I recently was presented with the task of replacing two mattresses at my parents house this Thanksgiving and decided to take the opportunity to begin a DIY mattress journey. I’ve designed my build around the philosophy of maximizing point elasticity: optimal contour around adjacent but differently weighted parts of my body. To provide adequate support, I chose materials with higher ILD and limited the usage of memory foam (low compression modulus).
So far, using the queen-sized layers I bought, the following is the most comfortable build I’ve found without a cover (top → bottom):
- Comfort - 2 inches Dunlop Latex (28 ILD)
- Comfort - 1 inch 4 lb Gel Memory Foam (~15 ILD)
- Transition - 3 inch TPS Quad Mini Pocket Coils (~1900 coils, 18 gauge)
- Support - 6 inch Quantum Edge Elite Pocket Coils (~1000 coils, 16 gauge I think)
- Support - 1 inch Tough Luxury Foam (~70-85 ILD)
I also enjoyed switching out the top layer with 1 inch Dunlop Latex (19 ILD), but noticed I could feel the coils below in a few positions, which I didn’t like. I plan on using the knowledge I’ve gained to go home and build a very similar mattress for myself. I am 5’ 7" at 175 lb with a preference for medium-firm store mattresses, and my partner is 5’ 2" at 115 lb with a preference for firm store mattresses. We are both combination sleepers with about a 50/35/15 split between back/side/stomach sleeping.
So if I’m already reasonably pleased with my build and plan to approximately replicate it, what am I posting about?
- I feel like the build is very slightly too firm in the comfort layers and a little too soft in the support layers. Furthermore, the super point elastic nature of the mattress makes moving around on your hands and knees quite difficult, which is sort of to be expected. I have ideas for adjustment and wanted feedback on them.
- What I settled on wasn’t what I initially planned. On my journey, I realized I really enjoyed having the memory foam under other layers, and then later realized that I liked a little bit more firmness in the top layer when doing that, creating a bendy-wavy medium-firm surface feel. Later on, I found some posts where @phoenix described this type of build as “dominant-layering” and reported that they have enjoyed laying on beds with this construction before. I wanted to learn more about dominant layering to perhaps fine-tune this feel.
- I was limited by what I had bought, so I couldn’t try out certain combinations I was curious about. I wanted to see if anyone had thoughts on different materials I had not bought (energex, 1-inch talalay, HD polyfoam, etc…) and how they might interact with this build and/or design philosophy.
- Does my design philosophy even make sense? Do any brand name mattresses have models that implement something like this?
Here are the ideas I have at the moment for the next build.
- Replace the 6 inch pocket coils with 8 inch TPS pocket coils (~1000 coils, 14.75 gauge). They typically recommend the 15.5 gauge for most people my weight, but given my mattress desires, I think the 14.75 might make sense for me. I feel like the highly point elastic nature of the mattress focuses more force onto individual pocketed coils, so they need to be much firmer to compensate. This should also help alleviate a bit of the mobility issue, but I feel that mobility will still not be ideal.
- Replace all dunlop with talalay in the first layer to increase point elasticity even further, slightly soften the build due to the lower compression modulus, and improve cooling. I’m slightly concerned about this because when I tried 2 inches of soft talalay on top of 2 inches of medium Dunlop on a different build, the resilience irritated me during side sleeping. 2 inches of medium Dunlop over the inch of memory foam is fine for me though, and 2 inches of soft talalay over the memory foam is borderline but okay, but the latter was too soft. Idk if just switching the medium Dunlop to medium talalay will irritate me or not, which brings me to my next point.
- Instead of doing 2 inches latex on top of 1 inch memory foam, I was curious what it would be like to sandwich 1 inch of memory foam between 2 1-inch layers of latex. How would this affect the bendy-wavy feel? How much would the latex “tie-together” the coils in the layer below, reducing the point elasticity?
- Soften one-inch of the two latex inches to 19 ILD to compensate for the firmer base coils. Not sure if necessary.
- Reduce the base layer of tough luxury foam to 0.5 or 0.75 inches. The idea is that when I get a stretch cover measured to the whole inch, the small amount of extra give will prevent the mattress from firming up as much. This is just for convenience so the covered form of the mattress is more predictable in performance.
I know I brought up a lot of different things, but I am willing to focus the discussion onto whatever is thought to be most relevant/interesting.