If you did let me know your opinions!
Thanks
Hi Pooswa,
While I haven’t purchased a mattress from them … I have talked with Scott there about their mattresses so I know they use high quality materials and are clearly “mattress people”. These types of manufacturers tend to rely on local word of mouth referrals rather than advertising. You will find they are very knowledgeable about mattresses and mattress materials and they are great to talk with on the phone.
Hopefully someone that has purchased from them will see your post and add their thoughts and “real life” experiences with them 
Phoenix
Thanks for the info…I would like to have someone chime in with first hand experience but u will visit this no matter what… Another question for you I bought a pillow top mattress from a cheap furniture store …needless to say but it was a big mistake and barely lasted a year before becoming uncomfortable and indented to our body’s … So the question is is there a fix to help alleviate this problem until I buy a new mattress …
I plan on looking for either a memory foam or a latex( never tried out a latex one) .
My wife sleeps hot and have heard this is a problem with the foam? And we both Want a firmer style bed…
Thanks
Hi Pooswa,
There really isn’t any good “fix” for a mattress that has softened or has deeper impressions. A topper may help a little because it can slightly lessen the amount the softened form compresses (the compression forces will spread out somewhat out by the time they reach the softened foam) but it will still follow the soft spots or the dips underneath so any improvement will generally be partial or temporary. There are a few ideas that may help in post #4 here
Almost all mattresses have some type of foam in them (either polyfoam, memory foam, or latex foam) and sleeping hot is more of an issue with memory foam than with the other two types. Some of the newer types of memory foam sleep cooler than the older more closed cell types but they are still more insulating and tend to be less breathable than other foams … especially latex which is generally the most breathable and coolest of the foams.
There are a lot of other factors that can effect the sleeping temperature of a mattress and how cool a mattress sleeps is generally a combination of many things rather than just one. Post #2 here talks about some of the many factors that are involved in how hot a mattress sleeps.
Most foams come in a wide softness/firmness range except for memory foam which would all be considered “soft”. It does get softer or firmer with heat (to different degrees with different types of memory foam) and because it’s slower responding it can also feel firmer than it really is with movement until it takes on the shape of the new sleeping position. In many cases … the softness of firmness of a memory foam mattress is the result of the firmness of the foam below the memory foam and the thickness of the memory foam layers rather than the firmness of the memory foam itself (all memory foam that has warmed up would be in a “soft” range). An example of this would be the Tempurpedic Simplicity mattress which comes in soft, medium, and firm choices and yet they use d2" of the same memory foam in all of them. The difference between them is the firmness of the polyfoam base layers underneath them.
Phoenix
Thanks again like I said earlier I will give irwins a visit( just not opened on weekends so hard for me to get to)… But while researching here I came across restava…
Looking at The Caress-GEL Collection: the difference I see in-between the lower priced model and higher price model is that in the higher priced one the add a layer of foam above there cool comfort gel…wouldn’t this defeat the purpose of the gel acting as a cooling feature? also keep in mind I am looking for more firm mattress so maybe this layer of foam would help?
Tomorrow I’m going to try out name brand mattress that are sold around here to see what I like… And if I find something I like I will be back online to try find something that is comparable/better and hopefully cheaper!
Hi Pooswa,
I looked at the Restava site and as you mentioned one of the Caress Gel collection has gel memory foam in the top layer and two have an inch of polyurethane on top. The Victoria model has 3" of gel on top, the Ivory is the same but has an inch of “comfort foam” on top (likely softer), and the Pearl has an inch of “firming foam” on top (probably firmer than the comfort foam).
The reason that many manufacturers use a polyfoam quilting or comfort layer over memory foam is because it can add ventilation to the mattress (generally polyfoam that is used for quilting is more open celled and breathable than memory foam) or to provide some extra resilience to the memory foam (the polyfoam would provide a faster response than slow response memory foam and modify the feel and response of the memory foam). It would also reduce the heat going to the memory foam so it can also firm up the memory foam to some degree depending on its temperature sensitivity. All of this is to create different “feels” in a mattress that different people may prefer.
A lot of the promotion about gel is that it is a heat conductive material (in the case of regular gel which conducts and draws heat from the body) or a phase change gel (which both stores and releases heat so it works in both directions) but the other benefit of gel is that it can increase the compression modulus of the memory foam (which means it gets firmer with compression than some regular memory foam) which is why in some mattresses you see it in lower layers.
So having an inch of polyfoam above the gel memory foam would reduce it’s heat conductive properties but this is traded off for the other benefits of the design. The sleeping temperature is usually a combination of many factors including the ventilation of the upper layers of the mattress, the ticking and quilting, any cooling technologies used in the mattress (thermal conductive materials, phase change materials, and materials which provide humidity control and ventilation), how deeply you sink into the mattress, how closely it conforms to your shape, the mattress protector, and the sheets and bedding that are used. Each layer or component either adds to or detracts from the other layers to provide a cumulative effect that controls sleeping temperature (and of course the other properties of the mattress).
Of course this is just generic information and they would know more about the specific “feel” of each mattress than I do.
Phoenix
Update: stopped by irwins today and talked to the owner… Unfortunately he had no latex mattress on the showroom floor nor any of his memory foam and he won’t be making any till dec… But I did get a little info such as he uses talalay Latex And that he uses 5lbs memory foam and makes a two sided mattress on that… I also forgot pretty much every thing that I learned on this site to ask …so another trip is needed there to talk to him again…but he was super nice and seemed to know his stuff…I mentioned that I learned of his store from this forum and he said that phoenix really know his stuff…
Now question time again for you Phoenix :
What should I ask about the latex bed?
What should I ask about his memory foam bed?
Is there any name brand mattress that I could readily find to try out the talalay mattress?
He said his memory foam mattress compares to tempurpedic so I guess I’ll go try those out to see what it feels like?
…and I’ll Gladly give this site a donation if you call irwins and find out all the stuff I forgot to ask!!
Edit: was looking around some more and came across this mattress
Classic Brands Purity 9’’ Latex on the sears website the price is really good I think just wondering if you know anything about them…will call Tommorow and try to get more info.
Update: stopped by irwins today and talked to the owner… Unfortunately he had no latex mattress on the showroom floor nor any of his memory foam and he won’t be making any till dec… But I did get a little info such as he uses talalay Latex And that he uses 5lbs memory foam and makes a two sided mattress on that… I also forgot pretty much every thing that I learned on this site to ask …so another trip is needed there to talk to him again…but he was super nice and seemed to know his stuff…I mentioned that I learned of his store from this forum and he said that phoenix really know his stuff…
Now question time again for you Phoenix :
What should I ask about the latex bed?
What should I ask about his memory foam bed?
Is there any name brand mattress that I could readily find to try out the talalay mattress?
He said his memory foam mattress compares to tempurpedic so I guess I’ll go try those out to see what it feels like?
…and I’ll Gladly give this site a donation if you call irwins and find out all the stuff I forgot to ask!!
Edit: was looking around some more and came across this mattress
Classic Brands Purity 9’’ Latex on the sears website the price is really good I think just wondering if you know anything about them…will call Tommorow and try to get more info.
Hi Pooswa,
Besides of course testing any mattress for PPP (Pressure relief, Posture and alignment, and Personal preferences) I would want to know the type of latex that is in the mattress and whether it is blended or 100% natural. There is more about the different types of latex in this article.
I would want to know the thickness of each layer and the density of the memory foam layers and the density of the polyfoam layers. There is more about memory foam in this article and in post #8 here which may be helpful.
There are many brands that use talalay latex in their mattresses but Pure Latex Bliss is one brand that makes all Talalay latex mattresses that are fairly widely available. Bear in mind though that these tend to use softer Talalay layers on top than some other manufacturers. They have a retail outlet finder on their site here. Restonic also makes all Talalay latex mattresses in their health Rest line, Spring Air also makes some all Talalay latex mattresses and Jamison does as well. There are many more but it’s much easier to call retailers in your area and ask if they carry any “all talalay latex” mattresses because in many cases a manufacturer may make them in one area of the country and not another.
Tempurpedic makes 15 different memory foam mattresses and all of them feel different. I think what he meant is that the memory foam he uses (5 lb) is the equivalent quality to the 5.3 lb memory foam that Tempurpedic uses but this doesn’t mean that they would feel the same as any of the Tempurpedic mattresses because two different types of memory foam even of the same quality/density can feel and perform very differently and the type and thickness of the memory foam layers along with the firmness of the polyfoam support layers can all have a big effect on how a memory foam mattress feels and performs.
This is a latex hybrid with latex in the top layers and polyfoam in the support layers. I don’t know the type of latex, the thickness of the latex layer, or the quality/density of the polyfoam they use in the base layer and I would certainly want to know this. They are also not comparable to an all latex mattress but would be comparable to other latex hybrid mattresses that used similar materials and layering. A latex/polyfoam hybrid is much less costly than an all latex mattress (polyfoam is a much lower cost material than latex)
Hope this helps … and I am a few days behind in many of the phone calls I need to make (some over a week behind) so I’ll leave you to make the call and ask the questions because now that you know the questions the answers will be very easy to find
Phoenix