First off, thank you for all the great information. Reading your site and tutorial have been an education, and are helping me wade through the plethora of claims in various online mattress posts. I welcome your feedback on my thinking, as I attempt to make sense out of all I’ve learned…
Some background: My husband and I slept on various forms of waterbeds from college into our early 40s. We found them extremely comfortable, but a pain to move - and our jobs had us moving regularly. So we traded our last waterbed in for a Simmons Beautyrest DeWitt Plus. It was firmer than I prefer, but we slept on it for 18 years. We tried a latex topper - 1st a 1" Dunlop 29 ILD version, then a 100% Natural Talalay Latex, 2" thick, 20-24 ILD. The latter helped, but we still found ourselves tossing and turning, and with the added bounce from the latex, were still not getting an optimal night’s rest.
This year, we decided our now 63/64 year old shoulders needed something more comfortable. We bought a Saatva Classic plush soft, didn’t find it had much better comfort for the shoulders, were provided with a free foam topper, which helped, but we still didn’t love it. We returned it after a nearly 6 month try (outstanding customer service from Saatva, in all our interactions with them).
So we’ve returned to the search. I’ve read your site with great interest, visited area mattress stores numerous times, and have concluded I like a hybrid, with coils and either latex or foam. I like the idea of latex rather than foam, simply due to the material source, but have found the latex we’ve tried (as noted above) to still not feel like it has sufficient comfort (perhaps that’s because the underlying bed was firm? Or it wasn’t thick enough? Or too high an ILD?) and the bounce to be a bit off putting. I didn’t think I was a fan of memory foam (don’t like to sleep hot, am leery of possible adverse health effects from chemicals and while I like a bit of sinking in, I like to be able to change positions readily). That said, we recently bought a small furnished summer cottage, with an old rock hard coil mattress. We added a memory foam topper as a stop gap to sleep reasonably well through the summer while we evaluated a replacement mattress. We’ve both slept surprisingly (to us) well and found it quite comfortable. The topper is a Sleep Innovations Plush Gel 4" model. We didn’t buy it for longevity, so I don’t know how long it will last, but it did the trick nicely for the summer. It’s CertiPurUS certified.
My husband is 6’, 170 lbs, broad in the shoulders, a side and back sleeper. He gets stiff shoulders sleeping on his side, but is pretty stoic about it and is leaving the mattress decision up to me. I’m 5’5", 130 lbs, weight fairly evenly distributed, a side and stomach sleeper. We both recognize (with the help of your site) our desire for a relatively firm supportive feel deeper in the mattress and a softer surface comfort layer with some give for our shoulders and hips when side sleeping, but not too soft for stomach and back sleeping. We live in south Florida.
My questions at this stage:
- I’m shying away from a latex core because we tend to move every few years and they seem to be heavy and harder to move. Is that an accurate understanding? I’ve been pretty comfortable on many inner springs over the years.
- I’m thinking a differential construction might get me more what we’re after than a progressive construction, which seems to not have a soft enough comfort layer for me. Am I thinking about that right?
- I’m leaning towards a latex comfort layer over memory foam as it seems to have better durability as well as a better ability to balance comfort and support, but since my husband and I have both had better night’s sleep on our recent memory foam topper than our previous latex topper on our home bed, I wonder if I should reconsider. Can I expect to get better comfort out of a latex comfort layer that’s thicker and/or has a lower ILD than what we tried in the past?
- I’m considering a Luma Sleep Hybrid Mattress Slumber System, but am concerned whether the latex top will be soft enough and/or transfer too much motion. Any thoughts, given the experiences I’ve described?
- Anything else that you’d like to offer me words of wisdom on?
Thanks for your help!
It’s always nice to hear that the resources here are doing their job!
