The warning first: cheap nightwear looks fine on the hanger and then does something specific and annoying within about three washes, either the seams at the underarm give up, or the fabric that felt soft in the shop turns into something closer to a bin bag against your skin by week two. And yet it is still worth getting right, because you spend more hours in this stuff, over a year, than almost anything else you own. Nobody budgets for that.
What separates a decent set from a disappointing one comes down to a handful of things you can actually check with your hands before you buy. Fabric weight matters more than the label's fibre claim. A cotton jersey that feels thin and papery in the shop will feel thinner once it has been through a tumble dryer a few times, so if it is see through under the shop lights, assume it will be sheer at home. Check the seams, particularly under the arms and at the crotch on pyjama bottoms, for overlocking that is even and doesn't pucker. Press the elastic in the waistband between your fingers, it should have some give and bounce back rather than sit there like old chewing gum. Robes and anything with a tie or a popper live and die by the hardware, a flimsy plastic snap will crack the first time you do it up in a rush, and a belt loop that is only tacked on rather than properly bar tacked will be hanging by a thread within a month. Slippers are their own test entirely, the sole needs some actual structure or your arches will know about it by the second week, and a lining that bunches at the toe is a lining that will drive you up the wall every single night for however long you own them. I have genuinely returned a robe for a popper that failed on day one, which felt like an achievement nobody wanted to hear about.
Worn well, this is the stuff that goes under a big jumper for the school run, gets layered with trainers for the bin run, and somehow ends up being the outfit for a whole lazy Sunday that was meant to involve getting dressed properly at some point. It softens with washing if the fabric was decent to start with, and turns scratchy and bobbled if it wasn't, there is no in between. Wash on a cool setting, skip the fabric softener on anything with a brushed finish because it flattens the texture that was the whole point, and let slippers air out properly rather than leaving them damp by the door. The one mistake to avoid is buying purely by how something looks folded in the packet, because nothing in that department tells you how it will feel at three in the morning, and that is the only review that actually counts.
Picked by Nadia Okafor. Start with Pyjamas, Loungewear, Slippers.
