For most of my life, I’ve had spring mattresses. Never had any trouble with them or any complaints. Even if I had them for a while and they showed signs of age by dipping a bit in the middle, which a girlfriend called at the time, “a crater” I always seemed to have a good sleep.
About fifteen years ago or so, foam mattresses became the big thing. One commercial had a glass of red wine on the bed and someone next to it jumping up and down, and not one drop spilled. After taking off my shoes and cyphering the numbers, the times I had been in that exact situation were zero.
Still, I bought a memory foam mattress. It was fairly firm which I tend to like. After using it for a while my lower back began to hurt. Nothing terrible and by the time I was up and moving about everything was fine. Still, it was an annoyance so I bought a less firm memory foam mattress. Every morning my lower back still hurts. But again, by the time I’m done with my coffee etc everything is ok. It’s still annoying and sometimes it prevents me from getting a good nights sleep.
So, now I am considering going back to a spring mattress. I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.
I’ve been looking for awhile now. I got my daughter a mattress that has both inner springs and memory foam. I desperately need something new myself. I’m drawn to the purple mattress, but haven’t quite ordered it yet.
There are so many different kinds of foam mattresses, besides the name-brand memory foam mattress. Usually they come in combinations of different kinds of foams in layers, and varying degrees of firmness. These are now sold online, with 100 or 120 night trial periods when you can get a full refund. A few points:
There are any number of reviews of the top 10 or 12 of these online brands. I would google for those reviews and see what kind of a consensus you can come to. Some of them are quite a bit cheaper than others (and apparently just as good).
I was always under the impression that, if your back hurts, what you want is a more firm mattress, not a less firm one. Especially as you get older, your back may need more support.
A lot depends on your sleep position (sides, stomach, back). Good luck if you’re like me and do all four.
I got a new mattress recently, first time in many years, and if you are leaning toward a traditional spring mattress I can recommend two online companies - both have amazing free (or almost free) trial periods, along the lines of what @Roderick_Femm said. They both make “hybrid” mattresses, which are springs with a layer of foam on top. A much more traditional feel if you are not getting along with all-foam.
The first one I tried was the Bear Hybrid. Quality was really good, great customer service - I ended up returning it only because I discovered that I prefer a really firm mattress. The return process was very easy, they were very nice about it, they send a local company to pick it up and make use of it somehow. For most people with an intermediate plush-firm preference this would be very comfortable I think. They offer a completely free 100 day trial. This one comes compressed in a box, I think it’s somewhat more foam and less springs than the one below.
The one I kept was the Saatva Classic. Great quality and customer service again, and this comes in 3 different options on the plush-to-firm scale, so I went for the Firm one. As I recall their trial is not completely free, I think there’s a $100 charge if you return it, but that’s still pretty great. The other nice thing with the Saatva is that it doesn’t come compressed in a box like most of the online mattresses. I think it has two layers of springs and a thinner layer of foam, probably closest to a traditional spring mattress, so it doesn’t compress. They carry it in like a traditional mattress and put it on your bed and take away the old one and you’re ready to go. Really easy process.
I was wary of the whole idea of doing this online, but they all seem to competing with one another to offer great service and trial periods. I would strongly recommend online over talking to some scummy salesperson in a store. You might think that it’s a big advantage to try it out in a store, but you really can’t tell just from lying on it for 10 minutes. You need to sleep on it for a while to figure out if it’s going to work for you.
I took a day and drove to a bunch of stores, checking out prices and inventory. The next morning I went to one more store and one of the mattresses I checked out felt great. I offered about two-thirds the asking price, cash; they delivered it the next morning. That was 6 years ago now and my Serta Perfect Sleeper with the merest of pillow-tops is still deliciously comfortable.
We went through this a couple of years ago. Welcome to hell.
IMHO, this is another super-sleazy industry. There are pretty much no reviews that aren’t profiting from the sales of the mattresses they’re ostensibly reviewing (rendering their objectivity questionable, at best).
And some of these “reviewers” are making serious money at it.
Many of the bigger manufacturers create no end of model names for the same mattress, making it impossible for you to shop by price across multiple retailers.
And (no cite, just pretty sure) the bed-in-a-box people have such dramatically high profit margins that they can refund a significant number of unhappy customers and still make significant profits.
I bought my current mattress/box spring set about eight years ago, and yes, it’s a tough thing to do. I’m fully dressed with shoes on, lying flat on my back on a bare mattress in a showroom. What does that tell me about how the mattress will feel in my bedroom, once I’m dressed for bed and the bed is made up? Not much as far as I can tell.
And as for reviews of mattresses, I’m not sure what help they can be; this is an inherently subjective thing you’re buying so what you like the next person may not.
Although after I talked myself out of buying a new car by dividing the purchase price by the number of hours each week I’d be spending in it, it occurred to me that by the same theory, I ought to be spending a lot more time and money buying a mattress.
The foam ones outgas. You have to put them outside for a day or two to air out.
Foam mattresses can be HOT. As in, the body heat is reflected back to you. If you are the cold half of a couple, no biggie. Mr VOW is the hot half of us, and he’s kicking the covers to the floor and rolling around like a chicken on a rotisserie spit.
One major drawback of the “one mattress on a bed frame, no boxsprings” type is you cannot flip the mattress. The only rotation you can do is a horizontal one.
And that ain’t enough.
We need a new bed at The Daughter’s house, and I’m dreading that shopping trip.
We have been sleeping comfortably on memory foam for over 20 years. We also invested in adjustable beds which have been a great boon for Mrs Bob.
I do agree about them getting warm though and yes, you have to learn a new way of rolling over.
We flip the mattresses four times a year - sideways and end to end in rotaition. I marked the four faces SP, S, A, and W to be sure they went in sequence.
I’ve always been disappointed that any mattress no matter how expensive will eventually dip in the middle. It’s just the nature of any material. Compress it for 7 hours a day in the same spot and it will never retain its original form.
That’s probably the main reason we went to an inflatable type (Sleepnumber). We got the cheapest model which by itself is not that comfortable but with a memory foam mattress topper is the best of both worlds. It has the top comfort layer and it hasn’t dipped in the past 10 years we’ve had it because of the nature of the adjustable inflatable base.
We dropped the big bucks almost a decade ago on a Tempur-pedic and its still amazing. We move the mattress every couple of years as we move homes but don’t really do anything else. The mattress fabric on my side of the bed is starting to show some stretching that will turn into a tear in the next couple of years and then we’ll probably get a new mattress maybe we’ll make 15 years. I love my bed and it has spoiled me whenever I sleep somewhere else I’m excited to come home to my bed. We’ve bought two other brands of bed in a box memory foam and neither of them are as nice as ours but they make perfect kids/guest beds. The isolated movement is great since I have no idea if my wife is having a restless night’s sleep and vice versa though we’ve never tried the wine thing. We slept on a spring bed at my inlaws a couple of weeks ago and either time either of us rolled over or got up to pee the other one was woken up, worse was the air bed at my parents, I almost bounced my wife out of bed when I flopped back into bed after peeing in the middle of the night.
We’ve paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.10/night for this mattress so far and my number 1 piece of advice is to spend as much as you can afford but look for one with a good return policy so you’re not stuck with a shitty, expensive bed for the next decade.
I suspect you’re stateside but if not GoodMorning.com are good people to deal with. You may like their Logan & Cove brand. It’s manufactured for them by Springwall.
The problem I had with this is that the memory foam sinks between the frame’s slats. I put 18 of these things (in two rows of nine for queen-size*) between the mattress and the frame; now my back is much better. So far, the mattress hasn’t needed to be rotated again, either; just lifted up for a bit then set back down.
*not as illustrated but sideways and the two rows are not interlinked.
About 15 years ago my brother gave me a foam rubber pad. Not a mattress. Just a slab of foam rubber, about 2 1/2 to 3 inches thick. I’ve had that laid out on the floor (carpeted) and sleeping on that quite comfortably, tyvm. And when I move (which I’ve done 4 times in the last 15 years), I can just roll it up and put it in the back seat of my car.
No matter what type of mattress you get, you should really consider an adjustable frame. Being able to get into a position that removes pressure from your back is wonderful.
