A Schplendid Guide to Down: its history, science, uses and delights
Posted posted on September 09, 2025
Goose fluff is one of nature’s most marvelous inventions, with a story that mixes science, history, ethics and sheer delight. And of course, at Schplendid we know down is the finest thing you can possibly stuff into a sofa cushion…
What is down, and why does it matter?
If you’ve ever sunk into a pillow that seemed to float rather than squash, you’ve already met down. Not to be confused with feathers (which have stiff quills designed for flight), down is the fluffy underlayer that geese and ducks grow to keep themselves warm and smug-looking on freezing lakes.
Nature designed it as insulation perfection: light, breathable and astonishingly good at trapping warmth without weight. Humans, being both practical and comfort-hungry, quickly caught on. From Viking duvets to Arctic sleeping bags, down has been keeping us cosy for centuries.
The science of down: nature’s perfect insulation
A feather vs a down cluster. Feathers have a stiff quill (calamus) with rows of barbs and barbules to form a flat vane for flight. Down clusters have no quill – just soft filaments radiating in all directions, perfect for trapping air and creating cloud-like comfort. (Image courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Academy. Used under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) license)
How it grows: Down develops beneath the outer feathers of waterfowl. A typical feather has a stiff hollow shaft (the calamus or quill) with rows of barbs and tiny interlocking barbules that create a flat surface for flight. Down is different: it has no calamus, no flat vane. Instead, each down cluster is a three-dimensional puff of fine filaments radiating out like a snowflake.
How it works: Those radiating filaments trap countless pockets of air. The air is the magic trick – it holds warmth in, but lets moisture out. That’s why a goose can bob about on icy water and look perfectly content.
Why it feels so good: No quills, no spikes, no hard edges. Just fluff. Compress it and it springs back; sink into it and it moulds to you. It’s breathable, weightless, and absurdly resilient.
Science by numbers: Down is measured by fill power – the volume one ounce will loft up to. Higher fill power means loftier, longer-lasting clusters. Goose down generally outperforms duck down, which is why it’s coveted by duvet-makers, mountaineers…and sofa obsessives like us.
This ability to puff up is often called loft. Loft simply means how much space a given weight of down will occupy, and how well it springs back after being squashed. The loftier the down, the warmer, lighter and longer-lasting it is.
If down is so brilliant, you might be wondering: which birds have it? The short answer is all of them. Down feathers are one of the defining traits of birds, part of what makes a bird a bird. If you’ve ever seen a chick covered in fluffy yellow fuzz, you’ve seen down in its purest form. It’s the insulation baby birds rely on before their adult feathers grow in.
Waterfowl: the down champions While every bird has down, not all down is equal. Geese, ducks and swans are in a class of their own. Because they spend their lives on cold water, they’ve evolved large, lofty down clusters that trap air superbly. That’s why virtually all commercial down comes from waterfowl.
The legend of eiderdown Among ducks, the eider is special. Female eiders pluck their own breast down to line their nests, creating the softest cradle imaginable for their eggs. For centuries, people in Iceland, Norway and beyond have collected this nest down after the chicks have hatched, without harming the birds. The result — eiderdown — is extraordinarily light and warm, and so rare that it has become the caviar of bedding materials.
Other seabirds and land birds Gulls, petrels and songbirds also grow down, though in smaller, less lofty amounts. It works perfectly well for the bird itself, but it’s not practical for human use. Plucking down from a sparrow, for instance, would be an exercise in futility (and bad temper).
The odd case of ostriches and emus Flightless birds like ostriches and emus start life fluffy, but their adult plumage is more like shaggy hair than feathers. They don’t produce the kind of down clusters that waterfowl do, so they’ve never been part of the story.
The human angle So while down belongs to all birds, only waterfowl produce it in the volumes and quality humans can use. That’s why when you hear “goose down” or “duck down” on a label, you know you’re getting the insulation champions of the avian world. And when you hear “eiderdown,” you’re hearing the whisper of something legendary.
Image: Vintage feather illustrations by Adolphe Millot (public domain)
Down through history: man’s use of goose fluff
The early days The Vikings didn’t have central heating, but they did have goose down. Archaeological digs in Scandinavia have turned up bedding stuffed with it, while Tang dynasty China also recorded its use. From the start, it was the smart person’s shortcut to warmth.
Medieval and Renaissance Europe By the Middle Ages, a “feather bed” was a mark of luxury – and goose down was the luxury within the luxury. Softer and warmer than feathers, it was prized by the wealthy as the secret to a proper night’s sleep.
18th and 19th centuries In northern Europe, the “eiderdown” quilt became a household fixture. Explorers, meanwhile, trusted down sleeping bags and coats to keep them alive in Arctic conditions. For some it was comfort, for others sheer survival.
20th century By the 1900s, down had a double life: the height of domestic indulgence (duvets, pillows) and the essential kit of outdoor adventurers. From Edwardian bedrooms to Himalayan peaks, goose fluff was everywhere.
Edmund Dulac illustration for Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea. Public domain.
Art, culture and the romance of feathers
Down hasn’t just kept us warm; it has inspired a fair bit of art, myth and metaphor along the way. Geese and feathers appear everywhere from medieval manuscripts to Renaissance paintings, often symbolising domestic comfort or heavenly softness. The famous “eiderdown” quilt even became shorthand for bourgeois luxury in Victorian novels.
Fairy tales are full of featherbeds too: in The Princess and the Pea, the heroine is laid atop a pile of mattresses and featherbeds so thick they reach the ceiling. The point wasn’t goose-down science, but the idea that the softest bedding in the world was the ultimate test of refinement.
Painters also loved their geese, especially the Dutch. The 17th century gave us portraits of buxom maids plucking feathers in farmhouse kitchens, great heaps of white fluff filling the scene.And how about this beauty, resident at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath…
‘The Watersplash’ – Henry Herbert La Thangue (1859–1929) (Image: Victoria Art Gallery. Public domain via Art UK)
The ethics of down: past and present
Here’s where we need to be honest. Not all down has been gathered in ways we’d want to celebrate. In the past, there have been two major problems:
Live-plucking – where geese or ducks were plucked while still alive, an inhumane and painful practice.
Foie gras by-product – some down has come from geese raised for force-feeding, which carries its own welfare concerns.
Both practices still exist in pockets of the global supply chain, especially where regulation is weak. And for many years, consumers didn’t ask questions: the duvet was soft, the jacket was warm, and that was that.
Max Liebermann’s Women Plucking Geese (public domain, 19th century)
But times have changed. Outdoor brands now use the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) to certify humane practices. Traceability has become key, with audits to ensure down is collected ethically.
At Schplendid, we’ve cut to the chase: all our goose down comes from Italy as a by-product of the meat industry. That means no live-plucking, no force-feeding, no geese raised just for sofas. The bird provides food; the down is collected afterwards. Nothing wasted, nothing cruel.
Down vs the alternatives: a fair fight
Down has plenty of rivals, and each has its merits – but let’s be frank, none quite measure up.
Feathers – Better than foam, but those pesky quills mean lumps, spikes and clumping. Imagine sitting on a hedgehog in a duvet jacket.
Wool – Warm and natural, but heavier and less compressible. Perfect for jumpers, less so for cushions.
Synthetic fibres – Cheap, mass-produced, and decent at imitating down when new. The problem? They flatten quickly and, once spent, they hang around in landfill longer than the pyramids.
Science backs this up: down scores highest for thermal insulation, compressibility, weight-to-warmth ratio, and longevity. Which is why explorers still use it, duvets are filled with it, and at Schplendid, our sofas are stuffed with it.
For centuries, down was the preserve of bedding and clothing. Sofas, oddly, were left out of the party. Why? Because down is expensive, tricky to work with, and doesn’t suit the mass-production model. Most sofa makers chose the cheaper path: foam and polyester fibre.
At Schplendid we’ve decided that’s a crying shame. Cushions are where you actually feel a sofa, after all. Why wouldn’t you put the best material there? By running our business lean – no showrooms, no glossy ad campaigns, no salesmen with aluminium briefcases – we can spend where it matters. On the sofa. Which is why you’ll find ethically sourced Italian goose down in our cushions, and why you’ll find yourself sinking into them with a sigh.
Conclusion: a Schplendid material
Goose down is one of nature’s marvels: evolved to keep birds warm on icy lakes, adopted by humans for bedding, fashion and exploration, and now finally making sofas as comfortable as they ought to be.
It has history, it has science, it has controversy, but handled properly it has beauty and sustainability too. That’s why we use it – because if you want to make something truly Schplendid, you start with the best.
A Schplendid Guide to Down: its history, science, uses and delights
Goose fluff is one of nature’s most marvelous inventions, with a story that mixes science, history, ethics and sheer delight. And of course, at Schplendid we know down is the finest thing you can possibly stuff into a sofa cushion…
What is down, and why does it matter?
If you’ve ever sunk into a pillow that seemed to float rather than squash, you’ve already met down. Not to be confused with feathers (which have stiff quills designed for flight), down is the fluffy underlayer that geese and ducks grow to keep themselves warm and smug-looking on freezing lakes.
Nature designed it as insulation perfection: light, breathable and astonishingly good at trapping warmth without weight. Humans, being both practical and comfort-hungry, quickly caught on. From Viking duvets to Arctic sleeping bags, down has been keeping us cosy for centuries.
The science of down: nature’s perfect insulation
How it grows: Down develops beneath the outer feathers of waterfowl. A typical feather has a stiff hollow shaft (the calamus or quill) with rows of barbs and tiny interlocking barbules that create a flat surface for flight. Down is different: it has no calamus, no flat vane. Instead, each down cluster is a three-dimensional puff of fine filaments radiating out like a snowflake.
How it works: Those radiating filaments trap countless pockets of air. The air is the magic trick – it holds warmth in, but lets moisture out. That’s why a goose can bob about on icy water and look perfectly content.
Why it feels so good: No quills, no spikes, no hard edges. Just fluff. Compress it and it springs back; sink into it and it moulds to you. It’s breathable, weightless, and absurdly resilient.
Science by numbers: Down is measured by fill power – the volume one ounce will loft up to. Higher fill power means loftier, longer-lasting clusters. Goose down generally outperforms duck down, which is why it’s coveted by duvet-makers, mountaineers…and sofa obsessives like us.
This ability to puff up is often called loft. Loft simply means how much space a given weight of down will occupy, and how well it springs back after being squashed. The loftier the down, the warmer, lighter and longer-lasting it is.
The many types of down
If down is so brilliant, you might be wondering: which birds have it? The short answer is all of them. Down feathers are one of the defining traits of birds, part of what makes a bird a bird. If you’ve ever seen a chick covered in fluffy yellow fuzz, you’ve seen down in its purest form. It’s the insulation baby birds rely on before their adult feathers grow in.
Waterfowl: the down champions
While every bird has down, not all down is equal. Geese, ducks and swans are in a class of their own. Because they spend their lives on cold water, they’ve evolved large, lofty down clusters that trap air superbly. That’s why virtually all commercial down comes from waterfowl.
The legend of eiderdown
Among ducks, the eider is special. Female eiders pluck their own breast down to line their nests, creating the softest cradle imaginable for their eggs. For centuries, people in Iceland, Norway and beyond have collected this nest down after the chicks have hatched, without harming the birds. The result — eiderdown — is extraordinarily light and warm, and so rare that it has become the caviar of bedding materials.
Other seabirds and land birds
Gulls, petrels and songbirds also grow down, though in smaller, less lofty amounts. It works perfectly well for the bird itself, but it’s not practical for human use. Plucking down from a sparrow, for instance, would be an exercise in futility (and bad temper).
The odd case of ostriches and emus
Flightless birds like ostriches and emus start life fluffy, but their adult plumage is more like shaggy hair than feathers. They don’t produce the kind of down clusters that waterfowl do, so they’ve never been part of the story.
The human angle
So while down belongs to all birds, only waterfowl produce it in the volumes and quality humans can use. That’s why when you hear “goose down” or “duck down” on a label, you know you’re getting the insulation champions of the avian world. And when you hear “eiderdown,” you’re hearing the whisper of something legendary.
Down through history: man’s use of goose fluff
The early days
The Vikings didn’t have central heating, but they did have goose down. Archaeological digs in Scandinavia have turned up bedding stuffed with it, while Tang dynasty China also recorded its use. From the start, it was the smart person’s shortcut to warmth.
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
By the Middle Ages, a “feather bed” was a mark of luxury – and goose down was the luxury within the luxury. Softer and warmer than feathers, it was prized by the wealthy as the secret to a proper night’s sleep.
18th and 19th centuries
In northern Europe, the “eiderdown” quilt became a household fixture. Explorers, meanwhile, trusted down sleeping bags and coats to keep them alive in Arctic conditions. For some it was comfort, for others sheer survival.
20th century
By the 1900s, down had a double life: the height of domestic indulgence (duvets, pillows) and the essential kit of outdoor adventurers. From Edwardian bedrooms to Himalayan peaks, goose fluff was everywhere.
Art, culture and the romance of feathers
Down hasn’t just kept us warm; it has inspired a fair bit of art, myth and metaphor along the way. Geese and feathers appear everywhere from medieval manuscripts to Renaissance paintings, often symbolising domestic comfort or heavenly softness. The famous “eiderdown” quilt even became shorthand for bourgeois luxury in Victorian novels.
Fairy tales are full of featherbeds too: in The Princess and the Pea, the heroine is laid atop a pile of mattresses and featherbeds so thick they reach the ceiling. The point wasn’t goose-down science, but the idea that the softest bedding in the world was the ultimate test of refinement.
Painters also loved their geese, especially the Dutch. The 17th century gave us portraits of buxom maids plucking feathers in farmhouse kitchens, great heaps of white fluff filling the scene.And how about this beauty, resident at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath…
The ethics of down: past and present
Here’s where we need to be honest. Not all down has been gathered in ways we’d want to celebrate. In the past, there have been two major problems:
Both practices still exist in pockets of the global supply chain, especially where regulation is weak. And for many years, consumers didn’t ask questions: the duvet was soft, the jacket was warm, and that was that.
But times have changed. Outdoor brands now use the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) to certify humane practices. Traceability has become key, with audits to ensure down is collected ethically.
At Schplendid, we’ve cut to the chase: all our goose down comes from Italy as a by-product of the meat industry. That means no live-plucking, no force-feeding, no geese raised just for sofas. The bird provides food; the down is collected afterwards. Nothing wasted, nothing cruel.
Down vs the alternatives: a fair fight
Down has plenty of rivals, and each has its merits – but let’s be frank, none quite measure up.
Science backs this up: down scores highest for thermal insulation, compressibility, weight-to-warmth ratio, and longevity. Which is why explorers still use it, duvets are filled with it, and at Schplendid, our sofas are stuffed with it.
Read about exactly why we use goose down in our sofa cushions here.
Down in furniture: from beds to sofas
For centuries, down was the preserve of bedding and clothing. Sofas, oddly, were left out of the party. Why? Because down is expensive, tricky to work with, and doesn’t suit the mass-production model. Most sofa makers chose the cheaper path: foam and polyester fibre.
At Schplendid we’ve decided that’s a crying shame. Cushions are where you actually feel a sofa, after all. Why wouldn’t you put the best material there? By running our business lean – no showrooms, no glossy ad campaigns, no salesmen with aluminium briefcases – we can spend where it matters. On the sofa. Which is why you’ll find ethically sourced Italian goose down in our cushions, and why you’ll find yourself sinking into them with a sigh.
Conclusion: a Schplendid material
Goose down is one of nature’s marvels: evolved to keep birds warm on icy lakes, adopted by humans for bedding, fashion and exploration, and now finally making sofas as comfortable as they ought to be.
It has history, it has science, it has controversy, but handled properly it has beauty and sustainability too. That’s why we use it – because if you want to make something truly Schplendid, you start with the best.
See also:
"The most comfortable stuff you can possibly sit on” – Why we use goose down in Schplendid sofa cushions