Bed skirts used to be just one large piece with “decking,” meaning the skirt is attached to a mattress-size rectangle of fabric that rests between the mattress and box spring. It is now more common to have three separate sections of skirt that are easily tucked between the box spring and mattress and fixed in place with special pins.

First of all, because linen’s flax fibers are slightly longer than those of cotton and wrapped a little tighter, linen sheets are stronger which means they will last much longer. If softness is a factor for you, you may want to consider cotton, though. Flax fibers are much rougher than cotton resulting in slightly crisper fabric. But the great thing about linen is that it gets softer after each wash, so essentially it gets better with time.