Comforter vs Quilt vs Dohar vs Blanket: GSM Guide by City (India)

Short answer: A dohar is the lightest layer: three thin sheets of cotton stitched together, made for fan or AC nights and the first cool weeks of the season. A comforter is a stitched shell with polyester or microfibre filling, and its warmth tracks its GSM: around 150–250 GSM for AC rooms, 300–400 GSM for a North Indian winter. A razai (traditional quilt) is packed with cotton or wool and is the heaviest and warmest. A blanket (mink, fleece or wool) is a single woven or knitted sheet with no filling. It is warm for its weight, easy to wash, and best used on top of something else. For Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata or Bengaluru, a dohar plus a 200 GSM comforter covers the whole year. For Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur or Chandigarh, plan on a 300+ GSM comforter or a razai for December and January.

Most "dohar vs comforter" articles online are written by bedding brands and stop at "dohar for summer, comforter for winter". This guide adds the numbers those pages leave out: GSM bands, rough weights, which layer suits which city, and how to stop a quilt from bunching inside its cover.

The four layers at a glance

Layer	What it is	Typical weight (double)	Warmth	Washing
Dohar	3 cotton layers (muslin–cotton–muslin), no filling	about 0.8–1.5 kg	Low	Machine wash, dries fast
AC comforter (150–250 GSM)	Microfibre shell + thin polyester fill	about 1.2–2 kg	Low–medium	Machine wash, gentle
Winter comforter (300–400 GSM)	Same build, thicker fill	about 2–3.5 kg	Medium–high	Large drum or laundry
Razai (cotton or wool fill)	Hand-filled quilt, often with a separate cover	about 3–6 kg	High	Wash the cover only; air the fill
Mink / fleece blanket	One knitted pile sheet, no fill	about 1.5–3 kg	Medium	Machine wash cold

The weights are typical ranges taken from product listings, not fixed standards. Always read the weight or GSM on the listing you are buying.

What GSM means on a comforter

GSM is grams per square metre of filling. It is the one number that lets you compare two comforters from different brands, because "soft", "cosy" and "all-season" mean nothing on their own.

• 120–200 GSM: AC comforters. Right for 22–26°C bedrooms, monsoon nights and coastal winters.
• 200–250 GSM: All-season comforters. Fine from about 16°C upward, especially if you add a blanket on the coldest nights.
• 300–400 GSM: Winter comforters for unheated North Indian bedrooms, where nights in December and January regularly drop into single digits.
• 400+ GSM: For hill stations, very cold rooms, or people who sleep cold. Heavy and slow to dry after washing.

A higher GSM is not automatically better. A 400 GSM comforter in a Chennai flat will leave you kicking it off by midnight. Buy for the coldest night you actually get, not for the coldest night in India.

Dohar: the most-used layer in most Indian homes

A dohar has no loose filling. Two outer muslin layers sandwich a cotton or flannel middle layer, and the whole thing is stitched flat. That makes it:

• Breathable, so you do not wake up sweating under a fan.
• Easy to wash: it goes in a normal machine load and dries on a balcony line in a day.
• Not warm enough on its own once the room is below roughly 18°C.

For most of South and West India, a dohar is what you sleep under from March to November, and often all year in an AC room. Up north, the dohar goes under a blanket or razai in winter, which is why many households keep two or three.

Comforter vs duvet: same shell, different idea

In India, "comforter" and "duvet" are often used as if they were the same thing. They are not.

• A comforter is sewn shut. The cover and the filling are one piece, so you wash the whole thing.
• A duvet is the filled insert only. It goes inside a removable duvet cover, which you wash like a bedsheet.

A duvet with a cover is more hygienic for daily use, because you can wash the cover every week. The trade-off is that the insert slides around and bunches into one corner. That is what blanket or duvet clips fix: they pin the insert to the cover at the corners. A 16-piece set like these INOVERA mushroom blanket clips covers four corners on up to four quilts, and they also stop a bedsheet from sliding on a smooth mattress.

Razai: still the warmest option for a North Indian winter

A traditional razai is filled with carded cotton, or sometimes wool, rather than polyester. Cotton fill is dense and heavy, and that weight is part of why many people find a razai so comfortable on a cold night.

Things to know before buying one:

• Cotton fill compacts over time. Older razais go lumpy and thin. Local dhuniya shops still re-card and refill them before winter, which is cheaper than buying new.
• You cannot machine wash the filling. Use a razai cover (khol) and wash that instead. Air the razai in the sun for a few hours every couple of weeks.
• Jaipuri razais are lighter, hand-printed versions, often with fine cotton fill. They are warm enough for Rajasthan or Delhi in November and February but not for the coldest weeks on their own.

If you live in a flat with no sunny balcony to air a heavy cotton razai, a 300–400 GSM microfibre comforter is the easier choice for daily use.

Mink and fleece blankets: warm, cheap, and best as a top layer

Mink blankets, the plush, often printed ones sold everywhere in winter, are acrylic or polyester pile knitted onto a base. They have no filling, so their warmth comes from the dense pile.

• Good for: an extra layer over a dohar or comforter, the sofa, or guests.
• Weight: double-bed mink blankets are usually sold by weight, often 2–3 kg; a heavier one is generally warmer.
• Downsides: they trap heat but do not breathe like cotton, so some people overheat or sweat under them. They also build static in dry winter air.

Live examples on our site include a BENAVJI floral embossed mink blanket and a VAS Collections 2500 g mink blanket. Check each listing's size and weight before ordering.

Which layer for which city

City / climate	Coldest nights (rough)	What to own
Chennai, Kochi, Mumbai, Goa	rarely below 18°C	Dohar + 150–200 GSM AC comforter
Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad	about 12–16°C	Dohar + 200–250 GSM comforter, light blanket spare
Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bhopal	about 10–14°C	250–300 GSM comforter or dohar + mink blanket
Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Patna	often 3–8°C in Dec–Jan	300–400 GSM comforter or razai, plus a blanket
Shimla, Dehradun, Srinagar, Darjeeling	near or below 0°C	Razai or 400+ GSM comforter + blanket

The temperatures are broad ranges, not forecasts. Unheated older houses with stone floors feel colder than the thermometer says, so size up one band if your home does.

How to layer for the coldest weeks

Layering beats one very heavy quilt, because you can remove a layer at 3 a.m. without waking up freezing.

1. Bottom: bedsheet, plus a mattress protector or a woollen underlay if the mattress feels cold.
2. Middle: dohar or an AC comforter.
3. Top: a mink blanket or razai for December–January only.

Air that is trapped between two thinner layers insulates better than the same weight in one dense layer. You also only have to wash the dohar often, not the heavy top layer.

Storing winter bedding for the rest of the year

Comforters and razais take up a lot of cupboard space for eight or nine months a year.

• Wash or dry-clean them and dry them fully before packing. Any damp left in the filling smells musty by October.
• Vacuum compression bags shrink a comforter to roughly a third of its size. Leave a razai with cotton fill uncompressed or only lightly compressed, because hard compression flattens cotton fill for good.
• Under-bed storage bags work for dohars and blankets. Add a sachet of naphthalene balls or neem leaves in humid cities.

Quick buying checklist

• GSM printed on the listing. If a comforter has no GSM, assume it is a light AC one.
• Size: single is usually about 150 × 220 cm and double about 220 × 250 cm. Match it to your bed, not your bedsheet.
• Box stitching (a grid of squares) keeps polyester fill from drifting. Avoid wide, open channels.
• Reversible two-colour designs let you change the look without buying a second one.
• Cover vs no cover: if you will not wash a whole comforter every few weeks, buy a duvet and cover instead.

For live price drops on comforters, blankets and other winter bedding, check today's offers. We list deals that are price-verified on the store page, and every listing links straight to the product.