Today’s luxury featherbeds are not your Grandma’s featherbed. In her day it literally was a bag of feathers. There are many featherbeds available, the majority are made of 95% duck feather 5% duck down (not considered luxury). Feathers are flat with a hard quill, down is the soft undercoating from the bird’s breast. Goose down is better than duck down, the down clusters are larger, and at least 50/50 down/feather is better than mostly feathers, which are hard and “crunchy”, and they tend to leak out of the best featherproof casing over time.
There are some truly luxury featherbeds available using white goose down and feather, with larger percentages of high fill-power goose down, and even all down. The fill-power is the measurement of the down cluster’s ability to loft up after compression. The higher lofting downs make puffier featherbeds. 650 fill-power or higher goose down for a featherbed is luxury quality. More down in your featherbed means a more luxurious look and an incomparable level of comfort. A down bed with all white goose down would be softer and the puffiest. More luxury to sink into.
The most common styles are...