Remem­ber that numer­i­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions dras­ti­cally influ­ence our choices: even if they’re mean­ing­less and con­tra­dict our per­sonal expe­ri­ence?

The same goes for thread count, it seems: Tex­tiles expert Mark Scheuer calls it a “mar­ket­ing ploy” and tells you to for­get about it when pur­chas­ing, while Linen­place says it is a met­ric we should consider–just not the most impor­tant one–offering ‘the truth about thread count’ (via Kot­tke):

In a qual­ity prod­uct, the incre­men­tal com­fort value of increas­ing thread count over 300 is very lit­tle. A 300 thread count can feel far supe­rior to a 1000 thread count. Thread count has become a sim­ple met­ric used by mar­ket­ing peo­ple to cap­ture inter­est and impress with high num­bers. The prob­lem with mass pro­duced high thread count sheets is that to keep the price down, impor­tant ele­ments of qual­ity must be sac­ri­ficed, mean­ing in the end the cus­tomer gets a prod­uct with an impres­sive thread count but that prob­a­bly feels no bet­ter (or even worse) than some­thing with a lower thread count.

Toronto-based Au Lit Fine Linens goes one fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that while thread count is impor­tant, where the cot­ton is grown (its qual­ity) and where and how it is woven is what mat­ters most.

Egypt­ian cot­ton is acknowl­edged to be the finest cot­ton in the world, just as the Ital­ians are renowned for their long-standing tra­di­tion of weav­ing. The soft­ness of your sheets depends more on the qual­ity of the fiber, which is why a 220 thread-count sheet can feel softer than a 500 thread-count sheet that uses an infe­rior grade of cot­ton or a twisted thread. (The lower thread-count sheet using Egypt­ian cot­ton and woven in Italy will also last longer than a higher thread-count sheet woven from infe­rior cotton.)

The crux: ignore thread count, buy 100% Egypt­ian cot­ton woven in Italy.