Your heating system does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping your house warm and comfortable during the winter. Only thing is, you usually need to crank up the thermostat a bit more if you want to be perfectly toasty for a good night’s sleep. While you can definitely appreciate the extra heat from doing that, we doubt you’ll appreciate the extra cost it piles on to your heating bills. Sure, you can always opt for a space heater to heat up a smaller space, but it will also add quite a chunk of change to your utility outlay.
Electric blankets offer a more cost-effective solution for keeping things toasty while you’re in bed, giving you the warmth you need where you need it, which is right under the sheets. No need to dial up the thermostat, wear a winter jacket indoors, or pile up multiple blankets – just slide in under a heated electric blanket to get the comfort you crave and enjoy a cozy slumber.
Of course, wrapping yourself in anything “electric” doesn’t sound like the safest idea. It’s not an unfounded concern. After all, electric blankets contain heating elements, which can always pose a risk for fire or burns. However, the best electric blankets today are generally exempt from those kinds of worries, since they contain safety mechanisms that monitor and regulate the temperature. If you want to be certain your electric blanket is safe, make sure they are certified by either UL or ETL, both of which are classified as a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL) in the US. These certifications mean that an electric blanket meets current safety requirements, making them generally safe to use for their intended purpose.
The best electric blankets tend to have very similar heating systems that heat up to the same temperature range. For the most part, they are reliable, but will, occasionally, fail. That’s why we recommend always getting an electric blanket that offers a longer warranty (three years or more), ensuring you’re adequately covered, in case you experience one of those failures (they’re, unfortunately, not that uncommon in the category). Also, you want to check the cleaning instructions on your electric blanket. You’ll probably want to go with the machine-washable ones for convenience, especially if you’re the type who likes clean, odor-free blankets on the regular.
These are the best electric blankets to keep you toasty in your comfy bed this winter.
CureCure Heated Blanket
This affordable electric blanket is ETL-certified for safety, so you don’t have to worry about getting shoddy quality for trying to save a buck. We love the blanket’s flannel material, which is incredibly soft and comfy to sleep in, with none of the easily noticeable wiring you occasionally find on more economically-priced electric blankets. Only four heat settings are available, so you won’t be able to dial down a more precise temperature of your liking, but it does deliver even and consistent heating across the blanket’s coverage area. It also heats up pretty fast, so you don’t have to wait long to get toasty. There’s also an auto-shutoff feature that kills the heat after six hours to prevent any untoward accidents.
HomeMate Heated Blanket
Another affordable electric blanket option, this one comes in three sizes and offer a bit more features than the one above. It has 10 heat settings that range from 86 degrees to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, so you can fine-tune the warmth a bit to your liking, with automatic temperature regulation that ensures it never gets hotter than your chosen preset. The auto-shutoff is fixed at eight hours, so you can get a full night’s sleep with the blanket continuously heating. It’s made with 200 GSM flannel outside, with a 180 GSM Sherpa inside, so this imparts a very soft feel on the skin that should help keep you comfortable all night.
Perfect Fit SoftHeat
Using thinner, lay-flat wires, this electric blanket feels a heck of a lot more like a normal blanket than your usual heated fare. That’s nice if you find the thicker, stiffer wires on some electric blankets a tad uncomfortable. However, the thinner wires also produce milder heat compared to some of the warmer electric blankets we’ve tried even at the highest setting. To make up for it, they do make the blanket heavier and thicker to add extra warmth, although it still won’t leave you as toasty as other options in this list. It has a dual-controller feature that lets you set different temperatures for the outer and inner sides of the blanket, as well as a preset auto-shutoff that activates after 10 hours of use.
Degrees of Comfort Electric Blanket
With 20 heat settings, this electric blanket allows you to really fine-tune the warmth levels to keep things comfortable in bed, with the bigger sizes (queen, king, and California king) even getting dual controls that let you set temperatures for the inner and outer sides separately. It’s very toasty, especially once you get to the higher settings, although the wires feel a tad too stiff, to the point that you might occasionally feel them while you’re covered up in bed. The material is very soft, though, so it makes up for the bit of stiffness. Features include a preheat button that you can use to warm it up a bit before going to bed and adjustable shutoff from one to 10 hours.
Sunbeam Royal Ultra Fleece
Sunbeam has been the go-to name for many people when it comes to electric blankets. For good reason, too, since they make some of the genuinely better ones out there. This one is made from polyester fleece with a flatter pile and soft napped feel that we find to be extremely comfortable, although the outfit offers the same heated blanket design in several materials, so you can choose something else if micro-fleece isn’t quite your thing. Sunbeam’s electric blankets have really good digital controls that make fiddling with the settings easy, with 12 available heat levels and selectable 12-hour auto-shutoff (you can set anywhere from one to 12 hours with one hour intervals). It even has two controllers for setting the temperature on the left and right sides separately, so couples can share one blanket and get different temperatures on their side of the bed. We’ve also found the outfit’s blankets to be less-prone to failure over the warranty period, which should make it a good choice if you don’t want to keep dealing with customer service and replacements over and over.
Woolrich Heated Plush to Berber Electric Blanket
With microlight plush on the outside and Sherpa inside, this electric blanket is very soft on the skin, making it very comfortable wrapped around your body. We’ll be honest, this looks exactly the same blanket as the Degrees of Comfort one above, down to the design of the controllers, so either one or both of them are just rebranded versions of something else. Either way, we like the way it functions just as well, offering 20 heat settings and selectable auto-shutoff from one to 10 hours. It is a tad heavier than most other electric blankets, though, so you’ll need to clear up some room to store it once the winter is over.
Sunbeam Heated Blanket Velvet Plush
This electric blanket brings the exact same features as Sunbeam’s Royal Ultra Fleece above, with the only real difference being the material. Instead of poly fleece, this one is decked in a plush velvet material that delivers an incredibly soft and pleasant feel. Do note, that velvety-soft texture tends to get more slippery than your usual blankets, so it will slide around a bit more while you sleep. Fortunately, it’s available in bigger sizes and heats up evenly, so you’ll still likely be covered even when it moves, although the same slippery property might cause the inner heating elements to move over time, so keep that in mind as a precaution. Everything else is the same as other Sunbeam heated blankets, from the 12 heat settings and 12-hour selectable auto-shutoff to the single power plug design.
Warmee Smart Heated Blanket
Apparently, a “smart” heated blanket actually exists. What makes it smart? For one, you can control the settings from an app, sparing you from having to use a dangling controller somewhere. Left your phone in the dresser, don’t want to get up? Not a problem, as you can also use Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to modify the blanket’s settings. It allows you to choose any of five temperature levels and set the shutoff timer anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours, but there’s not much else you can change other than that. Basically, it’s more of a “connected” blanket than a “smart” one, but we’ll digress. The big selling point here, though, is the outfit’s Invisiwire technology that uses ultra-thin fibers to deliver the heating all across the blanket, making them a lot more indiscernible than they are on standard electric blankets. Seriously, you want to feel out the wires to figure out where they are, since they don’t quite make their presence known. They’re supposedly very soft, extremely pliable, and built-to-last, too, so these blankets boast less failures than many others in the category. Oh yeah, the blankets use velvet plush on both sides, so it’s extremely soft all over.
