The main thing I remember was that no matter how I set the sleep number, when getting in or out of it, I bottomed out on the base of the bed. The mattress could hold me up when it had my entire body lying on it, but anything I did that decreased the amount of surface area the mattress had to work with (like sitting on the edge trying to get in or out, or trying to reach the far side of it to turn it down and only pressing down with my hands while the rest of me was still standing on the floor), I’d sink straight to the bottom. Bad enough when it was my butt, but in getting out of the thing at one point, my elbow smacked into what felt like a solid sheet of plywood.
I have a cheap-ish pillowtop mattress. I put a memory foam pad from Wal-Mart on top of that, and a featherbed on top of that. On top of everything (under the fitted sheet) is a wool mattress pad. Yes, I am the Princess & the Pea. 
Very satisfactory. No waking up sweaty. The idea of putting my fitted sheet directly ON the mattress is :eek:
More detail than the OP asked for: Ever since I started taking an estrogen-blocker after my lumpectomy, my bodily thermostat had been totally effed up. I don’t use a top sheet at all but a light polar fleece blanket, and on top of that a nylon army poncho liner. The latter looks ridiculous on my bed, but it is as light as a feather and incredibly warm. So all night I’m in and out of the covers-- blanket + poncho liner, then throw off liner and just blanket, then throw off blanket and nothing, then pull blanket on again but no liner, then blanket and liner again… the circle of life. Fortunately (sort of) I sleep alone.
We bought a Tempurpedic in about 2006, I’m guessing, and still have it. Compare that to the usual innerspring mattress that is good for about five years. Spent somewhere around $2000 for a king size and platform. The warranty is very good. The platform started squeaking a lot after about four years, which was really annoying. I went into the local Tempurpedic store and they replaced it for free. We put a mattress topper on it, so overheating isn’t a problem.
I had a Tempurpedic for a couple years, and loved it. That thing is heavy. You can roll over or get out of bed without disturbing your SO. I don’t know if they’re the ones with the wine glass trick, but I bet you could jump on it without spilling. Only complaints are the price tag, and it’s a bit sweaty.
That mattress got damp when the ceiling came down with a ton of firehose-soaked insulation, and we didn’t recover it. To replace it we considered a Tempurpedic with a “Breeze” gel layer. It’s really cool - totally solves the sweaty problem. But IIRC that added another $1000 to an already expensive bed.
I’ve slept on a Tuft&Needle at an AirBnB. I loved it, but the wife had to move to the sofa in the middle of the night because it was too firm. And usually she’s the one who likes firmer mattresses.
We’ve also slept on an imitation Sleep Number bed. We couldn’t find a setting that was even remotely comfortable.
In the end we decided to replace the Tempurpedic with a firm Novaform Serafina Pearl Gel. That was the #1 pick in an old (now outdated) copy of Consumer Report, but the biggest selling point was that we could return it to Costco if needed rather than having to roll it back up to mail back to Amazon or Casper. It’s not quite as heavy as the Tempurpedic was. No problem with sweat. A king mattress was $800, I think. Best purchase ever.
We just got a smaller medium-firm one for my daughter. It’s too firm for her, so we may end up putting a pillowtopper on it or exchanging for a Plush. Again, it’s Costco so returns are no hassle.
tl;dr: We loved an expensive Tempurpedic, and are now just as happy with a Novaform at a fifth of the price.
Anyone out there try a Purple mattress? They sound very interesting to me.
We have a Sleep Number with dual controls, so Ivylad and I can adjust the firmness on our side of the bed. It works great.
If you like it cool, I highly recommend the BedJet. Ivylad likes it cooler, so we set it up on his side and his body blocks the air from blowing on me.
My wife and I love our temperpedic. Its got a built in topper so she gets the ultra soft she love while I fall right through it to a extra firm mattress. I hate sleeping any where but my bed. We’ve had it for 7 years now and I don’t want to imagine another bed.
My parents had a sleepnumber and I hated the seem down the middle i was basically sleeping on a twin bed by myself which defeats the purpose of sleeping with someone and i had a queen bed all to myself when ai slept alone so it was a bummer across the board. It wasn’t uncomfortable just weird.
I love my Sealy memory foam “cocoon” mattress (that’s what they call it). It has a cooling-gel top that works pretty well, came in the mail, came with a 100-night guarantee, and cost a thousand bucks for the queen-size.
Here’s the bad news. (Adam Ruins Mattresses video.)
As it happens, I figured out that mattresses were a huge scam more than ten years ago.
Here are two posts I made in similar threads several years ago. I haven’t bought a new mattress since then, but according to Adam, nothing has changed.
Originally Posted by Me in 2008
DO NOT pay the listed price! Shopping for a new mattress last summer, I went into Mattress Discounters and tried out a bunch of different models. After deciding that I like a firm mattress with a pillow top, I expressed interest in a Simmons Beautyrest with a list price of about $2,200. When I said I liked it, but couldn’t pay that much, the saleswoman said it had been on sale a week or so earlier. She got on the phone to see if she could still offer the sale price, and came back and said I could have it for $1,100. So obviously, prices are highly negotiable.
I ended up buying a similar Simmons Beautyrest at another store for under $800.
BTW, the whole business of mattress stores saying they won’t be undersold, or will match other stores’ prices, seems to be a complete scam. From what I could tell in my shopping research, different stores don’t carry the same model of mattress: they have the same brands, but similar mattresses have different model names in different stores. Presumably they do this so they can make these falsely reassuring claime and discourage comparison shopping.
So go and try out as many mattresses as you can, and pick the features and general style you like. Tell the sales person you’re willing to pay half of the list price. When he/she says, no, walk out. (Not too quickly: they may offer a lower price before you get to the door.) Go to the next store, repeat.
If my experience is any guide, you should be able to get a mattress you really like for half the list price or less.
Originally Posted by Me in 2010
If you don’t haggle, you will pay about twice as much for your mattress as you should. No exaggeration. If you’re no good at haggling, take a friend who is better.
I bought a mattress (no box spring) a few years ago, and from my experience, you should usually be able to get a mattress for slightly more than half of the stated retail price. Free delivery and removal of the old mattress should be standard, no matter what price you negotiate.
First, find out what type of mattress you like: firm or soft, pillow-top or plain, etc. You have to lie on them for a long time, and in the positions in which you sleep. Relax, take it easy. Take your bedmate so that both of you can try it out. Do the two of you roll in toward the middle? Do you like that?
This could take quite a while if you check out a number of mattresses at three or four different stores. They’ll each have different models with different features, and each manufacturer seems to provide each store with its own unique model names, so you can’t get the same model from different stores. Very annoying.
Once you find a mattress you like, find a salesperson and say that you’ll buy that one today for half the price on the tag. And you want free delivery and removal of the old one. If they say no, you say, “Okay. Bye,” and head for the door. As others here have reported, they’ll stop you and make an counteroffer. (If they don’t, leave and go to the next store.)
If they’re willing to sell at half price, you can let them charge you a moderate delivery/removal fee, say $100. But if you pay anything more than half price, free delivery is a must. You should aim for no more than 60% of full price and free delivery. Paying more than 75% is getting ripped off.
Do not buy a box spring if you don’t need it, and don’t let them make it a bargaining point. If they keep trying to sell you a box spring, walk out.
A lot of that is good stuff, but most of it goes out the window if you’re shopping for Tempurpedic. Dealers won’t haggle because the manufacturer won’t allow it. Also, if you refuse to buy the Tempurpedic platform, it voids the mattress warranty. :rolleyes:
I really like my entry level Sleep Number bed. I look forward to going to sleep. Prior to the Sleep Number, I have always had a traditional coil mattress, some were soft, some were hard, some had more padding than others. They all developed depressions in them after a while and they seemed to become uncomfortable fast.
With a Sleep Number, it is always comfortable due to the ability to adjust. With my traditional bed, I used to have to have my pillows just right. With the Sleep Number, you adjust until everything feels good, your pillow thickness/density becomes less important.
I am a hot sleeper but I feel cool on the Sleep Number. I tried a memory foam pad to see if I could make it even better, but it just got in the way.
My wife needs a firmer bed or else she gets backaches. This mattress works for her.
There are some weird things to get used to. You have to press a button on the remote to get it down to your “number” and when you get up for the day you have to (or at least you should) press the remote a few times to get it up to 100 or other firm level so that you can sit on your mattress without “bottoming out.” You get used to it, it takes a few seconds. The foam seam in the mattress between the two halves is weird, but you get used to it and you find a way to work around it.
I don’t have a Purple mattress, but I did get a Purple pillow via Kickstarter. It’s been the best pillow, by far, than any I’ve ever used. I have broad shoulders and am a side sleeper, so I have to use other pillows beneath it to raise it up, but that hasn’t been troublesome. The inflatable bladder that came with it proved worthless. I think they may have changed the design of the inflatable since.
I have a Beautyrest IQ200
I absolutely love it and it is probably the most important thing I’ve ever purchased. Certainly the most important expensive thing I’ve ever purchased.
That said, different mattresses work for different people. You might get lucky buying one without research, but unless you’re one of those people who can sleep anywhere, on anything, you’re likely to be disappointed. There is no substitute for research. When we were mattress shopping we spent at least 1/2 hour on every mattress we were considering, in the Jordan’s Sleep Lab, and made sure to buy from a store that allowed exchanges.
I am sure there are people who bought the IQ200 that hate it, but I absolutely love my mattress. I miss it when I travel and it has spoiled me for sleeping anywhere but home.
I bought the Tuft & Needle and didn’t like it - it was too firm. They sent me an additional topper (free) to try, but it was still too hard. Donated mattress to charity (per their instructions) and took the refund and bought a conventional mattress. Got to keep the free topper, which is fine 
I had an ex talk me into getting one of these. Sleeping on it was no better or worse than a normal mattress, but any extracurricular activities 
were much harder to perform on it. Like another poster said, if you do not have your full body laying on the mattress it is quite difficult to move.
I love memory foam mattresses. I’ve tried expensive (Tempur-pedic), mid-range (Caspar), and cheap (Amazon no-names). Pretty much like 'em all.
Adding a NON-FOAM topper is very useful since it cuts down on the hot-sleeping.
The quality of the base is also way more important than with a normal coil mattress / box-spring combo. The wire bases I’ve bought on Amazon will sag or break over time, so adding extra slats (or buying a more sturdy reinforced base to begin with) is really useful.
My wife and I bought foam mail-order mattresses last year (we switched from a conventional king size bed to separate adjustable Twin size beds).
Mine is a Nectar, which I chose because it was supposed to be one of the firmer ones with a thick memory foam layer. I like it. It is firm, supportive and non-bouncy, which memory foam is supposed to be. Pretty good deal for <$500.
I believe my wife’s is an Arctic Dreams. It’s a bit more bouncy. I think it was even cheaper, under $300.
One of the salesmen I spoke to, back when I was buying a mattress, said that Tempurpedic was the most frequently returned mattress by a long shot, because they made people so hot. Obviously there are people who like that (many here, apparently), and others who get toppers to mitigate the problem, but memory foam mattresses are clearly not for everyone.