9. The warm bed chronicles: bedroom comfort in a winter van

Let us be very clear about something from the outset. I feel the cold. Not in the way that most people say they feel the cold, meaning they occasionally reach for a cardigan. I mean it in the bone-deep, physiological, this-is-simply-who-I-am sense. I am the person who wears socks to bed in August. I own more layers than a professional mountaineer and I am not embarrassed about this.

So when people ask whether you can really be comfortable sleeping in a van in January  -  even in the south of France, even with van heating  -  the honest answer is: yes, absolutely, but only if you approach it with the seriousness it deserves.

We're Kate and Charlie — mid-fifties, one anxious dog called Huffle, one fifteen-year-old Peugeot Boxer campervan called Brigitte, and absolutely learning as we go. Whether you have a campervan or a motorhome, if you're new to this or thinking about it, come with us.

Here is everything we did…

 The layers you wear  -  starting with the vinted revelation

Before we even get to the bed itself, let's talk about keeping warm in the van more generally  -  because the cab in January is cold, the hour before the heating gets going is cold, and the walk from the van to the shower block at 7am is very cold indeed. Layers matter, and this is also, in our case, a source of mild comedy.

I am a devoted Vinted convert. The idea of spending full price on a fleece specifically for wearing in a van in January  -  in the cab, on dog walks, while waiting for the kettle  -  offended every instinct I have, and so I went hunting secondhand. For Charlie, I found a Patagonia fleece in immaculate condition for a fraction of the original price. He wears it in the cab, on morning walks, around the van. It is excellent. He is warm. He is grateful. Job done.

For myself, I found a long Didrikson fleece that I was convinced, in the photographs, was a beautiful dusky rose. It arrived. Fred took one look at it and said, with the devastating certainty only a twenty-three-year-old can muster, that it was liver-coloured. Not pink. Not rose. Liver.

I re-Vinted it the week we got home. I now have a colour I can actually defend. The lesson here is to check the photographs on a properly calibrated screen, ideally with a brutally honest young person present.

The principle, however, stands. A good fleece for the cab and for outdoor morning life is not the same as your sleeping layers  -  but it is equally important. Vinted is brilliant for this. Patagonia, Didrikson, Rab, Montane  -  all the brands that make genuinely warm fleeces charge genuinely alarming prices new. Secondhand, in excellent condition, they are entirely reasonable. Go hunting.

(Link)

The ‘sleep hats’  -  our happiest innovation

I will not be modest about this. The sleep hat was my idea and it was a good one.

The science is not complicated: most of your body heat escapes through your head. In a cold van, where the temperature drops overnight regardless of how well you heated the place before bed, wearing something on your head while you sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to stay warm  -  more effective, arguably, than an extra blanket.

What we did not want was anything scratchy, anything tight, anything that would migrate irritatingly in the night or make us feel like we were wearing a bobble hat to bed. What we found  -  and have worn on every trip since  -  are two soft thermal jersey beanie hats. The kind designed for layering under a helmet or wearing on a cool morning run. Lightweight, breathable, completely non-itchy, and exactly the right amount of warmth.

We call them sleep hats. We are completely serious about them. If you take one thing from this entire post, take the sleep hat. You are welcome.

They live on the little shelf above the bed between trips. They go on approximately thirty seconds before lights out. They have never once let us down.

(Link)

Bed socks  -  obviously

There is nothing more to say about bed socks than that they are mandatory and if you are not already wearing them you have been needlessly cold for years. Thick ones. Fleece or Merino or cashmere if you’re really fancy.

(Link)

The Yeti  -  three items of clothing in one

The Yeti is what we call the fluffy poncho-style wrap we both have from M&S  -  hooded, kangaroo-pocketed, made of that particular kind of soft fleece that immediately makes everything feel better. We look utterly ridiculous, but warmly ridiculous.

The Yeti, it turns out, has three completely distinct and equally valuable uses in a van context.

Use one: the morning bed jacket. You wake up, the van is cold because the heating has been off all night, and you are not yet ready to be a fully functioning person. The Yeti goes on over whatever you slept in. You make tea. You sit up in bed and hold your mug with both hands and look out at wherever you are. This is, genuinely, one of the great pleasures of van life.

Use two: the evening reading/watching wrap. Sitting on the bench seat in the evening, watching something on the iPad or reading, the Yeti is what goes over your clothes when the temperature starts to drop and you can't quite justify firing the heating up again yet. The kangaroo pocket holds your phone, your book, occasionally a small dog.

Use three: emergency extra bed layer. On the genuinely cold nights  -  and in January in France, there are genuinely cold nights  -  the Yeti goes over the duvet and Huffle really appreciates it.

One item. Three jobs. The Yeti is peak van thinking.I coined the name ‘yeti’ – so don’t go searching of this online, you may not find what you’re looking for…

(Link)

The bed itself  -  a system that actually works

Our van has a bench-seat-to-bed configuration at the back  -  sofa by day, super-king by night. If you have the same setup, here is the system we arrived at after some trial and error, and which now takes approximately four minutes in each direction.

We fitted single mattress protectors to each section of the bench seating. On top of these, single fitted sheets  -  proper cotton ones, because life is too short for scratchy bedding even in a van. This means the sleeping surface is always clean, always comfortable, and always ready.

During the day, we cover the bench seating with a single teddy-bear fleece sheet over the night time sheets -  the stretchy, fluffy kind that clings gently to the surface and looks entirely intentional. It reads as a sofa throw. It is doing double duty as a bed cover.

At night, we lift the teddy-bear cover off, store it under the bed (two seconds, one motion), flatten the bench seating into a bed, and that's it. No complicated bed-making. No rummaging for sheets. No awkward tucking in a small space. The bed is already made. We simply reconfigure the furniture it's hiding in.

The whole operation takes less time than making a cup of tea. If your van bedding routine currently involves more than five minutes of effort, I promise you there is a better way.

(Link)

The duvets  -  one each, fifteen tog, winter joy

We have two single duvets at fifteen tog. Not a shared double, not a 10.5 tog compromise. Two singles, fifteen tog, one per person.

This requires very little explanation. Sharing a duvet in a cold van means one person is always slightly cold or one person is always slightly overheated. Two singles means each person has exactly as much duvet as they want, pulled exactly as tightly as they want. It is a relationship-preserving decision as much as a warmth-based one.

Fifteen tog for winter and autumn trips. We store them in stuff bags under the bench seat when not in use. In summer we'll switch to something lighter, but for cold weather camping, fifteen tog is the answer for us.

(Link)

Pillows as cushions  -  space saving and comfy

We use two pillows each. Four pillows is a lot of pillows to store in a van during the day, and we were not prepared to compromise on sleep quality to solve a daytime storage problem.

The solution  -  which I am genuinely rather pleased with  -  is stretchy, pillow-sized cushion covers. The pillows have regular cotton pillow cases on them and these colourful stretchy covers over the top.  During the day, they stack on the bench seating and look entirely like sofa cushions  -  colourful, coordinated, deliberately chosen. At night, we take off the cushion cover element and they revert to pillows.

(Link)

The net bags  -  small, brilliant, not very glamorous

We have fitted on each side of the bed a small stretchy net bag  -  the kind designed to hang from a headboard or hook. In ours: a pack of tissues, any medication that needs to be within reach in the night (blood pressure tablets, in our case  -  no judgement, we're in our fifties and we're fine), a book light, a phone.

During the day, these fold flat against the back of the bench seating, hidden behind the cushions. Nobody sees them. At night they are within easy arm's reach and mean that everything you need at 3am is immediately findable without turning a light on or disturbing anyone.

Charlie has two nets on his side of the bed because he has SO MUCH SLEEP GEAR.  Poor Charlie isn’t always the best sleeper – he has a bendy neck torch for reading in the dark. He has a sleep band that allows him to listen to short stories or relaxing music without waking me up. And that’s on top of the phone, the sleep hat, the blood pressure meds, the book, the torch and the banana for the mid sleep snack. 

These net holders cost almost nothing. They are incredibly useful. We don't know why more people don't talk about them all the time!

(Link)

 The rechargeable night light  -  the 2am essential

A small rechargeable night light that we put in our shower room at night. At 2am, navigating a small van in the dark while trying not to wake your travelling companion, your dog, or your own sense of dignity, it is not a minor detail. It is a small, warm, quietly excellent thing that earns its place every single trip.

(Link)

The bedside drinks holder 

We have mentioned this elsewhere and we will keep mentioning it until everyone we know has one. A really simple drinks holder which we attached to the van walls, above the seating/beds, one per side of the bed, holds your water bottle securely overnight so it cannot roll, tip, or deposit its entire contents over you at 3am.

Charlie knocked his water bottle off the shelf for three consecutive nights before we solved this. We now sleep soundly in every sense.

(Link)

The Honest Summary

None of this is expensive. None of it is complicated. Most of it is the kind of thing you would never think to look for if nobody told you about it.

The van does not have to be cold. The bed does not have to be compromised. The night does not have to involve lying awake in a draughty sleeping bag wishing you were at home. With the right layers, the right bedding system, a sleep hat, and a Yeti* of your own, a January night in a van in France can be genuinely, deeply, pull-the-duvet-up-and-never-want-to-move comfortable.

It took us a trip to work all of this out. We are passing it on so you don't have to.

*I coined the name ‘yeti’ – so don’t go searching of this online, you may not find what your’e looking for!  Here’s a link

Kate, Charlie, Huffle & Brigitte

Kettle & Keys  -  comfort, wherever you park up.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, marked with [affiliate]. This means if you buy through them, we earn a small commission — at absolutely no extra cost to you. We only ever link to things we have genuinely used and would recommend to a friend regardless. It's one of the ways we keep Kettle & Keys running, and we're grateful for every click. Thank you for supporting us.