When you own a waterbed, finding good waterbed comforters is very important.  Waterbed comforters do everything comforters on standard beds do – cover you at night for a layer of warmth and add color and style to your room – but they also provide some extra features they don’t. 

One of the most important roles of waterbed comforters is trapping the heat radiated by your waterbed mattress.  If your bed is unmade or you have only a sheet over it, you will lose a lot of the warmth that the heater and warmed water produce every day.  This will not only raise your electric bill, it will make it more difficult to maintain an even temperature in your waterbed.  So waterbed comforters should be pulled up over the mattress every day, and should cover the entire mattress to minimize heat loss.  A bonus – when you slip under the covers you’ll have warmth surrounding you top and bottom.

Another reason waterbed comforters are important are the protection they provide for your mattress.  Although the vinyl of waterbed mattresses is quite durable, daily activities mean you may periodically set things down on your bed, a child may hop around on it, etc.  When you aren’t sleeping, an extra layer of protection is always a good way to prolong the life of your mattress.

So what should you look for when shopping for waterbed comforters?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Look for waterbed comforters with some padding.  Quilted comforters, down comforters, etc. are always good.  These are excellent insulators and will provide protection without being too heavy.
• The quilting should be evening spaced.  Waterbed comforters that have any kind of filling such as down or fiberfill should be quilted in a fairly even, close arrangement to prevent shifting of the contents, otherwise you’ll end up with all the filling in the corners and very little in the center.
• Look for waterbed comforters with patterns that work with your specific style of waterbed.  Some comforters that are designed for standard beds just won’t have the same effect on a hard side waterbed.  If the comforter has a central motif with lots of embroidery or trim around the edges (where it would normally fall over the sides of the bed), you’ll lose the effect on a hard side waterbed because you’ll be tucking the edges of the comforter into the sides of the bed.  That’s why you should look specifically for waterbed comforters designed for hard side waterbeds – they are sized and designed to look stylish and appropriate when tucked in all the way around.
• If you have a soft-side waterbed, you can probably use a waterbed comforter that’s designed for either style of bed, since soft-sided models are designed to have the same look as a standard mattress. 
• The only bedspreads that will fit a California King are waterbed comforters specifically designed for this size bed.

An example of the size difference between waterbed comforters and standard comforters:  A queen hard side waterbed comforter might measure 72” X 104”, while a queen soft side comforter might measure 103” X 118.”    To ensure the right fit, measure your bed and figure out how much “drop” you need on each side before shopping for waterbed comforters.