The complete guide
How To Choose A Mulberry Silk Pillowcase That Actually Fits
The 2am problem
Most people do not go looking for a silk pillowcase because they read about it. They go looking because something is annoying them. The pillow gets warm and they flip it. The cotton creases press lines into a cheek. Hair that looked fine at bedtime looks slept-on in the morning. Those are small irritations on their own, but they stack up over a few hundred nights.
A pillowcase is the one piece of bedding that touches your face directly for the whole night. It is also, usually, the cheapest thing on the bed. That mismatch is why swapping it is such a sensible first upgrade. You are not replacing a mattress. You are replacing the forty centimetres of fabric doing most of the work.
Silk fixes two of those irritations by the nature of the fibre. The strands are long and smooth, so hair and skin move across the surface instead of catching on a woven cotton grain. And silk sheds warmth rather than holding it, which is why it feels cool when your hand first lands on it.
What the numbers on a silk pillowcase mean
Silk listings throw a lot of figures at you. Only a few of them matter.
Momme is the one to learn. It is a weight measure for silk fabric, used the way GSM is used for cotton. Lower momme means thinner, lighter cloth. Higher momme means a denser, heavier fabric that drapes with more weight. This pillowcase is 19 momme, which sits in the band most people buy for bedding. Below about 16 momme, silk starts to feel flimsy and the seams take strain. Above 22 or so, you pay noticeably more and the fabric can feel slightly stiff until it has been slept on for a while. Nineteen is the practical middle.
Grade refers to how the raw silk fibres are sorted. Grade 6A is the top band in the common grading system, based on fibre length and how even the strands are. Longer, more uniform fibres make a smoother and stronger cloth. It is a maker grading rather than an independent test, so treat it as a useful signal rather than a guarantee.
Thread count is the familiar one from cotton bedding, counting threads woven into a set area. This fabric is 600 thread count, which is a dense, closed weave. For silk though, momme tells you more than thread count does. If a listing shouts about thread count and stays quiet about momme, that is worth noticing.
Double sided matters more than the phrase suggests. A lot of budget covers are silk on the sleeping face and cotton or polyester on the back, which keeps the price down. This one is silk on both faces. In practice that means you can flip it mid-night without hitting a different texture, and the cover wears evenly instead of thinning on one side.
Getting the size right
This is where most returns come from, so it is worth two minutes of your time.
This pillowcase is a queen size at 75 cm long by 50 cm wide, which is about 30 by 20 inches. That follows the American queen standard. Silk bedding is very often cut to American sizes, which do not line up neatly with what sits on a South African bed.
A common pillow here runs around 45 x 70 cm. That slips inside a 50 x 75 cm cover with a small amount of room, which most people find perfectly comfortable. The fabric settles over the pillow and the extra ease at the end is barely visible once the zip is closed.
Where it goes wrong is at the extremes. A very deep memory foam pillow can measure the right length but sit much taller, and depth eats into the width of a cover. A firm, overstuffed pillow will stretch the seams and put strain on the zip. On the other end, a small child's pillow inside a queen cover will leave a lot of loose fabric.
So take a tape measure to the pillow you actually own. Measure length, width and depth. Compare those to 75 x 50 cm. If the length and width are both a few centimetres under, you are fine. If either is over, look at a larger size instead.
Who this suits
Hot sleepers notice silk first. If you are the person who flips the pillow two or three times a night hunting for the cool side, a breathable silk pillowcase changes that pattern because it does not bank heat the way a thick cotton weave does.
People with long hair are the second group. Hair sliding over a smooth surface pulls against the fabric far less than it does on cotton. That is a property of the fibre, plainly observable, not a promise about anything else.
Anyone who uses night creams or facial oils tends to appreciate the smoother surface too, though a silk pillowcase will need washing more often if you do.
And it suits gift buyers. A good silk pillowcase gift lands well precisely because it is a nice thing most people do not get around to buying for themselves. Plain white takes the guesswork out, since you do not need to know what duvet cover the person owns.
It suits one group less well. If you genuinely cannot face hand washing, silk will frustrate you. The care instruction here is hand wash only, and ignoring that is the fastest way to ruin good silk.
Living with it
Hand washing silk sounds like more work than it is. Fill a basin with cool water, add a small amount of mild detergent made for delicates, and swish the pillowcase around for a few minutes. Rinse in clean cool water. Do not wring it, do not twist it. Lay it on a towel, roll the towel up and press to push the water out.
Then dry it flat or hang it in the shade. Direct sun and heat are both hard on silk fibres, and they are rougher on a white fabric than on a dark one. Skip the tumble dryer entirely.
If it needs smoothing afterwards, iron on the lowest silk setting, on the reverse side. Most of the time flat drying does the job and the iron stays in the cupboard.
Two other habits help. Wash it separately from anything with zips, hooks or rough textures, because those are what snag silk. And avoid bleach and harsh stain removers, even on a white pillowcase. They attack the fibre.
Washed weekly and dried out of the sun, a 19 momme silk pillowcase holds its hand and its shine for a long time. The hidden zipper helps here too, keeping the pillow enclosed so there is less bunching and less tugging at the seams each night.
A few things nobody tells you
Silk feels different for the first week. It is smoother and slightly cooler than you expect, and some people take a couple of nights to settle. That is normal.
Buy two if you sleep on two pillows. A single silk pillowcase next to a cotton one is an odd combination, and you will notice the difference every time you turn over. Each pack here contains one pillowcase.
Keep the packaging until you are certain about the fit. Returns are open for 14 days from delivery, unused and unwashed, so check the size against your pillow before the first wash.
And remember the weight. At 0.1 kg this packs down to almost nothing, which makes it an easy thing to take along if you travel and want your own pillow surface in a strange bed.
The short version
Look at momme before thread count. Nineteen momme is a sound, practical weight for a pillowcase you will use every night. Grade 6A tells you the fibres are long and even. Double sided silk means both faces are the same and the cover wears evenly instead of thinning on one side.
Measure your pillow against 75 x 50 cm before ordering, because size is the single most common reason a silk pillowcase goes back.
Hand wash it in cool water, dry it flat away from the sun, keep bleach nowhere near it. Do that and the fabric stays smooth and cool for years.
Delivery is tracked to every province in 10 to 20 working days, free over R1800 and R250 below that. Payment is by card. You have 14 days from delivery to send it back unused and unwashed if it is not right.