Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa Electric Blanket review: Warm up a cold bed with ease

With a luxurious fleece finish, the Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa electric blanket (or “mattress warmer”, as the brand puts it) is comfortable to lie on and heats up incredibly quickly. Even some of the best electric blankets can take time to heat up, so the fact that the Dreamland is ready to go in minutes scores it big brownie points.

For those of us who feel the cold, an electric blanket on the bed is one of life’s best little luxuries. It makes going to bed a pleasant experience, plus the fact that the blanket can be left on a lower setting overnight helps prevent sleepers from waking up shivering at 4am. Dreamland’s electric blanket has much to recommend it, but it’s not the cheapest on the market. Is it worth the extra financial outlay? Let’s find out.

Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa Electric Blanket review: What do you get for the money?

The Dreamland electric blanket is available in three sizes – double, king and super king, and comes with dual controllers (an absolute godsend if you share your bed with a hot sleeper, as I do). Made from 100% polyester, the blanket has a reversible design: a thicker fleece side and a thinner side to prevent overheating in the summer. This thinner side also allows you to keep the blanket on the bed even when not in use, so you can still take advantage of the slight extra padding it gives to the mattress.

Speaking of those dual controllers, these can be set independently according to each sleeper’s preference, and the heating elements are arranged as such so that each side of the blanket is set by its own controller. There are six heat settings – six is fast preheat, four to five are medium preheat and one to three are designed to be used safely overnight. The preheat settings dictate how quickly the blanket will warm up, as well the target temperature. According to Dreamland, the highest setting (6) will heat the blanket up in five minutes (more later on the accuracy of this claim). There are also three auto shut-off settings for one, three and nine hours.

Helpfully, the blanket is also machine washable at 30°C and can be tumble dried on a low setting. Unsurprisingly, it can’t be ironed or dry cleaned because of its wiring. You can hang it to air dry though. The power cord is a decent 1.5m long, which should make it easy to plug the blanket in without the use of a mountain of extension cables. The whole blanket arrives neatly packed into a simple bag with handles for carrying – it’s worth keeping this for storage over the summer (or on those rare occasions when the UK weather is actually hot).

Like its heated throw counterpart, the Dreamland Hygge Days Faux Fur Luxury heated throw, it’s not the cheapest on the market at £92, but the blanket is high quality and will do a fine job of keeping you warm at night.

Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa Electric Blanket review: Comfort, performance and test results

The Dreamland Hunker Down looks like a luxury electric blanket. The plush fluffy top ‘Sherpa’ layer looks smart on the bed – not that you’ll be looking at it much once it’s under your sheet. It also feels very warm and cosy, even without the heating elements switched on. Speaking of those heating elements, one of my favourite things about the Dreamland electric blanket is that it comes with dual controllers. This means you can set both sides of the bed to different temperatures or just switch one side on and leave the other off. This is perfect if you’re a couple like my husband and I – while I’m always cold he gives off enough heat to power a small town, meaning an electric blanket is his idea of a nightmare. We found the dual control feature to be an effective solution that meant I could power my side of the bed to warm up, while he maintained his cool side of the bed.

The auto-shut off feature is really useful too. You can set the timer for one, three or nine hours, the last of which is long enough to cover your recommended eight hours sleep plus an hour of reading or relaxing before you drift off. This means you can leave the blanket on one of the safe ‘all day’ temperatures and keep warm and toasty even as outside temperatures drop.

As I mentioned above, Dreamland claims that the electric blanket heats up to its maximum temperature in five minutes. To see how accurate this claim is, I ran some tests using a temperature probe. Credit to Dreamland, I’d say this claim isn’t too far off the mark: with the probe placed on one of the heating elements, I recorded a temperature of 54.5°C after five minutes (from a starting temperature of 22°C). After 10 minutes this had further increased to 59.1°C. I also tested the electric blanket on half power (setting three), and this rose from 19.4°C to its highest temperature of 23.4C after five minutes.

I tested the top of the blanket with a temperature gun. Temperatures averaged 30°C in the middle, but the corners were cooler, with an average of 25.9°C. This is to be expected, as the corners are designed to drape over the bed slightly. I also ran power consumption tests to see how energy efficient the Dreamland electric blanket is. At full power the blanket used 36W while heating up, with an accumulated 0.076kWh after 30 minutes. Of course, you’re not going to be using the blanket on full power all night, as this is just for initial heating. So I reran the test, this time starting the blanket up on half power, where it used 30W during heating up and 0.050kWh over 30 minutes.

On full power the Dreamland Hunker Down blanket is incredibly warm – even the most reptilian among us should be kept cosy on the chilliest of nights. But it’s too hot to sleep at these temperatures overnight and I found that level three was more than toasty enough for sleeping without any danger of overheating. Others may find that levels one and two are more than warm enough. The blanket itself is thicker than many electric underblankets on the market, so you’ll feel like you’re getting a nice amount of padding when you lie on it.

The blanket is machine washable, which I found impressive, without any risk of damaging the wires. That being said, do use a low temperature of 30°C max. I also found the power cable long enough for me to plug the blanket in without the use of any extension cords (though this all depends on the placement of plug sockets in your home). All in all, this is a very efficient blanket that does exactly what it says on the tin.

Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa Electric Blanket review: What could be improved?

This is a high-quality electric blanket. And as you might expect for that higher quality, it comes with a fairly hefty price tag. There’s no doubt that the Dreamland’s material is plusher than many cheaper alternatives and it does both an excellent job of heating up quickly and reaching temperatures that will keep even the chilliest warm. But if you’re on a budget, it’s not the one to consider.

My other issue with the throw was the supposed reversible feature. Dreamland says you can reverse the blanket in summer and sleep on the thinner side that’s designed without the ‘Sherpa’ fleece feel. But I found the wires far too protruding on this side and uncomfortable to lie on. In fairness, I am quite a bony creature, so while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend lying on this side, not everyone will share my experience. There’s also nothing stopping you from removing the blanket outright when the summer months roll around.

Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa Electric Blanket review: Should you buy it?

While it’s certainly not a budget-friendly option by any means, there’s lots to recommend the Dreamland Hunker Down. The blanket feels warm to the touch before you even turn it on and heats up extremely quickly and evenly across the main section of the bed.

It comes with secure straps to attach it firmly to the mattress and I didn’t notice any shifting about as we slept. Half settings are more than powerful enough to keep the chill off overnight and the auto shut off features allows you to safely leave the blanket on all night and not have to worry about remembering to turn it off in the morning. I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping on it.