Salt-sensitive hypertension, increases in blood pressure in response to increased salt intake, is associated with an increased risk of morbidity, mortality and end-organ damage compared to salt-resistant hypertensive subjects. The Dahl Salt-Sensitive (SS) rat mimics these phenotypic characteristics observed in human hypertension when rats are challenged with a high salt diet. Our previous work has demonstrated that environmental factors, like dietary protein, alter the severity of salt-sensitivity in Dahl SS rats and should be an important consideration in experimental design. The current study investigated how the bedding on which animals were maintained (wood versus corncob) could impact the salt-sensitive phenotype in the Dahl SS rat. Animals that were maintained on a corncob bedding exhibited a significant attenuation in blood pressure and renal end-organ damage in response to a high salt diet when compared to animals on the wood bedding. This attenuation was associated with an improvement in renal function and reduction in immune cell infiltration into kidneys of Dahl SS rats maintained on corncob bedding. These results indicate that the type of bedding impacts the salt-sensitive phenotype in the Dahl SS rat, and that bedding utilized in experiments can be a confounding factor to consider during data interpretation and experimental design.