Wearable blanket vs. weighted blanket: which actually helps you wind down?

Both promise the same thing — the feeling of being held. They go about it in opposite ways.

A weighted blanket keeps you in one place

A weighted blanket is a bed object. It lies flat across you, usually eight to fifteen pounds, and it does its best work when you’re horizontal and still. That’s the point of it: it pins you gently to the mattress and asks you not to move. Wonderful at 11pm under the covers. Useless the moment you stand up for a glass of water — it stays on the bed, and the calm stays with it.

A wearable blanket comes with you

A wearable blanket solves the other ninety minutes — the couch, the desk lamp, the window at 3am, the walk to the kitchen and back. It’s warmth and cover you can stand up in. Most wearable blankets, though, are just fleece with sleeves: cozy, but weightless. They give you the warmth and skip the part that actually settles a nervous system.

The Exhale is deliberately both

The Exhale is a wearable blanket with four pounds built in — not spread flat like a bed blanket, but concentrated through the hood and shoulders, where a hand would rest if someone were trying to calm you down. So you get the weight of a weighted blanket and the freedom of a robe, in one floor-length hooded cloak. Matte fleece outside, deep faux fur within.

Which should you choose?

If you only ever want weight in bed, and you never move once you’re there, a traditional weighted blanket is fine. If the hard part of your night happens out of bed — on the sofa, at the window, in the chair where you actually unwind — you want something you can wear. That’s the whole reason The Exhale exists.

Curious how the weight feels across the shoulders? Read about The Exhale, or see what weight actually does to a nervous system.