Has anyone here purchased - or otherwise gotten to try out - one of the new mattress types that promise to be so much more wonderful than the traditional metal coil, pillowtop variety?
I’ve seen ads for something called Casper, and for a Purple Mattress brand, and of course I am familiar with the memory foam ones. (Who could forget an ad with someone setting a glass of red wine directly on their bed, then getting up onto it to hop around?) It looks like we’re getting ready to replace at least one of the mattresses here at Casa De Shoe and I’m curious about the newer styles.
(If it matters at all, I prefer a fairly firm surface as I often sleep on my tummy, and a soft mattress lets my back arch into an uncomfortable curve.)
Tell me all about your fancy and/or overpriced and/or sleep-inducing surfaces, Dopers!
He likes to sleep cool, and said it was very sweaty. He made attempts to deal with it…changed sheets, lowered thermostat. He said it was DEF not for him.
Do not like a memory foam. I slept in one at my daughters house. It’s in her guest room because they hated it and bought a Sealy something or other. I can’t recall the name of my mattress. It’s 20yo. I dread needing to replace it. It’s my nest and I have it feathered just so. On occasion, when I feel brave I go looking around mattress stores. So far nothing has grabbed me. Good luck.
Beck, maybe I misremembered, but I thought you’d mentioned at some point buying an expensive fridge & mattress, and that the fridge was one of the worst purchases you’d ever made but the mattress was one of the best.
If so, what made it so awesome?
The Purple ones offer something like 90 or 100 days to try it out … they had a booth at some fair we attended where they had cushions made of their weird material. Quite comfy under my butt, but sitting in a chair is a whole different thing from lying down to sleep.
I have heard the memory foam runs hot, since it’s so insulting. I do not run hot myself and probably wouldn’t mind, except I’ve grown accustomed to the pile of quilts & blankets keeping me warm and really enjoy the weight.
I don’t think I bought a mattress lately. But I did buy the stupid fridge. I may have mentioned my mattress as a successful purchase but it was a while ago. I always fret and fuss over big purchases. It drives Mr.Wrekker insane how indecisive I am. The fridge was a bad, bad purchase. It’s been a headache since week one.
The last mattress I bought was for my daughters bed here in her room.(7 or 8 years ago) She has suffered with dorm room beds she sleeping on now. She calls them prison cots.
A mattress is such a personal thing. I don’t know how you can take anyone’s advice on it. Go to a mattress store and lay on a few.
I got a few off of Amazon, they do have coils and are the higher end one that they sell, they come rolled up and take a few hours to puff up to full size after. I suspect that they don’t have as long of coils that flat matteresses have. I like them a lot and they are very comfortable. They are also much heavier then standard ones.
I recently purchased a BedInABox PACBED® ORIGINAL for one of my guest rooms. I found it was just a tad too firm, so I added a 4" Serta Memory Foam Topper, and it was perfect. I have this topper on ALL of my other beds, which are coil/spring type mattresses. Makes a huge difference.
With a good pillow top mattress cover, I have no problem with any mattress being too hot. YMMV.
The price for the BedInABox bed was reasonable, delivery was quick and I am pleased with the purchase.
You can read trustworthy reviews of most of these types of beds at Sleep Like The Dead.
Two years ago I needed a new mattress. I found the Sleep Like the Dead website to be a great resource for research. After scouring it looking for things that matter to me I ordered a mattress from Tuft & Needle. Consumer Reports said that this $500 mattress is comparable to a traditional mattress costing around $1000 in a retail store.
I won’t wax poetic about it but I’ve been sleeping on this T&N mattress for a bit over two years and it is just fine. I have no complaints and no regrets – no gotchas. It is just a bit firmer than ‘medium’ firmness which is what I wanted.
One major point to be aware of when starting to look for this type of mattress is that not all foam mattresses are memory foam. Memory foam is the one that sleeps hot and many people don’t like the feeling of ‘being trapped’ by the memory foam; you don’t sleep ‘on’ memory foam, you sleep ‘in’ it. I stayed in a hotel with a memory foam mattress once and ended up sleeping on the floor because I so hated the mattress.
All in all, I think this idea of online mattress shopping is great; you end up spending half or less than you would spend shopping in a traditional mattress store. Just be sure of the return policy of the brand you choose in case you don’t like it; for example, Tuft & Needle will pick up the mattress at your house if you don’t like it – you don’t have to pack it or ship it back. (They donate returned mattresses to local charities.)
I’m a big fan of my Casper bed. I’ve got two of them, actually. It’s not hot, and it doesn’t have that “pillow covered rock” feel that some foam beds have, where it feels really soft at first until you sink in and then it’s hard. My Casper bed is bouncy. It feels soft-ish the whole time, but not so soft that it can’t support your back and body. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s better than other foam beds I’ve slept in. It’s not just memory foam, it’s some sort of hybrid foam that has all the benefits of memory foam and none of the downsides.
Unfortunately, the first Casper bed I got was $750, and the second was $950, and now they have several types to choose from and I think they’re all pretty pricey. Not several grand pricey though, so your mileage may vary on whether you think they’re expensive or not.
I love my memory foam!! I have a terrible time sleeping on anything else - especially really firm mattresses. I don’t understand people saying they sink into the mattress. I have a fitted mattress pad as well as a fitted sheet and I’ve never felt enveloped by the mattress - and it’s not like I’m light-as-a-feather, either. And it’s never felt as hot to me as sleeping on an air mattress - them suckers always leave me sweaty and uncomfortable.
I have a (non-Tempurpedic) memory foam mattress and I love it, but my husband doesn’t. It is quite firm compared to the coil mattresses in our house, but that’s part of why I like it. I don’t find it abnormally warm to sleep on but that is a common complaint.
That’s been my experience whenever I’ve slept on one at a hotel or something. They’re supportive enough, but I wake up with a back full of sweat, no matter what I try to do to remedy it. Once or twice I could understand, but this has happened to me every time.
We went to a local mom and pop store and bought a mattress with a memory foam base with an integrated pillow top. My wife and I love it, it gives the best of both worlds. As a side benefit, the mom and pop store was very transparent about what went into building a mattress and steered us away from the higher priced, brand name models to an equally well constructed, lesser know brand for about half the price. His profit margin was the same on either, so he had no reason to try to get us to spend more.
That is strange to me. I have had 2 Sleep Number beds and am now looking to get my third. I love that it can be as firm or as soft as I want. What about it did you not like?
I agree with Turble, research research research. That website is one of the ones I tried out when I was considering a new mattress and it was very informative; I think there is at least one more out there (I ended up not buying anything, just because).
I think all of the online-only mattress brands, of which there are now many, offer 90 or 100 days to try them out, which I think is mostly marketing to get people over the idea of buying a mattress without trying it out first. Most report that returns are handled with no hassle and no arguments. Different brands have different “formulas” for their various layers of foam and memory foam, to get different amounts of bounciness and firmness. Some have variety in these areas, some have only one setting. Purple is different in its construction and sounds a bit too good to be true, but I might have given it a try.
Sleep Number beds you can try out at a store if there is one near you, but I haven’t gone in there for fear of a possible hard sell. There are also no-name brands that are substantially the same at half the price. The main issues with these seem to be firm side walls, for when you get into and out of bed, and the durability of the motor that controls the firmness by adding or removing air. Some of these seemed like kind of a chancy thing to me.
Memory foam mattresses, including Tempurpedic, now have a variety of formulations that have alleged cooling materials built in that allegedly counterbalance the sweaty feel, so that they are more normal temperature-wise. I can’t say if they work or not, but that information is probably available in the research too.
My wife and I recently bought a traditional innerspring mattress with a pillow top, and for additional softness and coolness we put a “cooling” 4" foam mattress topper on it, and a gel-type “cooling” mattress pad on top of that. The mattress topper seems to me to be a good compromise: you can put it on top of just about anything, and it really is significantly cooler than plain memory foam. I think my wife got it at Costco for less than $200 (king size).
I should mention that, before we got this mattress, we got a hand-me-down Sleep Number mattress, and my wife hated it. If you’re not used to an air chamber bed, approach one with an abundance of caution.
