Silentnight Comfort Control Electric Blanket review: Cosy warmth on a budget

During the cold winter months, a good electric blanket, like the Silentnight Comfort Control, can be a godsend. There are two common types: under-sheet electric blankets that strap to your mattress and warm your bed from under your fitted sheet, or heated throws that you can drape around yourself – whether you’re relaxing on the sofa or sitting at your desk.

Silentnight’s Comfort Control Electric blanket falls into the former category. I’ve been testing it over December and January and have found it to be a cosy addition to my winter sleep setup that won’t break the bank.

Silentnight Comfort Control Electric Blanket review: What do you get for the money?

The Comfort Control blanket starts at £30 in a single size, rising to £35 for a double (which I tested), £42 for a king and £45 for a super king. As I mentioned above, the blanket is designed to be fitted onto your mattress underneath your sheet. It has two elastic straps that serve to hold it in place and are easy enough to fasten underneath your mattress (but bear in mind that you will probably need to lift the mattress up slightly to get the straps round it).

The cord of the electric blanket connects to the top right hand corner and can be detached when it’s time to wash it (according to Silentnight’s own guidance, the Comfort Control is suitable for hand washing or machine washing at 40°C on a wool cycle, and can even be tumble dried on a low heat if necessary).

The blanket is easy to use with a chunky sliding switch control that has three settings: no heat (0), low heat (1), medium heat (2) and high heat (3). Interestingly, you can turn the blanket to 0 on both ends of the slider, which I thought was an odd feature at first. However, it makes sense for ease of turning the blanket off if you’re in bed and at an awkward angle, or if it’s dark.

While Silentnight offers a sleep trial with its mattresses, no such trial is available for the electric blanket. However, it does come with a three year warranty.

Silentnight Comfort Control Electric Blanket review: Comfort, performance and test results

I tested the Silentnight Comfort Control electric blanket between December and a particular cold snap in January. I was initially a little surprised to find that the blanket wasn’t quite as luxuriously comfortable as anticipated – the polyester construction is clearly durable and imitates wool quite well, but it was coarser than I’d expected. Luckily, this is irrelevant once you’ve got it strapped to your bed (which is easy enough to do) and under a sheet.

To the touch, I could feel where the heating elements ran through the blanket, though these weren’t an issue once I was lying on it, nor was the chunk of hard plastic in the top right corner of the blanket where the cord attaches: I was worried about it digging into me during the night but, because I had the blanket positioned so that this bit sat underneath my pillow, I didn’t feel it at all.

In operation, the Comfort Control electric blanket feels very toasty and snug. On colder nights I turned up the temperature to its highest setting, but for the most part found that medium heat was a comfortable middle ground.

To get an impression of how quickly the blanket heats up, I ran some tests with a thermocouple probe and a temperature gun. With the probe positioned between the duvet and fitted sheet and with the blanket at its highest setting, the temperature rose from 19.4°C to 30.3°C after 10 minutes, reaching 38.5°C by the 25 minute mark. It’s worth noting that these measurements are just illustrative – temperature will be affected by body heat and the bedding you use among other factors – but they’re still a good indication of how quickly the blanket heats up. My tests with the temperature gun also indicated that heat is evenly distributed throughout the blanket for the most part, if a bit cooler at the corners.

Tests with a power meter plug also suggested that power consumption is reasonably low. I noted a figure of 52.5W as the blanket warmed up on the highest setting, and 37.5W on setting 2. After 30 minutes on the highest setting, accumulated kWh was 0.042, which would equate to a cost of around just £0.01 (according to the January 2025 price of 25p/kWh).

On the subject of cost, the Silentnight Comfort Control is a very affordable electric blanket. The double that I tested will cost you £35 directly from Silentnight, or £27 from Amazon (at the time of writing). Combine this with the low running cost, and you’ve got a brilliantly affordable way to keep warm during the winter nights.

Silentnight Comfort Control Electric Blanket review: What could be improved?

Most of the issues I had with the Silentnight Comfort Control were little more than relatively minor annoyances, however they did impact my experience with it. For one, it can be a bit fiddly trying to use the blanket’s temperature controls while you’re lying in bed: on more than one occasion, I had to contort my arm uncomfortably behind me to switch it off, which wasn’t aided by the fact that the only light source was a small bedside lamp. As I’ve mentioned above, having the ‘off’ setting on both ends of the control’s slider is quite handy in this respect, but moving the entire control unit down the cord (closer to the plug) would help further.

Another irritation was the length of the power cord. I had the blanket positioned on my mattress in such a way that I had to use an extension lead, the position of which I had to move around to my bed every time I wanted to use the blanket. Again, not a total failure on the part of the Comfort Control, but still a bit of a pain and I think making the blanket’s power cord a bit longer would be a big help for users. This entirely depends on the setup of your room of course, so you may well not have the same issue as I did, and you can always rotate the blanket so the cord is positioned at the bottom left rather than the top right hand side.

Lastly, I was a little taken aback by the size of the blanket itself. It isn’t big enough to cover the whole surface area of the mattress, and at first I thought I had been sent the wrong size. Others have complained of this too. I found that, once you’ve got a duvet covering you, the blanket still does a good job of warming up your bed. But those on the taller side may get cold feet.

Silentnight Comfort Control Electric Blanket review: Should you buy it?

The Silentnight Comfort Control electric blanket is not without its shortcomings, though I think most of the issues I outlined above are ones that could be resolved relatively easily by the brand.

Nevertheless, it remains a great option if you’re looking for a budget-friendly electric blanket. Cheap to buy and cheap to run, it will ensure your bed stays toasty in the winter without breaking the bank.