I’m going to be totally transparent about our experience with Brooklinen bedding: I think I expected a bit more.

The brand is uber-trendy, minimalist and based in Brooklyn, even just blocks from where we used to live. The marketing photos are dreamy, the website is a breeze to use, and the company’s Instagram is addictive. What’s not to like? We got Brooklinen Percale cotton sheets and the Linen Quilt because I wanted to try all the hyped-up bedding products.

What happened? I’ll detail it here. (Also, this review is not sponsored at all; we got all our Brooklinen products as gifts for our wedding, or bought them for ourselves after our wedding, and way before we started this blog.)

What we ordered and received as gifts from our registry

Here’s what we got from Brooklinen:

I thought both these colors would be timeless, minimalist and never go out of style. And I was right. It’s just that the quality is what bothers me still to this day.

Brooklinen sheets quality

First, the sheets. They’re fine quality. And I really do like the crisp cotton feel. They’re exactly what they’re described as: crisp and soft, keeping you warm in winter and cool in summer. I like the “pillowcase enclosures” which make sure that I don’t see the whites of my pillows. I also like the fitted sheet’s hint of “LONG SIDE” and “SHORT SIDE” when I’m making the bed, as other brands leave you guessing.

Where things went south

But within days, I felt compelled to write this letter to customer support at Zola, where I had ordered my sheets from.

Zola apparently gave us a refund, which I had forgotten about, as I write this three years later in order to report on three years of use.

The sheets after three years of use

The situation with the sheets has not improved. Sure, they’ve held up fine in the washer and in the dryer, and haven’t come apart at all.

It’s the staining on the pillowcases. It is truly bizarre. I’ve had lots of sheets in my life and never have I had pillowcases that somehow have marks of where my face has been. And I’m not an exceptionally oily or dirty person — like I mentioned, my sheets from Amazon Basics (which I want to dislike, but because they’re fine after the same three years of use, I kind of enjoy) have held up excellently, as have my Quince bamboo sheets.

So what’s up with Brooklinen’s percale sheets, and is anyone else experiencing this? It’s borderline embarrassing to leave my Brooklinen pillowcases exposed and not hidden by the Linen Quilt Pillow Shams that I hide them with if I have visitors seeing my bedroom.

The sheets themselves have held up fine, nonetheless.

Brooklinen Linen Quilt quality

I bought us the Brooklinen Linen Quilt because I desperately wanted a new minimal bedding style for us when we started fresh with our deco after our wedding. Dan let me choose the color for our Brooklinen Quilt order, and I chose black (Charcoal Diamond).

The Brooklinen Linen Quilt has been the only quilt on our bed for three years and counting. Because it’s linen, I figured I’d avoid washing it too frequently, because I was afraid of putting it in the dryer and I don’t have a clothesline big enough to hang it dry.

Regardless, what I should be explaining is that we treat our Brooklinen Quilt very well, and it looks nice. It has moved with us from four different apartments now, to our current house, where it’s currently on our queen-sized bed.

So what happened?

Recently, I started seeing the stitches coming out of our Linen Quilt. I thought, Really? My $279 quilt has stitching coming out after only three years? I had bought this quilt for it to last a lifetime. Why should such an expensive quilt (at the end of the day, it’s thin, and in winter I need to layer on top of it to keep warm) be coming apart?

But yes, it’s coming apart at its stitching in several places. And once again, we do not create wear and tear on this quilt. We barely sit on our bed or hang out on it unless we are sleeping. This quilt doesn’t see much activity at all.

I reached out to Brooklinen’s Customer Support to complain that my three-year-old quilt is basically coming apart at the seams (figuratively). I hope they have something good to say and I hope they send me a new one.

Do I recommend Brooklinen?

I have to think on this. Brooklinen clearly is a very successful company with a very popular following and a lot of very attractive products.

I think it’s the quality that falls short, as I’ve now experienced the face-stained pillowcases, the stitching defects on the quilt and I haven’t even mentioned that in the first few days of using my Brooklinen bath towels, I had gray fuzz coming off them onto my body after I’d shower.

I think Brooklinen is an aesthetically-pleasing brand with excellent marketing and advertising. It’s what got me hooked: home design that I wanted to aspire to, and paid the high prices in order to “get that cool look.”

Was it worth it? I’m not sure. See for yourself: check out the Classic Percale Core Sheet Set and Linen Quilt.

As an update, I replaced my Brooklinen quilt with the one from Quince, and you can see how they compare against each other at my Brooklinen Quilt Set vs Quince Quilt Set review.