Comfortable patients rooms are required to reduce patients’ psychological stress during hospitalization. To clarify the states of bedding at patients rooms, we conducted a questionnaire survey on bedding which catches patients’ eye and is used by them. We obtained responses from the nursing managers at 162 hospitals in Japan. The most common color for bedding was white (bed sheets: 97.5%, duvet covers: 69.8%, pillowcases: 89.5%). Patternless linens were used more frequently in view of clean environment than patterned ones (99.4%, 71.6%, 95.1%). Colored and/or patterned linens were used for relaxing patients. The most important element of bedding was safety/hygiene management (such as infection prevention), therefore, most hospitals put importance on cleanliness and safety/hygiene management. The effect of each type of bed linen on patients was evaluated as follows: white: “promoting patients’ sense of cleanliness”; pale red: “making patients feel better and warmer in the room”; patternless: “promoting patients’ sense of cleanliness without being conspicuous”; and patterned: “promoting patients’ calm and safe feelings, and making them feel better, brighter, and warmer in the room”. The results suggest that colored and/or patterned bed linens promote patients’ psychological comfort.

This study examined whether the fingertip could feel the features of the other fabric through a fabric. Samples were 13 types of fabrics with different properties. Combining samples in various ways, a sensory test was performed by a pair test method to see if the object fabric could be recognized through a fabric by three methods: touch, slide and touch-sack tests. As a result, the characteristics of the fabric including thickness, the compressional property, the surface property and the combined effect of the two fabrics affected the recognition of the object fabric. Among the test methods, the touch-sack test tended to be the most difficult to recognize the object fabric, while the touch test and the slide test were more likely to recognize the object fabric in this order. Using fabric data such as compressional properties and surface properties as explanatory variables, a discriminant analysis was performed in three groups: the group that can recognize the object fabric (G1), the group unable to recognize it (G2), and the group not belong to either (G3). By the analysis, the good discriminant equations were introduced. The analysis results also showed that the important parameters to recognize the object fabric were the thickness and its balance of the two fabrics, the compressional energy (WC) of the object fabric, SMD and the wavelength corresponding to the peak of the power spectrum obtained from the SMD signal wave.