The first bedding catalog I ever helped lay out, back at Spiegel in 1976, was a sixteen-page signature on uncoated stock that we shot inside a borrowed model home in Glenview, Illinois. The art director kept fussing because the duvet wouldn't stop wrinkling under the lights, and I remember thinking: a person spends a third of their life on these sheets, and we're going to give them four pages and call it good. Half a century later, the catalog page is one of the few places in retail where bedding still gets the room it deserves — the long copy, the close-up of the hem, the buyer's little note about thread count. Below are ten houses still doing the work, with an honest accounting of who is thriving, who has changed hands, and who has gone quiet since the last time we wrote up this list.
Cuddledown of Maine
Cuddledown started in Yarmouth in the early 1970s with one product, a European-style down comforter, and the catalog still feels like that — long descriptions, real fabric weights, an editor's eye for what wears well after a winter of use. Potpourri Group, the Massachusetts catalog house, bought Cuddledown back in 2012, and to my surprise the new owners largely kept their hands off the voice. The blog (yes, they have one, called The Bedding Snob) was still posting in 2025. If I had to recommend one bedding book to a reader who has never sent away for one, this would be it.
Schweitzer Linen
Schweitzer is the New York entry — three Manhattan stores, the original on Madison Avenue, and a catalog that has been arriving in mailboxes for more than fifty years. Their thing has always been Italian-woven sateens and embroidered borders done overseas in small runs. It is genuinely old-world — a phrase I am normally allergic to in catalog copy — and the prices reflect it. The 2023 small-business profile in West Side Rag caught up with the family running the show, and as of this year they are still on Lexington, still on Madison, still on Columbus, and still mailing.
Brentwood Home
The newcomer of the bunch, relatively speaking. Brentwood Home is a Los Angeles outfit that started selling factory-direct mattresses online in 2009 and built a sideline in organic-cotton sheets, latex pillows, and the like. They are Climate Neutral certified, they make most of the line in California, and they will send you a printed catalog if you ask. They quietly discontinued their eleven-inch and thirteen-inch Cypress models early in 2025, which tells you they are still actively pruning the line rather than coasting — a healthy sign in any catalog house.
Soft Surroundings
Here is where I have to break some news to readers who loved the old St. Louis catalog. Soft Surroundings filed for Chapter 11 in September 2023 and closed all forty-something stores. The brand itself was bought out of bankruptcy by Coldwater Creek's parent and is being run as an online-and-catalog business now — no retail. The bedding section of the new catalog is thinner than it used to be, and the shams and ruched velvet quilts that used to be the whole reason to call them are hit-or-miss. Worth a look, but not the powerhouse it was a decade ago.
Fabulous Furs
Donna Salyers built this Covington, Kentucky business out of a Newsweek column she wrote in the 1980s about faux fur, and she ran it for more than thirty years before announcing her retirement. The company kept going under the same name, and the throws and pillows that landed it on bedding lists are still in the book. If you want a faux-mink coverlet for the foot of the bed without the ethical baggage, this is still the right address.
Lands' End Home
Lands' End is the survivor. Founded in 1963, public again since 2014, and quietly one of the largest direct merchants left in the country. Their home book is a fraction of what it was when Gary Comer was alive, but the white-sale cycles around January and August are still worth circling on the calendar. The supima sheets and the flannel sets are dependable in a way most of the trendier bedding sites cannot match. If you order one set of sheets a year, this is probably where you should order them.
Victorian Trading Company
The Lenexa, Kansas catalog with the cabbage-rose wallpaper aesthetic and the pages of lace-trimmed nightgowns. Victorian Trading has been going through a quiet transition since the company changed hands a few years ago — the warehouse outlet shut, and the brand has been moving toward a digital-first model. You can still phone in a catalog request as of early 2026, but I would call before mailing a check. The romantic patchwork quilts and tapestry throws are the draw, and they remain hard to source anywhere else.
Linen Source
Linen Source is a name that has been passed around the catalog industry the way old vinyl is passed around at flea markets. It was originally a Tampa operation, ended up under the Orchard Brands / Bluestem umbrella along with Blair, Norm Thompson, Old Pueblo Traders, and a half dozen others, and survived a Bluestem bankruptcy. The product mix — quilts, bed skirts, comforter sets at a middle price — is what it has always been. Don't expect couture. Do expect a fair price on a perfectly serviceable matelassé.
Blair Home
Blair, out of Warren, Pennsylvania, is best known for menswear, but the home book picks up the same value-first sensibility — comforters and sheet sets you can put on a guest bed without losing sleep over the credit-card bill. Blair has had a turbulent ten years (the Bluestem bankruptcy in 2020, the recovery after) but the catalog still arrives on schedule. If you grew up in a household where Blair khakis were a fixture, you already know what to expect.
Cradle & All
The specialty entry: crib bedding, bassinet sheets, baby pillows. The category as a whole has thinned out since the safe-sleep guidance of the last decade pulled bumpers and decorative pillows out of cribs, and Cradle & All has had to adapt the merchandise mix accordingly. For grandparents shopping for a nursery — the readership I assume for an article like this — the sensible move is to call the new parents first and ask what they actually want before ordering. The catalogs sometimes show what is no longer recommended.
A practical word before you order
Three things I learned in fifty years of putting these pages together, and they all still apply in 2026.
- Read the fabric weight and the fiber content before you read the price. A 600-thread-count poly-blend is not better than a 300-thread-count long-staple cotton. The catalog copy is supposed to tell you which is which — if it doesn't, that is the catalog's fault, not yours, and you can phone customer service and ask.
- Time the order. Bedding goes on sale in January (white sales, a tradition that goes back to John Wanamaker in 1878) and again in August before the back-to-school push. Buying in March or October at full price is not a sin, but it is rarely necessary.
- Keep the catalog after the order ships. The model number, the dye lot, the size of the fitted sheet pocket — you will want to look those up the next time you need a matching pillowcase. The catalog is the user manual for what you bought.
Half a century on, what surprises me most is that the bedding catalog still works. The good ones treat the bedroom as a room someone actually lives in, not a stage set for a phone camera. That is the right instinct — and it is why I still keep three or four of these books on the table by the door.
