The Best Bed Skirts

Measure from the top of your box spring or foundation straight down to the floor, and buy that number. Do not measure from the top of the mattress - the skirt's decking panel sits under the mattress and on top of the box spring, so the drop starts there. Fourteen inches is the most common size because a standard box spring plus a low frame comes to roughly that. If your bed sits on a tall frame, or the box spring is on risers, measure properly: you may need 15, 16 or 18 inches, and a skirt that is two inches short does not hide anything - it draws a line across the thing you were trying to cover. Err long rather than short. A skirt that brushes the floor looks intentional; one that floats above it looks like a mistake.

It is the install, and for most people it decides the purchase. A platform (or tailored) skirt is a flat fabric deck with panels sewn to three or four edges: you take the mattress off, lay the deck on the box spring, and put the mattress back on top to pin it. It never moves once it is on, and it is the crisper look. A wrap-around skirt is an elastic band with a skirt panel attached, and it goes on around the box spring with the mattress still in place, like a giant fitted sheet - about a minute's work instead of twenty and no heavy lifting. The trade is that elastic relaxes over time and washes, so a wrap-around eventually creeps and twists where a platform skirt does not.

Only if your bed has posts or a footboard - but if it does, you need them and nothing else will do. Split corners are exactly what they sound like: the panels stop at each corner instead of being continuous, so the fabric can pass either side of a post. On a continuous skirt, a four-poster or a footboard leaves you with fabric bunched against the upright and a gap where the panel cannot reach. On a plain platform frame with no footboard, split corners are a styling choice rather than a requirement - some people prefer the break in the line, some prefer the unbroken sweep. Two of the picks above state split corners.

Mostly, no - and this is the honest limitation of the whole category. A bed skirt is a solution to a box spring: a bare upholstered rectangle that looks unfinished on a frame. A platform bed has no box spring, often has visible designed sides, and the mattress sits directly on slats. There is nothing for a platform skirt's decking panel to rest on, and a wrap-around has nothing of the right shape to wrap. The workable exceptions are a wrap-around on a platform bed with a solid rail the band can grip, or a dedicated skirt designed for adjustable and platform beds - a small category sold specifically for the job. If your platform bed looks unfinished, a valance-style fitted cover or just leaving it bare is usually the better answer.

Two useful things, and one small complication. It hides whatever you store under the bed, which is the practical reason most people buy one, and it keeps a layer of fabric between dust and the underside of the mattress and box spring - a modest benefit, not a dust-mite intervention. The complication is airflow. A skirt that reaches the floor on all four sides slightly reduces air movement under the mattress, which matters if your bedroom is damp or your mattress sits on a solid platform rather than slats. It is not a reason to avoid one; it is a reason to pull the bed out and vacuum under it occasionally rather than treating the skirt as a lid.

Cold wash, gentle cycle, low or no heat in the dryer, and take it out damp. Microfiber comes out of the machine essentially ready - that is its real advantage here. Cotton shrinks on heat, and on a bed skirt shrinkage is more visible than on any other piece of bedding: lose an inch of drop and the hem no longer reaches the floor, which is the entire point of the product. Ruffled skirts need shaking out and hanging while damp, or the pleats set in whatever shape the drum left them. Wash it when you move the bed to vacuum, which is realistically once or twice a year.