Bedclothes are the sheets, blankets, quilts, and coverlets that cover you while you sleep. When you make your bed in the morning, you're arranging the bedclothes neatly on top of the mattress. When you're cold at night, you might pull the bedclothes up to your chin.

Bedclothes are fabric layers that keep you warm and comfortable. A typical bed might have a bottom sheet (which goes over the mattress), a top sheet, and then one or more blankets or a comforter piled on top. All of these together are the bedclothes.

You might hear someone say they “kicked off the bedclothes” on a hot summer night, or that they were “tangled in the bedclothes” after a restless sleep. The word sounds old-fashioned because people today often just say “blankets” or “covers,” but bedclothes remains useful when you want to refer to all the bed coverings at once, rather than naming each piece separately.