Dreaming about
a blanket

Most people's first comfort object is a blanket, and plenty of adults still have a favorite one on the sofa. So dreaming about a blanket is usually about comfort, whether you have it, need it or are using it to hide from something. And because you're probably lying under one while you dream, a real blanket can slip into the dream too.

The rest of the reading comes from the details. A blanket someone wraps around you is a different dream from one you pull over your head, and a thin blanket on a freezing night is different again. Who gave it to you, and how it felt, decide which one you had.

What dreaming about a blanket means

A blanket makes no heat of its own. It only keeps in the warmth you already have, which is a useful way to think about what it stands for.

Comfort and being looked after

Being wrapped in a blanket is being cared for, and dreams of it often come during a hard time, when you need comfort or have just found some. Child psychologists call a toddler's blanket a "transitional object", the thing that stands in for a parent while the parent is out of the room, and Linus from the Peanuts comic strip made "security blanket" an everyday phrase. If your dream blanket felt like that, it's about the people or habits keeping you steady.

Hiding under the covers

Pulling the covers over your head is how children hide from monsters, and adults do the dream version when something feels too big. If you were under a blanket hoping not to be found, look at what you're avoiding, like a conversation, a bill or a decision. The blanket keeps you warm and also keeps you where you are, so the real question is how long you can stay under it.

Covering everything

A "blanket ban" or a "blanket statement" covers every case without looking at any of them. A dream where one blanket covers a whole room, or everyone in it, can be about a rule or an attitude that flattens all the details, sometimes one you've turned on yourself ("I always mess this up").

Dreaming about someone giving you a blanket

Being handed a blanket, or having one put around your shoulders, is care from whoever gave it. Usually that's a person who already looks after you, or one you wish would. A stranger offering a blanket after an accident or out in the cold can be your own kindness toward yourself, turning up in someone else's hands.

Dreaming about being cold under a thin blanket

A blanket that doesn't keep the cold out is comfort that isn't enough. It comes when support you rely on feels thin, a relationship that's cooled, savings that don't stretch, friends who live far away. Check the bedroom first, though, because a blanket that has slid to the floor is the likeliest cause of this one.

Dreaming about a baby blanket

A baby blanket brings new beginnings into the dream, and usually tenderness. It can be about a pregnancy, real or hoped for, or about something new in your life that needs protecting while it's small. Finding your own childhood blanket is about going back, to the safety you had or to a younger version of you who needed it.

Dreaming about a dirty or torn blanket

A blanket full of holes, stained or smelling of someone else, is comfort that's been spoiled. It can be about a home or a relationship that used to feel safe and doesn't any more. And in English a "wet blanket" is the person who spoils everyone's fun, so a soggy blanket in a dream can be about someone (or a part of you) that keeps putting out your enthusiasm.

Dreaming about a blanket according to Jung and Freud

Blankets never made it into either man's writing on dreams, but both left ideas that suit an object you pull around yourself.

Jung: a small piece of the mother's shelter

Jung's list of mother symbols (what dreams and myths use to stand for her) includes a cave, a garden, the woods, an oven, still water and the cow.^[1] Nearly every item is a place that holds, warms or feeds. A blanket isn't on the list, so reading it this way means borrowing his idea, but it's the smallest and most portable shelter there is, the one a child carries to bed. A dream where it wraps you well is that old shelter still working, and a thin, torn or soaked one points to a shelter you used to count on that has stopped holding.

Freud: the plainest wish

Freud's starting point was that a dream stages a wish, and being wrapped up warm is about as plain as a wish gets. What he'd chase is why it's pressing tonight, since he held that a dream's pictures come from the leftovers of the day (day residue), like a cold evening, a hard phone call or a flat that has gone quiet.^[2] For the hiding-under-the-covers version, his question would be what the covers are keeping out.

Questions to ask about your blanket dream

A blanket dream is mostly about comfort, so ask where your comfort comes from.

• Were you warm, or still cold underneath it?
• Who gave you the blanket, or took it away?
• Were you hiding under it?
• Was it yours, or someone else's?
• Who or what makes you feel safe right now, and is it enough?

Oniri asks you about the dream and the weeks around it before it reads anything, so a blanket of comfort and a blanket to hide under can be told apart.