GYS Bamboo Nightgown Review: Months of Hot Tucson Nights

At 2:40 in the morning I was standing in my closet again, in the dark, peeling off a damp cotton t-shirt for the second time that week. I am 51. I work the front office at an elementary school here in Tucson, and my night sweats started around 49. Most nights I wake up hot once. Some nights, twice. I was not looking for a cure and I still am not. I was looking for something I could sleep in and walk to the kitchen in without changing clothes at one in the morning. By June there were two GYS bamboo viscose nightgowns hanging in that closet. I have worn one of them almost every night since.

I bought them myself. The first one went in the cart in June, the week after the night I am about to describe. The second one followed a couple of weeks later, because I got tired of washing one and waiting. They are the same style: short sleeve, V-neck, above the knee. I have washed them the way the tag says and hung them to dry, and I have worn them through the worst of a desert summer, which out here is less a season than a long argument with the sun. What follows is what changed in my bedroom and what did not. I am not a doctor. If you are waking up hot and wide awake, talk to yours.

How I've Used It

The night that made me buy one was in late May. I woke at one in the morning with a cotton t-shirt stuck to my back, got up, changed into a different t-shirt, lay back down, and stared at the ceiling for 40 minutes listening to Ray breathe. He sleeps cold and he likes a heavy blanket, and I would rather he keep it than spend the whole summer arguing about the thermostat. The next day I went looking for something lighter to sleep in, and I ordered a GYS nightgown.

Before I ordered anything, I tried the cheap version first. I slept in a tank top and shorts for about a week. That solved the damp shirt and created a new problem, which is that my arms were cold by 4 a.m. and I was dragging the sheet back over my shoulders. Then I tried a thinner cotton t-shirt, and it was better than the heavy one for an hour or two and then it was stuck to my back just the same. What I actually wanted was one piece that covered me enough to walk down the hall for water and not enough to hold heat. That is a narrow thing to shop for in a department store at my age.

It showed up in June. The first thing I noticed was how little it weighs in your hand. The second was that it does not stick to you. That sounds like a small thing until you have spent a summer peeling a damp shirt off your ribs at one in the morning. I got into bed and the fabric stayed off my skin instead of wrapping around it, and as far as I was concerned, that was the whole test.

I have worn one of them almost every night since, and I alternate them so there is always a clean one on the hanger. The small Honeywell fan on my nightstand still points at my pillow, and I still turn it up to medium when I wake up hot. The nightgown did not replace any of that. What it replaced was the closet trip.

What Bamboo Viscose Feels Like at Two in the Morning

Bamboo viscose is a fiber made from bamboo pulp, and what it turns into is a fabric with a smooth surface and very little weight. It is not silky and it is not slippery. It hangs against you instead of sitting on top of you, which is the difference between a garment you notice all night and one you forget about somewhere around midnight.

Here is the honest test. When I wake up hot, the fabric is damp, same as anything else would be. The difference is what happens next. My old cotton t-shirts held that dampness and went cool and clammy across my back, and I would wake an hour later cold, wet, and irritated. This one dries faster. I noticed it most around 4 a.m., the hour I used to spend lying in a cold shirt waiting to fall back asleep. Now I am just lying there, which is a much smaller problem to have.

There was a night in the middle of June, the first week the afternoon high stayed over 105, when I woke at 12:50 and again at 3:10. I remember it because it was the first second wake-up that did not involve getting out of bed. I lay there with the fan on medium, waited it out, and was asleep again before 3:30. In May that same sequence would have cost me an hour and a change of clothes. That is the entire benefit, and I do not want to dress it up as more than it is.

I am not going to tell you it lowers your body temperature. It does not, and on a bad night I still wake up hot and I still reach for the fan. The nightgown does not stop the flash. It means that once the flash passes, I am not lying in a wet shirt, and I am not getting up to change.

The Details That Held Up Over Three Months

The V-neck matters more than I expected. A high neckline on a hot night feels like a hand at your throat. This one sits open, stays where you put it, and I have not had to tug at it once. Short sleeves mean my arms are out, and my arms are the first part of me to run hot. Air on my arms does more for me than anything below the waist.

It falls above the knee, which is the length I wanted. Anything longer wraps around your legs when you roll over, and then you are fighting your own nightgown at three in the morning. It pulls on over the head with nothing to fasten, which sounds trivial until you are trying to find a button in the dark.

The neckline has also not stretched out. I pull these over my head every single night, which is exactly the motion that ruins a V-neck in a couple of months, and the opening is the same shape it was in June. I have had cheap knit tops go limp at the collar by August. These have not.

There is a lace detail across the back. It is decorative, it has held up through three months of cold washes and line drying, and it has not bothered me, because I sleep on my side. If you sleep flat on your back and you are particular about texture against your skin, look at that detail closely before you order. That is the one place where this GYS nightgown asks anything of you.

Sizing and Fit, and What I Would Do Differently

I ordered a Small. The fit is regular, not snug and not roomy, and there is enough slack that I do not feel it when I turn over. I did not size up and I would not. If you are between sizes, think about how you sleep rather than how you dress. I wanted mine to move with me. I did not want it floating around me like a tent.

What I would do differently is buy two from the start. One nightgown means laundry every other day, and in July in Tucson that gets old fast. The second one fixed the only real complaint I had, and the complaint was mine, not the garment's.

Three months in, neither one has stretched at the neck or gone thin at the shoulder. The seams are where they were when they came out of the package. I wash them cold, I hang them, and I have not had to do anything else to them. For something this light I expected to be shopping again by August. I am not.

Washing and Drying in Desert Heat

Cold wash on gentle, then hang to dry. That is the entire routine, and mine have kept their shape and their surface. I do not put them in the dryer. Part of that is caution, and part of it is that they dry so fast on a hanger in this house that the dryer feels like an hour I do not need to spend.

They are thin enough that two of them take up almost no room on the line, and they are dry by the time I have finished the rest of the laundry. I wash them on Saturday with the sheets, hang them on the back patio in the shade, and they are back in the closet by afternoon. No special detergent, no ironing, no learning curve.

I timed it once, mostly out of curiosity. Hung in the shade on the back patio at 9:30 on a Saturday morning in July, dry to the touch by 10:15, and that was with the monsoon humidity sitting on everything. My old cotton t-shirts took most of the day on the same line.

What It Does Not Do

It does not stop night sweats. It does not keep me asleep. On a night when I wake twice, I wake twice, and a nightgown is not going to change that. If you are looking for something that ends the flashes, this is not it, and nothing hanging in a closet is.

It also does not cool you the way a blanket does. I have a cooling blanket folded in half on my side of the bed, and it does a different job entirely. The nightgown is the layer against your skin. It cannot do the work of the layer over you, and it should not be asked to.

The last thing is that it looks like a nightgown, because it is one. Short, with lace across the back, not something I would answer the door in at ten on a Saturday morning. I bought it to sleep in, and that is all I ask of it.

The Nights It Did Not Help

There were nights in July when none of it mattered. When the size of a flash is bigger than anything you can put on your body, you wake up drenched anyway, and a lighter nightgown just means you are drenched in something lighter. I had two of those in the same week at the end of July. I changed at 2 a.m. both times. I am telling you this because a review that only covers the good nights is not a review.

The first of the two was a Sunday. I had spent the afternoon doing nothing more strenuous than folding laundry with the blinds shut against the sun, which is what makes those particular nights so irritating. There was no cause to point at, no glass of wine, no spicy dinner, nothing to blame except my own internal thermostat deciding it was done being reasonable.

What I will say is that on those nights the change was faster. The nightgown came off and went back on without a fight, and I was back in bed inside a minute instead of standing in the closet deciding what to wear. That is a small mercy at two in the morning. Small mercies are most of what this purchase is.

The night sweats did not stop. What stopped was me standing in front of the closet at two in the morning, peeling off a wet shirt.

Who This Is For

This is for the woman who wakes up hot once or twice a night and has already tried sleeping in less. If your nightstand has a fan on it and your closet has a stack of stretched-out t-shirts you rotate through, this is the same problem I had, and a lighter layer helps with the part of it you can control.

It is also for anyone sharing a bed with a person who sleeps cold. Ray keeps his heavy fleece on his side and I keep my light layer on mine, and neither of us has to negotiate at 2 a.m. That alone was worth the change in my house.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want a product that ends the sweating. This is a nightgown, not a treatment, and I would rather you hear that from me than find it out in August. Skip it if you sleep cold and like flannel or a gown with some weight to it, because this will feel like nothing to you.

Also skip it if you sleep on your back and you know that texture across your spine keeps you awake, or if you want a long gown that covers your legs. This one is short on purpose. If you want length, this is the wrong piece to start with.