2 year latex mattress update and question about coil spring manufacturers

[phoenix]

Hi SleepDeprived,

Thanks for the update and I’m sorry to hear that your mattress isn’t working out as well for you as you hoped for.

Unfortunately, it seems that latex just isn’t for me. I love how it holds my spine in a neutral position but somehow it is hard on my muscles and nerves. Although the bed feels right when I first go to bed, it seems to feel progressively harder through the night. I wake up in the morning feeling like thousands of tiny hammers have been pounding on me all night. IMy muscles have progressively gotten sorer and tighter since sleeping on latex. I’ve tried adding softer latex as a topper and, while it feels really nice, it has not changed the way I feel in the morning. My husband and I are both ready to throw in the towel at this point.

There are a few suggestions that may be worth considering though before you “throw in the towel” and replace your mattress completely.

There are some people that don’t do as well with the higher surface tension and resilience of latex and may do better with a more “relaxed” sleeping surface that has less surface tension or shear forces acting on the skin (see post #18 here).

In cases like these a “down alternative” (slick polyester fibers) mattress pad something like this or like this would be well worth trying to see if it improves your sleeping experience … especially if it has a good return policy that lets you try it with little risk.

Something like the lanoodles topper here or in some cases even a thicker wool topper (see post #3 here) can also help solve these type of issues if they are related to the surface tension, resilience, and shear forces of the sleeping surface.

We’ve been out to test beds locally again and find that it is the pocketed coils that always feel best to us. There are some mattresses now that have a pocketed coil base and micro coils above that feel just wonderful. The problem is, it’s easy to find a mattress that feels great at the showroom but the question is how will it hold up over time, because with a coil mattress we will be getting back into that issue of the soft upper layers that tend to develop sags (or “body impressions” as they like to call them).

As you probably know microcoils are a type of pocket coil that uses lower gauge steel, usually with higher coil counts that are softer than the pocket coils that are uses as the support core for a mattress. They are generally used as comfort layers to replace softer foam materials instead of as a firmer support system like “traditional” pocket coils. They are a good quality and durable component that certainly wouldn’t be a “weak link” in a mattress. Like any other choice between different materials and components they are more of a preference choice than a better worse choice because different people can have very different preferences about the type of materials or mattresses that they prefer. You can read more about microcoils in this article and in post #8 here and post #2 here.

Given that we definitely want pocketed coils, are there any manufacturers of this type of mattress that you know of that make a high quality product using high quality foams? We are in the Puget Sound area and have gone down to Tacoma to get a little more variety to test out. There is a place called Mattress Makers that carries Corsicana and I think some of their own mattresses. Other than that, it seems you have to travel to Portland area to find a local manufacturer? (Parklane)

Like the choice of comfort layers … the choice between different types of support cores are also a preference choice and not a “better/worse” choice. There is also more about some of the differences between a latex support core vs an innerspring or pocket coil support core in post #28 here.

Some of the better sources for innerspring/latex mattresses (including pocket coils) that I’m aware of are listed in post #2 here but this is far from a complete list since many local manufacturers or retailers may also have similar mattresses on their floor.

I would tend to avoid most of the Corsicana mattresses because they usually aren’t transparent about the quality and durability of all the materials and components in their mattresses and they tend to use lower quality and less durable materials that would be a weak link in their mattresses.

Some of the better options or possibilities I’m aware of in and around the Seattle/Tacoma area (subject to making sure that any specific mattress you are considering meets the quality/value guidelines here) are listed in post #2 here.

I don’t keep a record of the individual mattresses that the retailers and manufacturers in the hundreds of forum lists throughout the forum carry on their floor (it would be a bigger job than anyone could keep up with in a constantly changing market) but checking their websites and making some preliminary phone calls to the retailers/manufacturers that are on the list that are in reasonable driving distance is always a good idea before you visit any store anyway. This will tell you which of them carry mattresses that would meet your specific criteria, are transparent about the quality and durability of the materials in their mattresses (see this article), and that carry the type of mattresses that you are interested in testing in the budget range you are comfortable with. Once you have checked their websites and/or talked with the ones that interest you then you will be in a much better position to decide on the ones that you are most interested in visiting based on the results of your preliminary research and conversations.

Phoenix