Bamboo and camel blanket: which is better to choose?

Which blan­ket is bet­ter to choose: camel or bam­boo? This ques­tion has arisen peri­od­i­cal­ly since the emer­gence of alter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al woolen prod­ucts. Both mate­ri­als are absolute­ly nat­ur­al, which makes them pop­u­lar with lovers of envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and com­fort­able home solu­tions. There are not as many dif­fer­ences between them as it might seem at first glance. And yet they are. And the first, most impor­tant thing is the ori­gin. Camel hair is a hair­line of ani­mals, con­sist­ing of two types of hair: hard-coarse, guard and soft, high­ly crimped under­coat. Bam­boo fiber is the result of the pro­cess­ing of plants grow­ing in eco­log­i­cal­ly clean areas with­out addi­tion­al pro­cess­ing and stim­u­la­tion.

Con­tent

1. Types of wool and veg­etable fibers
2. How to dis­tin­guish the orig­i­nal from a fake?
3. Ben­e­fits of Camel Hair
4. Ben­e­fits of bam­boo fiber

Types of wool and vegetable fibers

Wool is one of the most ancient mate­ri­als for the man­u­fac­ture of cloth­ing and house­hold items. Over time, the tech­nolo­gies for its pro­cess­ing have improved, but the prin­ci­ple of obtain­ing and prepar­ing has remained unchanged. Unlike oth­er nat­ur­al mate­ri­als such as leather and fur, wool is obtained in a “blood­less” way. Ani­mals are sheared or combed. The qual­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al depends not only on the type of ani­mal, but also on its age, breed char­ac­ter­is­tics, as well as the time of cut­ting and clean­ing meth­ods.

Sheep wool is con­sid­ered the most pop­u­lar, more expen­sive and valu­able fibers are obtained from goats and yaks. Lla­ma wool is con­sid­ered an elite mate­r­i­al. Camel wool stands apart in this list. And not only because this mate­r­i­al is quite exot­ic for Euro­pean coun­tries, but also because the struc­ture of the hair is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from all those list­ed above.

The plant fibers used as filler most often include cot­ton, milk silk, and bam­boo.

The lat­ter resem­bles wool, its long thin and soft fibers do not cake and do not absorb any for­eign odors. So which blan­ket is bet­ter: bam­boo or camel wool?

How to distinguish the original from a fake?

Despite the avail­abil­i­ty of any of their mate­ri­als, there are still quite skill­ful fakes on the mar­ket. Most often forged blan­kets made of camel hair. They are more expen­sive than bam­boo and are in great demand in the north­ern regions.

In the best case, you can find ordi­nary sheep wool in the cov­er, the qual­i­ty of such a blan­ket will not be much worse than the orig­i­nal, but some prop­er­ties will still be low­er than that of an acces­so­ry made of nat­ur­al camel wool. You can iden­ti­fy a camel in “sheep­’s cloth­ing” by the fol­low­ing signs:

• The blan­ket is heav­ier and denser.
• It has a spe­cif­ic smell due to the low­er con­tent of lano­lin.
• Over time, the fibers become caked due to the scaly out­er struc­ture of sheep­’s hair, becom­ing like poor­ly rolled felt.

The worst option is an attempt to pass off ordi­nary syn­thet­ic filler as camel hair. We do not argue that mod­ern syn­thet­ic mate­ri­als have a num­ber of advan­tages. But if we talk about nat­u­ral­ness, this is clear­ly not one of them.

In this case, it is quite dif­fi­cult to deter­mine a fake; you will have to open the cov­er or wait for the first wash. If we are talk­ing about a fake, then, of course, even com­par­ing which blan­ket is bet­ter — bam­boo or camel — is not worth it.

Benefits of Camel Hair

The camel’s coat con­sists of hard guard hairs and a soft, light under­coat, which, unlike sheep­’s wool, has a smooth sur­face. It is incon­ve­nient to spin such wool, but it is ide­al as a filler. Such blan­kets do not cake at all, retain heat under any exter­nal con­di­tions and are very durable.

If you have an aller­gic reac­tion to sheep wool, then you should buy a camel blan­ket. Due to the high con­tent of lano­lin, the mate­r­i­al has antibac­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties. In addi­tion, such wool does not elec­tri­fy, which means it does not attract dust par­ti­cles.

Benefits of bamboo fiber

Bam­boo is wide­ly used in East­ern coun­tries not only as a build­ing mate­r­i­al, but also as a raw mate­r­i­al for the man­u­fac­ture of tex­tiles, yarn, exot­ic dish­es, med­i­cines, house­hold uten­sils and reli­gious items.

To fill the blan­ket, nat­u­ral­ly grown bam­boo is processed into fibers only a few microns thick. Nat­ur­al resis­tance to any exter­nal influ­ences makes the fiber very durable, and the hol­low struc­ture of the stem — light and elas­tic. Such a blan­ket is easy to wash in a con­ven­tion­al wash­ing machine with any deter­gent, it dries quick­ly, does not accu­mu­late sta­t­ic elec­tric­i­ty and does not cause aller­gies. In addi­tion, you can even buy a blan­ket made of bam­boo even on the Inter­net.

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s up to you to decide what to buy: a camel blan­ket or a bam­boo blan­ket. In any case, now you can weigh the pros and cons before buy­ing.