Hi there,
Wow I’m impressed with your site.
Somehow a couple years back we stumbled into buying an Earthsake bed (Berkeley CA) – a full natural organic latex. I can see from this site that we made the right choice after all. Whew. It wasn’t cheap. Most importantly, it still feels great and whenever we get home from sleeping when we travel, we can’t wait for the bed.
The reason why I’m writing is that we’re now lookng for two twin mattresses for a guest room daybed and trundle. Earthsake will be way too expensive for this, since these are for guests and are not regularly-used beds.
However, we want to have a reputation with friends and family as a great place to sleep over at – so the quality of the bed is important to us.
Within reason, that is, since our budget is only about $600 per twin, which puts us out of the range of the natural latex beds I’ve seen, which is a bummer.
The most important considerations we have are:
- Must be under $600 (ideally including shipping if it’s not local)
- Must not have any chemical fire retardants added (including no borax)
- Must have no toxic off-gassing (it’s in my office so even though they won’t be slept on regularly, the room itself is used a lot)
- Should be comfortable for sleepers
- Ideally is local (we are in the East Bay near Oakland), or cheap to ship if not.
Bonus points if we can find something with natural latex core in our price range.
The only natural latex option that comes (somewhat) close is buying a natural latex core from Nest Bedding or similar (maybe Famous Foam Factory in Albany CA) and then buying a cheapish natural cotton cover – and basically building our own mattress DIY that way (I assume that’s all we need: latex core and cover – no additional structures or anything).
On the other hand, we don’t need the natural latex – the other factors are more important.
We were about to go with Saatva until we read your take down of them. It seems you think they are a bit more pricey for the quality – I’m curious where to find a similar quality at a better price. Or even a BETTER quality at the same price.
What do you suggest?
Frankly, it’s feeling a bit overwhelming.
Hi badvegan,
The better options I’m aware of in the San Francisco / Oakland area are listed in post #2 here. I don’t have a list of specific mattresses or prices for each of them (other than what is on their sites) to see if they carry a mattress that would match your specific criteria so you may need to make a few phone calls to ask them what they have available in your budget range that also meets your criteria.
If you are comfortable with CertiPur certification as far as toxic offgassing then a traditional innerspring/polyurethane mattress with US made or CertiPur certified polyfoam would be a good option. I would make sure that the polyfoam was at least 1.5 lbs density for a two sided mattress and 1.8 lbs for a one sided mattress.
You may find a latex hybrid with a polyfoam support core and a latex comfort layer in your budget range.
A few online options that are inside your budget and may be worth considering from some of the online members of the site include …
https://www.sleepez.com/latex-mattress-sale.htm (6" of natural Dunlop latex with an inherent rayon/silica fire barrier).
Twin Solid Core Latex Mattress Only, Solid Core 7" Latex Foam Mattress, Latex Mattresses-Talalay and Dunlop, All Products (5.5" of blended Talalay latex with a wool fire barrier)
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Dreams-Latex-Mattress-Queen/dp/B0051AQXZK
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Dreams-Natural-Latex-Mattress/dp/B008E0LZLG/ref=sr_1_13?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1371712846&sr=1-13
All of these last 3 are latex/polyfoam hybrid mattresses that have 3" of latex and a polyurethane quilting layer over a polyurethane support core. The Natural latex mattress uses Dunlop for the comfort layer and wool for the fire barrier and I believe that the other two use an inherent fire barrier as well but I don’t know the specific details.
Innerspring with chemical free natural wool and organic cotton comfort layers.
Between some of the local and online options you have some very good choices available to you that are inside your budget range.
Phoenix
Hi Phoenix and all,
I wanted to report back.
We ended up going with a mail order option via one the links you supplied: the Dreamfoam natural latex.
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Dreams-Natural-Latex-Mattress/dp/B008E0LZLG/ref=sr_1_13?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1371712846&sr=1-13
We needed two mattresses – one for the day bed and one for the trundle underneath. Since the trundle needed to fit under the bed, we needed a low-height mattress for it. Additionally, I needed the mattresses delivered in a specific three-day window when I’d be working from home.
Luckily, I had some fantastic customer service from Chuck at Dreamforce (which is, based on my paypal charge, is also known as Brooklyn Bedding).
We are totally thrilled with our purchases. :woohoo:
Here’s what he did:
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He was able to build me a custom 6" tall mattress (their usual twin is 10"). It helps to be working directly with the manufacturer.
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He gave me a discount on that shorter custom mattress since it had less latex in it. That’s what I call customer service.
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Free shipping is awesome. Shipping on most mattresses is ridiculously expensive.
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The delivery arrived exactly on time, when I was at home.
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Since I’m a WU member, he gave me a free pillow for each twin. Very comfortable pillows too!
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The mattresses were a “6” on their comfort scale and feel great! We’re excited to have our guests stay on such a wonderful mattress set. (Our goal is to lead by example so that our family members and friends also get good-quality mattresses for their guest bedrooms. ;-).
It was fun getting the mattresses all compressed and rolled into boxes that were about 1/5 (or less) the final volume of the mattresses – and then watching them expand once opened. Very cool!
The only small quibble is that the 6" mattress has expanded a bit to more like an 7-8" mattress, but it still totally fits in our trundle, so it’s not a problem. It feels great by the way, and no one will even notice it’s a few inches shorter in terms of comfort.
Overall a fantastic experience! Thanks for the help Phoenix and big ups to Chuck at Dreamfoam/Brooklyn Bedding.’
This is the best mattress site EVER.
B.
Hi badvegan,
Thanks for the kind words and especially for taking the time to share some great feedback 
The type of quality, value, and service that is available from good independent manufacturers and/or retailers is always a nice surprise for most people that are more used to the frustration, confusion, and misleading information in the mainstream industry and I always like to hear when a good manufacturer goes out of their way to provide something unique for one of their customers.
Most of all … congratulations on your new mattresses
Phoenix