Have you heard of the phrase silky smooth hair? It's common, but I've not heard of cottony smooth hair.
Cotton pillowcases have 75% more friction than silk. This disrupts your hair follicles as you rotate through your sleep cycle, which is why cotton pillowcases make your hair tangle and break.
Sumptuously soft silk, on the other hand, lets your hair slip and slide whilst you rest, which helps keep your hairstyle intact and gives your hair that glamorous, luscious sheen.
Did you know silk is actually made from protein?
Yes, silk is genuinely 97% protein, made from fibroin and sericin, and contains 18 naturally occurring amino acids.
This means silk is essentially made from the same building blocks as your skin and hair.
Silk is also highly breathable and easily absorbs and releases perspiration moisture. It doesn't suck the moisture from your face and absorb your expensive night creams, unlike cotton pillowcases.
Whilst silk is a natural unprocessed fibre which is Oeko-Tex certified free of harmful chemicals for your skin, imitation silks, such as rayon, undergo intense chemical processing in their production.
These rayon and 'satin' imitation silks mimic silk's smoothness, but none come close to recreating the health-promoting properties of real silk.
Many skin conditions are caused by the droppings of dust mites that lurk on common pillowcases
Dust mite faeces contains allergens to our skin.
The sericin residue in silk protects the pillowcase and repels these harmful dust mites and nasty allergens.
This makes silk very effective in providing relief for skin conditions like dermatitis, eczema, sensitive skin, an allergic rash, shingles, psoriasis, to name a few.
Irritation free silk is wearable by practically everyone, especially those with sensitive skin.
Whilst sleep creases are minor at a young age, as your skin ages the collagen and elastic fibers in it deteriorate, meaning these creases bounce back less and less throughout the day.
Silk's reduced friction leads to less face crumpling when your face is pressed against the pillow. As each nightly 8-hour sleep compounds these improvements really help reduce any signs of sleep wrinkles over time.
Unique to silk's sericin protein coating, this protein effectively acts a protective barrier to your skin and hair.
This leaves your skin and hair with a smooth, silky luxuriousness.
Silk has also been credited with relieving one of the most common and uncomfortable symptoms of menopause – hot flushes. Changes in your bodies hormone balances can affect your bodies ability to control temperature, but silk is known to help counteract this.
Being a poor conductor of heat, silk will remain pleasantly cool so you don’t have to keep turning it upside down in the summer heat.
This helps your silk pyjamas, bedding and pillowcases maintain a more comfortable and cooler temperature throughout your sleep which reduces sweating and unwanted hot flushes.