Nobody warns you about this part. You buy the bed for a reason — reflux, snoring, a back that objects to lying flat, or simply so one of you can read at forty degrees while the other sleeps — and then on the first laundry day you discover that making it is a two-person negotiation with a sheet.
Raise both head sections to roughly forty-five degrees before you start, then dress the two split halves first, top corners before bottom corners, and only then lower the bed flat and finish the foot. The mistake almost everyone makes is going around the outside corner by corner, which leaves the split panels for last and forces you to climb onto the mattress. Done in the right order it is a four-minute job for one person.
The split is the whole problem, and the whole answer.
A split top king is one mattress, not two. Sleep Number describes the FlexTop King plainly in its own specifications: each sleeper can raise or lower the head of their side while the lower half of the bed moves as one piece (Mattress and Base Specifications, Sleep Number support, updated June 2026). The overall footprint is a king — 76 by 80 inches. Only the top section is cut.
That matters for bed-making because the fitted sheet is not one surface, it is three. There are the two head panels, which move independently every night, and there is the single body of the bed below them, which does not. A standard king fitted sheet treats all of that as one plane, which is why it bridges across the split and pulls tight the moment either head goes up. A split top king sheet set has the split sewn in, usually with six pockets rather than four, so each half can travel on its own.
The other thing worth knowing before you start: on a Sleep Number king the adjustable base measures 75 and a half by 79 and a half inches, and it ships in two pieces. The mattress slightly overhangs it. That is why there is almost nothing to grip underneath at the head, and why leverage has to come from the bed being raised rather than from your arms.
Order of operations, in the order that actually works.
Here is the sequence. It is not clever; it is just the reverse of what most people do instinctively, and that single change is the difference between four minutes and fifteen.
| Step | Do this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Raise | Bring both head sections up to about forty-five degrees with the remote before you bring the sheets into the room. | Raising the head lifts the split panels away from the base and creates slack. You are working with gravity instead of against it. |
| 2 · Orient | Find the label or tag and put it at the foot, and keep the split panels facing you. | Getting a six-pocket fitted sheet on backwards is the single most common restart. Sleep Number gives the same instruction on its own sheet sets: line the labels up before you begin. |
| 3 · Split first | Cover the two head halves before anything else. On each half, the top outside corner first, then the inside corner at the split, then work the panel down. | The split panels have the least room to move. Do them while the rest of the sheet is still loose and you never have to fight the elastic. |
| 4 · Lower | Flatten the bed completely, then walk to the foot. | Lowering redistributes tension evenly. The sheet settles instead of being stretched into position. |
| 5 · Foot corners | Pull each bottom corner over the mattress and, if the set has them, clip the corner straps under the bed. | Straps hold the corner through nightly articulation. Deep pockets alone do not. |
| 6 · Top layers | Add the flat sheet, blanket and comforter with the bed flat, then raise the head once to check for pull. | If something is going to bind, it binds on the first raise. Better to find out now than at eleven at night. |
The two-person version is faster still, but only if you split by side rather than by layer. One person takes the left half from top corner to foot; the other takes the right. Working the same corner from opposite sides just means undoing each other.
Raise the bed, dress the split, lower the bed, finish the foot. Everything else is the same as any other king.
The whole method in one lineThree habits that turn this into a wrestling match.
Going corner-first around the outside. It feels natural — it is how you have made every bed for fifty years — but on a split top king it leaves the two head panels for last, at exactly the moment the sheet has no give left. That is the point at which people end up kneeling on the mattress, which then pulls the corner they just did.
Making the bed flat. Flat is where the bed ends, not where it starts. A flat split top king gives you no gap at the head at all, and the panels sit directly on the base with nothing to grip. Raise, dress, lower — in that order.
Trying to make a king fitted sheet behave. If you have already bought one and it seems to fit, watch what happens the first time one side goes up. The fabric tents across the split, the opposite corner lifts, and by morning it has popped. This is not a technique problem and no amount of tucking fixes it; we go through the reasons in detail in Sleep Number Sheets for a Split Top King: What Actually Fits. If you own a true split king instead — two Twin XL mattresses side by side, which is a different bed entirely — two Twin XL fitted sheets are the right answer, and the difference between the two setups is laid out in Split King vs. Split Top King.
What changes the difficulty, and what only seems to.
Two things genuinely change how hard this is. The first is depth. Sleep Number does not publish a single mattress profile height — its own specification page says profile height varies by model and that measurements can change over time. Add a mattress pad and you can add another inch or two on top of that. So measure your own bed, with the pad on, from the top surface to where the sheet needs to finish, and buy pockets deeper than that number. A 15-inch pocket that is technically deep enough has no slack left to hold a corner through articulation.
The second is the fabric itself. A sheet with fluid drape settles into the split when you lower the bed; a stiff, heavily-sized fabric tents over it and has to be persuaded. That is a real difference and it is also the smallest of the three — fit first, then depth, then fibre. We sell sheets, so take that ordering as our bias declared out loud rather than hidden.
The thing that does not change the difficulty, despite being the complaint you hear most, is the gap in the middle. On a split top king there is no middle gap to close — the mattress is continuous below the split. That complaint belongs to the two-mattress split king, where a bed bridge or a connector strap is the fix. If you are not sure which bed you own, the full guide to split top and flex top king mattresses settles it in about a minute.
One last note on rotation, since it comes up. Across our own orders, 21.5 percent of split top king buyers take three sets at once and roughly three quarters of those choose three different colours — Overstock Sheet Club order data, our customers, not an industry figure. The practical reason is that the top panels take the friction of every raise and lower, so they age faster than the rest, and a rotation spreads that out. Whether that is worth doing is your call; washing guidance for this fibre is in How to Wash Bamboo Sheets.
Sheets built with the split sewn in
100% rayon (viscose) from bamboo · 17-inch pockets · corner straps · Split Top King $169.95 · free shipping over $75.
The questions owners actually ask.
How do you make a split top king bed?
Is a split king bed hard to make?
The difficulty people describe is almost always the last two corners, and the last two corners are only difficult because they were left until the sheet had no give left.
Can you use regular king sheets on a split top king?
Should each side get its own top sheet?
If your two sleeping positions are usually far apart, try the two-sheet version for a week before deciding. Nothing about the bed forces either answer.
