Roll-Invert-Unroll: An Easier Way to Replace a Duvet Cover

This way of putting a cover onto a duvet might save you effort and time!

by Danver Braganza on 2024-03-30

Changing a duvet or comforter cover used to be quite hard for me, before I discovered a trick to make it much more simple. Imagine replacing your duvet cover in minutes, and without resorting to frantic shaking of your duvet. This duvet cover changing hack, which I call the “roll-invert-unroll” will make this a reality.

Putting on a duvet cover can be challenging

I recently learned that the American Cleaning Institute recommends that we wash our duvet covers monthly. Other expert voices say we should be doing this fortnightly, or even weekly. Without revealing too much, I’ll admit my current schedule falls a little outside of these recommendations.

The hardest part of changing my bedclothes is usually attempting to get the duvet cover on after everything has been washed! Frankly, it is the part I dread the most. Between the floppy nature of the comforter inner and the friction between cover and inner, it felt like trying to force a noodle through a straw. Often I had to resort to

crawling inside the duvet cover and standing up with the inner
a tonne of shaking to get the two masses of fabric to line up satisfactorially.

These problems are much harder when you’re alone, but even with a partner to help there’s a lot of wasted effort. In the next section, I’ll describe how to put on a duvet cover easily and more efficiently, especially when you’re doing it alone.

Roll - Invert - Unroll

While I don’t exactly remember how I discovered this method of putting on a duvet cover, I do recall waking up one day with this method in my head. Perhaps I had dreamed it? Excited to try it out, I immediately removed my duvet cover and put it back on again, without actually washing it—and I was excited when the method worked.

It’s unlikely that I’m the first to invent it, but I’m stubbornly not going to check the Internet before publishing this article. At the very least, I’m helping spread the word to new people.

The method follows very simple steps: Roll, Invert, Unroll.

Prepare by arranging your duvet and cover

Fig. 1 First take your washed and dried duvet cover and turn it inside out.

Inverting the cover before you begin is a critical step, and it will make sense later.

Fig. 2 Next, lay it out completely flat on the bed, with the opening towards the foot of the bed

Fig. 3 Now lay your duvet inner on top of your cover

Fig. 4 Secure all four corners of your duvet inner to the cover

This step is not absolutely necessary, but makes the following steps easier and more tolerant if you’re a little less precise with the rolling and unrolling. Securing the corners will also prevent the inner from drifting inside the cover and forming lumps. My cover has ties for securing it to the inner. If you don’t have them, you can use safety pins.

Roll the duvet inner and cover together

Fig. 5 Tightly roll the inner and the cover together, keeping the cover on the outside. Start at the head of the bed, and roll towards the cover opening at the foot.

Fig. 6 When you're done rolling, it should look like this. Note that I've rotated the entire roll for better lighting in this photo—you should keep your roll by the foot of your bed.

Invert the duvet cover over the entire roll

This is the part that feels like magic. Keeping the roll tight, you invert the duvet cover over the entire roll, starting from one end of the opening and working towards the other.

Fig. 7 Start by finding the vertex of the opening on one side. Usually, the opening will be a few centimeters in from the very end of the roll. Feel free to stuff the end through this opening.

Fig. 8 Work along the edge, continuing to join the openings of the cover on the opposite side of the roll. It helps to button the opening on the correct side, as you go.

Fig. 9 In this picture, I'm just about to close the last button. When you're done, your roll should look like this.

Unroll

And that’s it—Your duvet rolls right into place, ready for your to sleep in it!

To wrap it up

I have been replacing my duvet in this way for more than five years now. Not only has it saved me a lot of time and effort, but the reduced frustration in the task of laundry leaves me calmer and feeling less frantic. Additionally, the way in which the duvet cover flips right-side-out during the middle of the process genuinely gives me a sparkle of joy every time I do it.

I hope that you try out this method of replacing your duvet cover, and that you find it is useful!