Hospital blankets are typically made of cotton. It’s an extremely common material used in blankets and it has several properties that make it useful to hospitals, including its affordability, cleanability and durability. When a business needs many blankets for an environment where staining and potentially harsh cleaning might be common, cotton is one of only a few good choices.
What Material Are Hospital Blankets Made Of?
Hospital blankets are almost always made of cotton. Cotton is a natural, cellulosic fiber that comes from cotton plants. It may be the most important natural textile fiber in the world and, arguably, the most important fiber of any kind in the world. It’s warm, fairly durable and extremely useful in a wide variety of use cases.
Cotton can be blended with other materials, but most hospital blankets are 100% cotton. Later in this article, we discuss some of the reasons businesses likely choose cotton, but the basic reason is that it’s a material that serves a hospital’s needs well overall. It also can’t easily be replaced with other materials.
Alternative Materials
In theory, a hospital won’t want exclusively cotton blankets. At times, it may be necessary to have hypoallergenic options available, such as microfiber. Some people may have an allergic reaction to cotton and others may find the material irritating and need an alternative material to sleep comfortably.
However, a business is unlikely to identify an alternative to cotton that it will want the majority of its blankets to be made from. As we’ll discuss more in the next section, cotton has several qualities that make it a good option when a business needs dozens of blankets that may need to be swapped regularly.
Important Qualities
Some important qualities to look for in a hospital blanket include the following:
Affordable
In a medical setting, blankets need to be affordable. A hospital may need hundreds of blankets. Inevitably, at least some of these blankets will be exposed to a significant enough biohazard (such as large amounts of blood from an injured person with a bloodborne disease) that they will need to be retired much earlier than a blanket would in a different setting.
Cotton blankets are common because the material is affordable. Moreover, around the world, most people use cotton blankets to warm themselves without major complaint despite its affordability. While expensive varieties also exist, blankets of a moderate thread count can be bought in bulk, won’t break the bank and will provide what is at least a neutral (if not better) experience to most patients.
Cleanable
Hospitals and other medical settings require constant cleaning. It’s the nature of the industry. Sick and injured people generate bodily fluids and other health hazards in many forms that require immediate attention and aren’t always predictable. Moreover, because patients are sick or injured, it’s important that sheets are replaced and cleaned quickly, so patients and staff aren’t at serious risk of being exposed to hazardous fluids.
If operating or working for a medical business, we also recommend reading our article on sanitization and sterilization because it reviews many of the best practices needed to control a location’s bacteria and germs, so they’re unlikely to harm clients and staff.
Easy to Maintain
In a medical setting, blankets need to be swapped and cleaned often. They also may need to be cleaned more thoroughly than is typical in other settings. This means hospital blankets can see a significant amount of wear. If they easily tear or fray, it’s going to become an issue sooner than for blankets that are used outside a typical hospital setting.
Cotton is a popular blanket material for many reasons, but the material’s durability and functionality are some of its best attributes.
Doesn’t Hide Problems
There are some situations where a particular material or design is chosen because it can hide issues such as dust or stains. However, the nature of a hospital means that these issues should never be covered up by a blanket. A good hospital blanket will make it easy to see if there is any staining or other potential hygiene issue that could result in an infection risk to a patient or the spreading of germs from one sick person to another.
Fundamentally, hospitals are places where one is always contending with serious kinds of germs. Any potential edge a choice can have in helping identify where germs might be and when an object or area may need extra cleaning does more than improve the customer experience — it can save the life of patients and potentially even staff members.
Conclusion
Sometimes, the correct answer is the obvious one. Blankets and other linens are so commonly cotton because it’s an excellent and widely available material that can serve the needs of most individuals. Any hospital should have at least a few hypoallergenic blanket options, but it’s unlikely that a business would regret mostly equipping itself with cotton blankets.
If you’d like help meeting your linen needs, Alsco can help. Our medical linen rental services can often be more affordable (and more convenient) than buying and maintaining your own linens. Our operation is highly scalable, whether you’re a small or large business, so we can outfit your hospital in whatever blankets and other linens you need. We take the worry and stress out of your linen management. Contact us to learn more.
Resources
Cotton Fibers and its Properties. (Feb. 4, 2022). Textile School.
