Hello,
I’m looking for some help in deciding what path to go with my mattress. Originally, my wife and I wanted to buy a mattress that was free of chemicals, i.e. fire retardants, but had a hard time justifying the price of organic mattresses. So, we bought a buckwheat hull mattress to test it out because it was as natural as you can get and very reasonable, about $350 for a twin. We ultimately need a king but bought a twin for testing. So to complete our mattress we need to buy another twin.
This is our dilemma. The buckwheat mattress is somewhat too firm. I actually like it but it’s too firm for my wife. We are interested in buying a latex topper…from Nest Bedding…that is 3in natural dunlop. The buckwheat mattress is about 6-7in in depth. I wanted to know if anyone has any experience in putting a topper on top of a buckwheat mattress? To complete our mattress we need to buy another twin and a topper which would be about another $1000. Before I spend the money on that I am wondering if maybe I should just put that money towards an all latex mattress from Nest which is about $3000. Thanks for any input.
I don’t have any personal experience with a buckwheat hull mattress although I have used a buckwheat pillow and buckwheat itself is a very firm material (like sleeping on sand). You can see some additional comments about buckwheat mattresses in this post.
The challenge with putting a latex topper on top of buckwheat is that a buckwheat mattress will take on the shape of the body over the course of the night and it will develop impressions and the latex will follow the impressions underneath it. Latex will generally do best on a flat even flat surface because it’s meant to contour through elasticity not because of impressions in a material underneath it. With this type of support system under latex the odds would be higher that you will end up sleeping out of alignment. It would probably be more effective to use latex under the buckwheat rather than the other way around. This is the configuration that the owner of Open Your Eyes Bedding used to sleep on (see post #2 here) although she now sleeps just on the buckwheat hulls.
I’m not sure if Nest Bedding is local to you (which would give you the chance to test their mattress or their topper in person which can make a more premium price worth it) but if they’re not then the tutorial post includes a link to a list of the members here that sell a wide range of latex mattresses online (the list is in post #21 here) and many of them are in a lower budget range. There are many different types and blends of latex (see post #6 here) but if your preference between them is the 100% natural continuous pour Dunlop made by Mountaintop Foam (which is the natural latex that Nest Bedding sells) then Spindle Mattress also uses the same type of latex in their mattresses so it may be worthwhile to make some good value comparisons. There are also many other options for latex mattresses that are significantly less than the $3000 you are looking at. NOTE ADDED: Nest Bedding is also now a member of this site
If all you want is a topper then some of the better online sources for latex toppers are listed in the component post here.
I really can’t answer if you “should” buy an all latex mattress because the choice of materials is really a personal preference (and budget of course) and different people would make different choices for very different reasons but you could always purchase just a single layer of latex and use it under your buckwheat hull mattress (or even over it in spite of what “theory” says) and then if it wasn’t what you were looking for then you could always use that layer as part of an all latex component mattress.