. And it did, but in the best way possible—because it turns out we like each other a lot more when we’re not tugging the covers back and forth all night.

Many people feel that same twitch of resistance when contemplating the Scandinavian sleeping method, says neurologist and sleep specialist Christopher Winter, MD. “It can seem a little bit separate at first. But to me, it’s certainly not a sleep divorce. It’s not nearly as severe as that.”

A sleep divorce, though it sounds dire, simply means sleeping in separate beds (or even in separate bedrooms) to achieve quality sleep, Lucy-and-Desi-style. But getting two beds is not always financially or spatially realistic, even for couples who like the idea. The Scandi method could be the perfect middle ground. Two blankets are more economical than two beds, and acquiring an extra comforter is a lot easier than assembling two bedframes.

If making your bed the traditional way every day is nonnegotiable, the idea of switching to two blankets can seem like a compromise. Even if you know that you would benefit from the Scandi method, you might hesitate to adopt it because you don’t want the bed to look messy.

But there are many ways to arrange two blankets and still make the bed look tidy and presentable. In Scandinavian countries, it’s most common to fold both blankets in half and lay them side by side on the mattress, with the opening of the fold facing outward.

If you’d prefer to keep your second blanket in stealth mode, you have a few ways to do that, too. One approach is to fold one blanket in half and lay it over one side of the bed and then use the other blanket to cover the entirety of the bed, hiding the second blanket beneath it.

Or, you can hide your second blanket in plain sight by folding it and laying it lengthwise across the foot of your mattress. This is a fairly common approach for folks to make their bed the traditional way—only you and your partner will know the true setup at bedtime.

If you or your partner is a top-sheet person, it’s relatively easy to incorporate into your individual setups, as well. That’s what my husband and I do: I can’t sleep without a top sheet, but my husband hates them, so I use the one that came with our fitted sheets while he sleeps with just his blanket.

In my home, we rarely ever make the bed. A messy bed doesn’t bother us, so most often our comforters are heaped on each side of the bed, and at night we find them exactly the same as we left them in the morning. What matters to us is that we can both sleep comfortably throughout the night without bothering each other—and we certainly have that handled.

This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Maxine Builder.