Many of you have probably seen the ads on TV. They were on display at a store in the mall and were indeed very comfortable. They are more than a 1000 dollars though so I won’t be buying them any time soon.
Anyone tried one? Anyone actually purchased one?
Friends of mine have one and I tried it. I was not impressed as it was a little too mushy for me. Also, synthethic foam beds cause me to perspire too much. I am, however, a huge fan of natural latex foam and recommend those to you as an alternative to both tempurpedic and traditional spring mattresses.
Latex foam is subject to all sorts of marketing trickery. Aim for a mattress with at least 80% natural latex foam. Nowadays they blend that with synthetic latex–still an improvement over the sweaty polyurethane products.
I have been on them, and I’m not all that impressed. I actually prefer my normal mattress I have at home. I don’t get why people shell out a thousand dollars for these things.
Yes, I ordered my mattress set on line directly from the company. It was one of the best discoveries of my life. I can’t understand why anyone would consider it mushy. It’s very firm and supportive and reacts to my body’s weight, shape and heat.
I go to sleep more quickly and I don’t think that I move around as much. It’s been great for joint pain too.
Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to get used to but I was hooked right away.
The company got rid of my old mattress for me – which was helpful.
Absolutely no problems with delivery or quality.
We love ours. It took me a few days to get used to it and it took my wife a few weeks. My wife has back pain and it’s helped her a lot.
Haj
I’ve considered dipping my toe into the Tempurpedic market by purchasing one of their neck support pillows. I can’t justify spending over $1000 for a mattress. If they’re good, they’ll catch on and the price will come down.
They’ve been around for many years and they are good, they have caught on and there is no earthly reason for them to drop the price. They’re often on backorder as it is.
Haj
After reading several SDMB threads about the wonders of Tempur-pedic matresses, Mr. Athena and I ordered one as a replacement for our old matress last spring. I tend to have back pain in the morning, and we needed a new bed, and everyone said wonderful stuff about TP beds, so we splurged.
I hated it.
The damn thing was hard as a rock. I was coming from a very nice poofy pillowtop matress. I like soft but supportive beds (ie, not mushy), and the tempurpedic was like sleeping on a rock.
We were also a bit miffed to find that the super dooper TP foam was really only several inches of TP foam glued on to plain ol’ foam. For $1700, I wanted the whole bloody thing to be made of the super space age stuff.
We spent 6 or 8 weeks being miserable on the thing before calling them and telling them to pick it up, we hated it. We then went and bought a nice pillowtop. Very comfy!
To compare the two, the TP bed reminded me of a stark, Japanese style room - nice to look at, functional, but not very comfortable. My pillowtop is a lush Victorian room with cabbage roses and comfy comforters. Just what I want on a cold winter night!
If my husband and I knew that it would allow us to sleep comfortably all night long, we’d be happy to pay that much and more for it. We are in our mid 40s and have various joint pains and other problems, which make it difficult for us to fall asleep and stay asleep. The thing is, apparently it works very well for some people but not for others. We’ve been discussing this purchase for some months now, and we STILL haven’t decided whether or not to get one.
Is this the same as the so-called memory foam? I got a 2" thick memory foam mattress pad last week. It’s going to go with the replacement mattress for our boat, but I decided to put it on my bed till I get around to covering the new mattress foam.
Anyway, I think it’s wonderful! Our regular bed is on the firm side, and this pad on top gives just enough cushioning that I’m sleeping really well and I don’t wake up achy. I’m going to order one for the house bed after we install the other in the boat. I’ll consider it $170 well spent.
It took my husband a week to get used to it.
I adored it from the very first night.
I sleep so much better now. For us, it’s been swell.
Yeah, I ordered a 4" thick memory foam topper for my bed. I got it two weeks ago. It’s not the miracle cure that everyone touts it as, but I do sleep about 200% better. I no longer toss and turn as much. Instead of turning over about 4 times an hour, I now turn about 4 times a night. The deeper sleep is definately starting to have a positve effect on my waking hours.
I’ve decided to buy a topper for each of my 3 grandparents for Christmas - I hope it will do their achy bones some good.
After looking around, I found a place that had the 4" thick pad for $150, queen sized. I’d be happy to chat about my experience with it if anyone has any questions - just send me an e-mail.
The thing is, if you aren’t comfortable, you won’t sleep well no matter what the mattress is made of – and everyone is different. There is no one correct mattress firmness or type for optimal health and rest.
Yeah, FairyChatMom, you got it: Tempur-Pedic foam = temperature-sensitive foam = Isotonic foam = viscoelastic foam = Swedish foam = memory foam = NASA foam. Tempur-Pedic is just the highest-priced brand name (some would say highest quality, too).
As Athena noted above, the Tempur-Pedic brand mattress is a layer of their temperature sensitive stuff bonded to several inches of plain old foam. (They used to show this explicitly in all their promo materials, but they don’t on their website anymore… hmmn!) Therefore, you can approximate one for many dollars less by getting just the “mattress overlay” from TP, or even more many dollars less by getting one from elsewhere, and putting it onto whatever inexpensive base you choose.
Several companies are making viscoelastic foam now, and some of them match the TP in quality, IMHO. The key difference between all the choices is the density. TP is about 5.5 pounds per cubic foot, IIRC. That’s denser than many people find comfortable – it just feels too hard to some, though some of those find that after sleeping on it a while they like it after all. Other brands come in similarly high densities; ~4 and ~3 are common too. If you think TP is too hard you might like the lighter kinds better – the different densities feel dramatically different.
On eBay, you can get a knockoff brand, ~5 pound, 3" thick, brand-new viscoelastic mattress topper for any size bed for under $200. (You can also get less dense versions for less money. You can get 4", 2", and 1.5" thick toppers on eBay too. I’ve seen 1" thick pads in catalogues.)
We got a topper through eBay about 18 months ago, put it on a bottom-of-the-line $80 cotton futon, and now sleep much better than we did before. We toss and turn significantly less. In particular, I never wake up with my arm or foot “asleep” anymore. I also use a matching foam pillow, which has solved the aches I used to get from squashing my ears when sleeping on my side (my ears stick out farther than most people’s do).
Unexpected bonus: when your partner moves around in the middle of the night, you won’t get bounced. It’s even better in than those brand-name individually-wrapped-coils mattresses that they used to show dropping a bowling ball on, 'cause those mattresses actually DO bounce if you leave the fabric cover on them and add sheets!
Visco-elastic foam reacts to your body heat less if the bedroom is very warm already (above 85 F). It also “breathes” a bit less than a regular mattress. Here in an Austin summer, we find we need to lower the room temp to at most 85 before going to bed in order to be comfortable now – we used to get away with up to 90. YMMV.
Changing positions works fine for me – there’s only a few seconds of lag time for the mattress to reshape itself. I really like the feeling of a me-shaped nest. I find it very cuddly.
I recommend Googling around to ask for free foam samples from as many companies as you can, especially from those who specify the density. Also go lie on a TP one in a showroom if you can (and spend enough time lying there that you see what it’s like when it forms to you).