A sheet that fits the laundry as well as the bed
A fitted sheet is shaped to grip a mattress: elastic gathers its edges, and sewn corners give it a three-dimensional form. That makes it convenient at home, but awkward for commercial laundry equipment designed to handle broad, flat pieces of cloth. A flat sheet can pass through a large heated press—often called a flatwork ironer—where rollers smooth and dry it. Elastic edges and bulky corners make fitted sheets harder to feed evenly through that process and harder to stack into neat piles afterward.
The bed is made by folding, not shaping
Hotels move linens through a repeatable cycle: collect them, wash and press them, sort them, then make many beds on a tight schedule. A flat sheet keeps its simple shape through most of that cycle. In the room, staff center it over the mattress and tuck the edges underneath, folding the corners so the sheet stays in place. The tuck supplies the grip that elastic would provide at home, but only at the final step.
That choice shifts some work from the laundry to bed-making, where a person can shape the sheet around mattresses of slightly different depths. The result is a small example of hotel design being governed by the whole operation, not just by what feels easiest in one room: a sheet that is less self-fitting can be easier to press, stack, and distribute at scale.
