Hi Phoenix and everyone. Thanks for providing this very useful web site.
My wife and I are shopping for a mattress. We live on the east side of Seattle. We will probably go with a 100% natural latex mattress, not sure which one at this point.
Another thing we are considering is an adjustable base. My wife (5’8") sleeps on her back and would benefit from being able to raise the head and foot of the bed. I’m a tall person (6’5") 200 lbs, side sleeper, and have reflux. I would benefit from raising the head of the bed only. As I understand it, inclining the entire bed would help with reflux.
Because of our different preferences, we are considering a split king or split cal king adjustable foundation. As a tall person, it seems like the “pivot points” on an adjustable bed are not in the right place for me. If I just raise the head of the bed, the pivot point hits me a few inches above my hip. Where my natural pivot point is closer to my hip. As such, with the head slightly raised (for reflux), say 6 inches, it seems that my spine is bent and I will end up with a back ache. For this reason, should we favor the split cal king over a standard split king? Is there a particular adjustable base that would work well for us?
Raising the head of the bed or inclining the head of the bed only would both help with reflux. Most adjustables only raise the head of the bed but there is more about the benefits of inclined sleeping where the whole bed is inclined in this topic and in this topic.
More of the height differences between people is in leg length than torso length and I haven’t heard of any issues with slight mismatches between a person and the articulation points of an adjustable bed with the small amount of elevation that would be used for acid reflux but you could always test this by raising the head of the bed to its full height and then making sure your hips and lower back were right up against the mattress and then lowering the adjustable bed to see how far away from the wall your head is at the lowered position.
I am about the same height and weight (6’ 5 1/2" and about 205 lbs) and on my queen adjustable if I do the same test there is almost no clearance between my head and the wall so I need to scoot down a bit to give my head some clearance and leave room for my pillow which leaves my feet a little over the foot end of the bed when I am fully extended but I have never had any issues with sleeping with the head of the bed in a slightly raised position (although of course one person’s experience may be completely different from someone else). In “theory” … a split cal king would probably be better for your height (and mine).
There is more about choosing an adjustable bed in post #3 here and the adjustable bed topic that it links to that can help you choose an adjustable bed based on price vs features comparisons and also includes some retailers that you can use as good sources of information about the features of the adjustable beds they carry and as pricing references as well.