I’ve narrowed my search to Brooklyn’s all latex and an all latex from plushbeds.com.
Brooklyn seems to give me more Talalay for the money, and also offers a choice between Dunlop and Talalay cores. My understanding is Talalay is more expensive, and Dunlop is firmer. Should I go with full Talalay since it is the same price. Wife and I are both primarily stomach sleepers, although she alternates positions some and I often wake up on my back.
I also need to find a box spring replacement that comes assembled or is at least tool less. The wife has no faith in my abilities to construct and I need to avoid that bitchfest. Brooklyn’s recommendations seem to all need assembly. I have a feeling this will make the wife push for plushbeds.com.
Cool site. You should have seen my face when my wife went into a local store and started sampling $5,000 mattresses!
The cost of different types of latex depends on the type and blend of the latex (for example Blended Talalay usually has a similar price to 100% natural Dunlop. The firmness would also depend on the ILD of the layers you were comparing but in the same ILD then Dunlop would feel firmer than Talalay for most people because it has a higher compression modulus (gets firmer faster than Talalay as you sink in past 25% of the layer thickness which is the depth of compression where ILD is measured).
Another member had a similar question that I replied to a few minutes ago and you can read my reply in post #17 here which includes several links which compare the different types of latex but in essence the choice between them is a preference choice … not a “better worse” choice.
There are some good foundation choices in the foundation thread here and the slatted wood KD foundations would make good choices and don’t need any tools or expertise to put together. Just make sure and confirm that the one you choose has slats that are no more than 3" apart for an all latex mattress.
The foundations that Plushbeds uses are also a KD foundation (KD means “knock down”) that need to be assembled as well. Foundations are generally too heavy and bulky to ship economically as a single assembled unit.
A forum search on Plushbeds (you can just click this) will also bring up more information about them and while they are “better than average” in terms of quality and value compared to some other online retailers … they are also not in the “best value” range compared to some of the other choices you have available to you from many of the online members of this site including Brooklyn Bedding.
Thanks for the links and information. I get it now, it is a choice between a natural Dunlop base or a blended Talalay base. I was thinking they were both natural, which is why I was confused. I’ll keep looking.