Given that I have edited my wardrobe to almost bare bones, I turned my attention to another pesky area: the linen cupboard. What a minefield it is. I don’t know who I think I am when it comes to bed linens, but everything I own, at last look, is wrong.

Why do I have green bed sheets? Not pale crunchy sage green linen, but lichen green cotton? I feel like they were a middle aisle of Aldi purchase, but it’s a shade of green that complements nothing. A deep pink. Yuck. What was I thinking?

Much like my children when they were little and didn’t like “pants”, I’m struggling with bed linen, at least the stuff I seem to own. I like the linens, for example, when you’re walking up the Rue St Honoré in Paris, and there is a shop window displaying snow-white feather down duvets and voluminous pillows embroidered with delicate birds and cherries and the whole ensemble is €5000 ($8270). Those I like.

Frette, the ne plus ultra of bed linens also looks like a lovely place, but I don’t even dare to go in due to the prices. So I seem to own a selection of mismatched bed linens in various stages of discolouration that I don’t even remember buying, but they were definitely on sale.

My idea of being rich is not a Hermes bag, a diamond, or a Porsche. It is to be able to buy any bed linen I like on a whim at full price.

I’m done with buying bed linen online. You all know the brand I’m talking about, which are not cheap and horribly disappointing when they arrive – and don’t get me started on the quality of the valances. I quickly evaluated the duvet covers I had in the cupboard and decided I should restock. I don’t know why there is pale pink, Tyrolean embroidery and weird batik, but there is. But what colour do I want?

Between the sheets

I had coffee with a very fashionable friend and asked him what colour bed linens he has, and he looked quite taken aback, so I guess it is quite an intimate question.

“I only have white,” he said emphatically. “Sheridan. Cotton. Hotel quality”.

“Oh you don’t do linen?” I asked, like he’d missed that very fashionable train. “No coloured linen, say lavender or oatmeal?”

We both said “oatmeal” in unison and then grimaced. It only looks good in monotone photo shoots and tiny rustic cabins. In a regular household it looks grubby.

But what I have recently discovered is a range of bedding, sheets and duvet covers, in a variety of colours, from an Australian brand called Shleep, made from 100 per cent merino wool. It is the most phenomenally luxurious feeling to sleep in a wool sheet; it breathes, it has stretch, it’s warm and cool at the same time.

So while we’ve all been thinking 1000-thread-count cotton or linen for a good night’s rest, it turns out sheep had it right the whole time.