I hate electric blankets but I do love my heated mattress pad. Crank that thing on for 5 minutes prior to hitting the hay and the bed is nice and warm. No need for a bunch of blankets

I also have a heated mattress pad and I don't know how I would survive winter without it!!

I LOVE sleeping in a cold bedroom. You get in the beds and the sheet are cold and you huddle in a ball until you warm up, but don't want to move because touching a new part of the sheets will be so cold. I will fall asleep in no time if that is the case. But my fiance sleeps in full pajamas and has, has the heat blasting and puts extra covers on the bed. Methinks she is trying to sweat me out.

: (

Alas, I am allergic to down!
I sleep in an unheated bedroom by choice, nude, between flannel sheets and thick cotton blankets.
If it's arctic, I wear a cap and socks. Not a design or fashion statement, but I am cozy.

Three cheers for the electric matress pad. Definitely the fastest, cheapest, most energy efficient route to a toasty warm bed throughout the night.

Diana: Maybe you should look into silk comforters, a nice warm alternative to down. They can be quite expensive, though.

Diane,
I'm allergic to down as well. We've got a wool comforter that we love.

And we love our humidifier, really makes a difference in the winter.

Me thinks Archie and Diana should get together. I bet our sleeping preferences were set as children.

Well, I may get some disagreements on this, but I'm telling you it's the way to be. What they do in Scandinavia, and what we adopted quite a few years back is to have two twin down comforters. That's the ultimate. Together but separate. No more wayward comforters! For warmth, and just individual sleeping comfort, that's the ticket! That, plus down pillows and fabulous soft, thin, sheets, and same for the duvet cover, the thinner the better.

am i crazy, or didn't we do this question last month? :)

It feels like there are a lot of repeats this month. what's going on?

It's usually cold, until my girl comes over. She is better than any blanket that I have ever had. Why did you have to go, Stephanie!!! Anyway, I wasn't here last month, so thanks for the repeats.

i like the room to be cool and i like to pile on the sheets and blankets. my husband likes the room to be COLD and he doen't believe in top-sheets and doesn't like blankets all that much either, except when he's complaining about me stealing them. i like them tucked in at the bottom, he doesn't. i like to fall asleep with noise (tv), he likes to fall asleep in silence. when my alarm goes off, I'm UP, he needs a solid 40 minutes of wake-up time before he's conscious. we must be the most incompatible happily married couple ever!

I like my room COLD and never even turn on the heater. There's nothing like being under the warm covers with just the tip of your nose peeking out to freeze.

liz, i had the same feeling when i saw this post. then i answered the survey and am posting here again; if you are not allergic to down, a down feather bed on you mattress and a down comforter on top of you, traps your body asap, in fact sometimes it feels too warm and i have no heat in my bedroom.

susan is right on about that. two separate comforters is the best. whenever we come back from germany, we swear we're going to trade our queen comforter in for two twins, but never do. it really is the way to go though, especially since my husband and i have totally different body temps.

does anyone use two twin comforters?

This year, I put my foot down and asked the landlord to 'fix' the radiator in order to keep it from clinking, as the noise these past years has been so loud as to wake us up every morning at 5am.

So, he just turned the radiator off. The heat has basically been off all winter, but underneath a plush comforter and a blanket, sleeping is more comfortable than ever.

I'll take a little chill over radiator clinking any day!!

We use separate comforters, and I'd never go back to using one, especially since we're both blanket-stealers.

I love sleeping in a cold bedroom. Sleeping in a hot room is pure misery for me! Also I am glad Susan brought up the idea of dual comforters! I always loved that idea after visiting Scandinavia and keep telling my gf we need to do that (of course at times I also believe we need our own bedrooms, because our schedules, clocks, thermometers and everything else sleep related are polar opposites...but that is another story!)

Anyhow, cold is the answer!

As he's barely able to get out of bed, and this being 4:30 am and he being barely awake, and me, the wide awake insomniac, I ask him, "so do you prefer one comforter or two?" It takes his brain awhile to process and he says, "I guess two, but don't most normal people have one?" So profound he is, that man of mine! It WAS a little difficult to first convince him to get two, some years back, but I said, let's just try it, so we eased into it. That's the secret, say you're just trying it out.

My corner bedroom has both western and northern exposures (not to mention drafty windows), and when those winter winds start howling off the Hudson River and the temperature drops into the teens , it gets pretty darn chilly in hereI I bought one of those oil-filled radiators on wheels at Home Depot, and it really warms the place up fast without drying it out the way heaters with blowers do. I often put it in the bathroom for a few minutes before I take a shower.

Drafts?

You do know that there are ways to seal drafts right? Cheap, effective, easy to apply...

Duct tape - don't laugh - comes in lots of colours...
Clear tape - there's a version that's thick and sticky - not packing tape.
That window covering stuff you hit with a hair dryer...
Various foam gaskets.

Nothing like stopping the energy nose-bleed, the whistling of the wind , and making your place less of unwanted freezer.

Couldn't answer the poll correctly because my apartment ranges between hot and cold depending on some mysterious process known only to the landlord. I think that the temperature may be tied to the landlord's adherence to the lottery. When the winning numbers are odd or have a four in them, it is hot. When the winning numbers are even or lack a four, it is cold.

I have the bedroom radiator off and the living room radiator on (they are not adjustable despite having those little knobs. They are either off or on.) Most of the time it is hot even with the windows open. Except when it is cold. And don't yell at me for wasting energy, I've tried and tried to adjust the radiators and pleaded with my landlord to keep the heat lower or constant. They spout nonsense about certain tenants being cold. I've talked to a lot of people in my building and have yet to discover these elusive cold people. You can see all the open windows from the street.

I also do the dual blanket system for me and my honey. Completely sensible.

I'm with sciencegeek. radiator on in one room, and windows open in both living and bedroom. Last night i even had the ceiling fan on it was so warm!
But I'd take warm over chilly any day. I like sleeping in my summer pj's all year round. =)

The bedroom area in my studio apartment can get very cold when the temps drop in the 30s. I have a large window near my bed and I can really feel the draft coming from the window.

I had two portable ceramic radiator heaters in my apartment but last fall one of them went out so now I only have one. Have one on both ends of the apartment kept it warm but dry. Since Jan. I've been dealing with one portable heater and my window unit which isn't good to run all day and night.

I've adjusted pretty well and will look for a new portable heater this weekend since they should be going on sale by now. I saw fans out on the shelves at Wal Mart.

I was compelled to answer this because I literally did not sleep last night, it was so miserably hot in my apartment. There seem to be a lot of senior citizens in my building who complain if the temperature is below 80 degrees in their apartments. It's horrible. I asked if the radiator could be turned off or if it could even be removed all together and, for some reason, it can't. I'm at my wit's end.

fixing drafts-

at an older apartment that had a door directly to the outside- I made a "door cozy"- it was two large pieces of fabric- one canvas; the other knit; and on the knit I sewed on some fuzzy velcro (loops), and then I put stick on velcro (hooks) around the door frame, and used the "cozy" to cut down the draft. plus I put a draft dodger (a cylindrical pillow) at the bottom of the door. it helped a lot and we were still able to use the door

Those humidifier/vaporizer things are great in a small, chilly bedroom. With the door closed they'll actually do a fairly good job of making the room feel warmer.

Fred:

Several people have suggested plastic on the windows ... the only problem is that, a day later, when the wind has died down and the temperature in the room reaches 85 degrees, I need to throw open the windows! I know that caulking would probably help somewhat ... I should probably do that some weekend.

I thought about the twin comforters idea, but my husband suggested a king (for our queen-sized bed) instead. It helps keep the husband and the dog from stealing the covers.

I prefer a cold bedroom. I think I got used to it when I lived in an "addition"(basically a closed in porch) where I routinely saw wind blowing through the walls and windows. It was cheap, though. My solution is a hot water bottle in a cover under the covers, like the Brits do....so cozy. I love it!

I prefer cooler temps for sleeping, but my studio apt is usually on the warm side. I haven't had the windows completely closed all winter. Still, I've adjusted to sleeping with just a sheet over me (no blanket) most of the night.

for a drafty window, put a heavy blanklet, old quilt or even a quilt sewed to a moving blanklet (they seem to be made of pretty insulating material) and put it across the window. Then when it's daytime or it's warm in the room you can just take it down. I sew loops on both sides and just put nails where I want to hang it. I like living in an older apt (30+, still sort of modern, off white walls and yet broke in enough to put up my nails and what not) It took me a day once, to patch everyone else's nail holes and dab on a mixture of craft paint to match. So I can put mine up.

One thing I bought that was a revelation was a pure lambswool mattress pad about 1" thick. So amazing. Perfectly regulates body temperature - warm in winter and cool in summer. Better than a pillow top mattress for comfort too.

That plus a thick comforter and my 75 lb dog and I am a warm little eskimo in my drafy and badly insulated 1920s cottage.

Oh and the oil filled plug in radiator with the bedroom door shut helps too.

Oh and I totally forgot - Plug-in radiant heat floor pads! For under rugs. These really work great, are energy efficient, don't take up any vertical space like a heater or radiator, and they are good for allergy suffers like myself (my forced air heat kills my sinuses).

Here is an example

http://cozywinters.com/shop/rug-heat.html