How to Make a Bed: 5 Genius TikTok Hacks You Must See

You probably know how to make a bed: You start with a fitted sheet, scrunch a top sheet between your bed frame and mattress, and enter into what feels like a fight for your life as you try to shimmy a duvet into a cover. While this might technically be how you make your bed, it’s not the most efficient way to do it—and it certainly doesn’t leave you with the a pristinely made-up bed à la luxe hotels. And did you fluff pillows, remove lingering wrinkles from linens, or style the bed with a cozy blanket or throw pillows? 

An unmade bed doesn’t just make a room look messy, but it deprives your bedroom of a statement-making piece of furniture that often anchors the whole space. And if the aesthetics aren’t enough to convince you that it’s time to learn how to make your bed properly, there is plenty of data to nudge you in the right direction. People who make their bed every day are happier, more confident and adventurous, and maybe even get better-quality sleep.

If you’re eager to start making your bed the right way—we’re talking perfectly crisp hospital corners, effortlessly fluffy duvets that look more like clouds than bedspreads, and seamlessly styled throw blankets and decorative pillows—what better place to learn than TikTok? After all, it is Gen Z’s search engine of choice. Below, AD surveys five TikTok-approved bed-making hacks guaranteed to make the start of your day just a little bit easier.  

1. Perfect the art of the hospital corner   

Getting a fitted sheet onto the bed is usually easy enough, but the top sheet—and an optional blanket—can be a bit harder without the elastic holding it in place. For the perfect hospital corners, try this advice from TikToker @julia_m_si. “I learned this at nursing school,” she tells AD. Start by tucking the sheet lightly under the end of the foot of the mattress before moving to the sides where the real magic happens. “Grab the bottom edge of the fabric and fold it up. Try to make a 45-degree angle,” reads the text in her video. Once at this stage, tuck in the lower drape you just folded up, then fold the excess fabric back down over the mattress and tuck it underneath. 

2.Keep the top sheet from slipping 

Though it can be tempting to ditch the top sheet—after all, they always seem to slipping down to the foot of the bed—this thin piece of bedding serves an important purpose: It helps keep your duvet clean. To keep the sheet in place, TikToker Loui Burke recommends pulling the top sheet all the way up so it’s covering your pillows, placing the duvet just where the pillows meet, then folding the top sheet over the duvet. “A few years ago I bought an olive green duvet cover set and a beige sheet set and wanted to show the color combination more,” he tells AD. He’d seen the brand put the top sheet over the duvet in the photos and decided to give it a go himself. “At first I thought it was just a styling choice, but then when I slept in it that night, I woke up and saw the sheet didn’t move,” he adds.  

3. Get the perfect fluffy look 

According to TikToker Junie Kim, the secret to that fluffy, hotel-like bedding look isn’t a super puffy duvet insert—although that can certainly help—but getting a duvet that’s one size larger than the duvet cover. “I’d been on the search high and low on creating that iconic fluffy bed you see in magazines and in furniture stores, and I’d come across too many duvets that are too flat, or if they’re fluffy, they’re too heavy and hot,” she says. “I thought, Why don’t I squeeze a larger duvet into a smaller cover and see what happens. The end result? The fluffiest bed that feels like sleeping on a cloud.” 

So if you’ve got a full-size bed, get a full-size duvet cover and a queen-size duvet insert. If you’ve got a queen-size bed, go for a queen-size duvet cover and king-size insert. And don’t worry if you’ve got a king-size bed; Kim has a hack for that too: “Use a California king-size duvet for a king-size cover to give it a nice extra fluff,” she says. 

4. Save your sanity when inserting the duvet

Once you’ve got the right size duvet and duvet cover, placing the former inside the latter is arguably the worst part about laundry day. Luckily, Stephanie Booth has a quick and easy hack to get around this. “I learned this hack from an organizer I have followed for 10 years, Peter Walsh. He was a guest on the Rachael Ray show like eight years ago and showed how to ‘sausage’ roll your duvet,” Booth tells AD. “He changed my bed-making life that day.” 

Start by turning your duvet cover inside out, top side down, with the duvet opener at the foot of the bed. Then, place your comforter on top and secure the corners with the attached ties to the duvet cover. Here’s where the fun part comes in: Starting at the head of the bed, roll the duvet down towards the foot just like a burrito, as Booth says in the video. Lastly, fold the duvet opening over each end of the roll, and unroll the blanket back towards the head. “Practice makes perfect with this hack,” Booth adds. “Turning the sausage-rolled duvet inside out at the end tends to be the most confusing part. You’re essentially pushing the sausage through the open end of the duvet cover and then unrolling.” 

Release wrinkles without an iron 

At this point, your bed should be nearly made. But if you’ve just taken everything out of the washer, you might have some lingering wrinkles ruining that perfectly manicured look. Instead of spending time heating up an iron and pulling out the ironing board, just do what Carolina Mccauley does: Grab a spray bottle filled with warm water, spray evenly across your bedding, and smooth away wrinkles with your hand. Once dry, you’ll have a perfectly smooth bed.