Is it weird to go to bed with overstuffed pillows stacked on top of my body? My husband thought so. But that’s what I would often do—in addition to a comforter and a blanket, doubled over for good measure. The weight of all that bedding calmed my nerves, kept me from shifting about, and soothed me to sleep every night, even in the heat of summer. If I had a sack of rocks, I would have thrown that on top too.
Then I realized, lo and behold, someone had invented a sack of rocks suitable for in-home use! Well, not a sack but a duvet of sorts, and it’s filled with tiny glass microbeads, not rocks. But still. Known as a weighted blanket, a version of it has been around since the late 1990s and has been used by therapists for people with anxiety and sensory issues.
However, I—and pretty much every stressed-out person craving a hug—only became aware of the weighted blanket around 2017. That’s when an entrepreneur, struck by people’s interest in all things sleep, introduced the aesthetically pleasing Gravity Weighted Blanket. Within a couple of years, a new sleep-product category was born, with bedding and wellness companies alike getting into the game.
Around this time, I was a writer on Wirecutter’s sleep team, so naturally, I dove into researching weighted blankets in earnest. I could talk your ear off about the science (and marketing hype) behind them, but you can read all about it (and peruse all our picks) in our weighted blankets guide.
Instead, I’ll tell you why—after testing and washing over a dozen of them—the Baloo Weighted Blanket is the one I ended up buying myself.
