The benefits of a silk blanket are its feel and how it handles sweat: the silk face is smooth and soft and drapes close to the body, and it absorbs moisture that a polyester satin blanket would leave against your skin. Sleeping under silk is safe for nearly everyone and gentle on sensitive skin, but it treats nothing. A silk blanket does not protect you from dust mites or ease eczema. How warm it keeps you depends on its fill.
If you order custom silk blankets to sell or give under your own name, its feel and its moisture uptake are the two claims you can safely make on the product page. Ours have a mulberry silk satin face over a polyester fill. A silk-filled comforter is a different product, because its silk is the stuffing.
A silk blanket’s main practical drawback is care, and ours is labelled dry clean only.
A silk blanket regulates temperature in one way only, by absorbing sweat vapour into its silk face, so on a warm night it feels drier against your skin than polyester satin. Its warmth comes mostly from the fill, and it is warm enough for winter if the fill is thick enough.
A polyester satin blanket can match silk’s smooth, glossy feel but not its moisture uptake.
No. Silk is not allergen-free, although finished silk fabric rarely causes a reaction, and a silk face does not protect you from dust mites.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology notes that allergic reactions to silk, including asthma and anaphylaxis, have been reported a number of times, so anyone already allergic to silk should avoid it.
If you are allergic to dust mites, the usual advice is to wash all bedding, blankets included, in hot water every week or two. Ours is dry clean only, and dry cleaning also kills mites, so on an allergic sleeper’s bed a silk blanket needs dry cleaning on that same schedule.
A silk blanket will not keep bed bugs away either.
A silk blanket is gentle on skin, but it does not treat skin conditions or moisturise your skin.
In a randomised trial of 300 children with moderate to severe eczema, silk garments worn mostly at night for six months made no clinically important difference to its severity. A blanket touches the skin less closely than clothing, so it cannot be expected to do more.
Silk’s benefit for hair belongs to a silk pillowcase rather than a blanket.