I love this topic and just noticed that its an old one. We have a king now in our FL condo which we haven't ever had before and honestly I hate to make the bed. But I am with jxbrown's mom who uses the tag as the guideline - I alternate between the tag being at Ken's head or my feet. I got some new sheets recently and they are so huge that I hate them, the top sheet is almost to the floor on both sides, its crazy. Another topic is the king size pillows, I am just not comfortable with them, they are hard to flip over when I change position which I often do. So I still use my tempurpedic pillow but I just hate having to deal with an extra pillow when I make the bed.

Part of the problem is that people assume that their mattress is the standard, advertised size. Like an standard King is supposed to be 76x80 but MANY manufacturers cut their mattresses short, believe it or not. Tempurpedic is notorious for cutting their mattresses short (Saves them money? Who knows.) The point is - the pocket depth being wrong is not the only problem you will have with getting a tight fit and avoiding swimming in bunched-up sheets on your bed. We have a Tempurpedic King mattress that is actually 74.5 inches wide by 79 inches long and 11.5 inches high. The thing to do is to order from custom sheet companies. These sheets are not that much more expensive than many premade sheets and often are higher quality. We ordered fitted sheets to match our existing sheet sets (similar colors) and the prices were quite reasonable. Good companies we found include CozyTown (https://cozytownlinens.com/ Call or read instructions on how to order custom sheets - they want you to choose the general size in the dropdown list then in the comments section tell them the actual mattress measurements). They use only long staple cotton. Their Italian and 300 thread count sheets are really nice and ship fast, while their 500 TC takes a bit longer to order. CustomMattressFactory.com is another company with 600 TC organic cotton that is even less expensive than the former company. But there are a lot of companies doing this sort of customization. We gave up searching for premade sheets to fit the beds and have finally gotten sheets that fit.

I love fitted sheets, but I hate the ones with the elastic all the way around. In the dryer, they suck up the pillow cases and the other sheet and it becomes a huge, damp ball. I'm constantly having to free the cases and then the sheet and dry them separately. I'm good at folding normal fitted sheets, these new ones are more challenging, especially in a king size, which all my sheets are. However, you don't have to spread them out on the bed to fold them, I dump all our dry stuff on the loveseat and stand behind it and fold, just running my hands down the sides of the sheets until I find the corners. What really annoys me about sheets is that the length and width of our bed is only 2" different, so whenever we make the bed, unless the sheets have a pattern, chances are the first try is wrong when fitting on the fitted sheet. Phooey! I can't ever remember where the tag is supposed to be, maybe I'll mark them with a Sharpie next time. Toe, Toe. Head, Head. Or should that be Toe, TOE. lol

The last three sets I bought did have elastic all the way around. That might not be a bad thing, but what I didn't like is that the elastic is inside a casing, meaning that it is not stitched TO the fabric of the sheet, so I have to adjust the gathers sometimes. I don't like that aspect. I didn't know it was the new thing, thought it was just this brand. The best fitted sheets I had actually had no elastic. They were really "fitted" by seaming in strategic areas at each corner. Of course, that was before we had several different heights of mattresses. A full size was just that, LOL. And yes, the new sheets are a despicable mess when I fold them. I used to be proud of my sheet folding, but not any more.