Buying a latex, non-wool mattress in the Berkeley area

[phoenix]

Hi njs,

It’s unusual to see a reaction to wool when it’s used in a quilting layer and covered with another fabric such as cotton so it’s unfortunate that your wife is one of the very few because there are certainly some great benefits to using wool in a mattress quilting (including temperature regulation and as a natural fire barrier).

But how do we find it? Just randomly walking around to different show-rooms doesn’t seem like a very effective use of time at this point, given how few hits we’ve had so far.

The better options and possibilities I’;m aware of in the San Francisco/Berkeley/Oakland areas (subject to the quality/value guidelines here) are listed in post #2 here.

There is also more about the different ways to choose a mattress (either locally or online) that is the most suitable “match” for your specific needs and preferences and how to identify and minimize the risks of making a choice that doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for that are involved in each of them in post #2 here but the most effective way to confirm that a mattress is a good match for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) is based on careful testing (hopefully using the testing guidelines in the tutorial post). When you are at step 3 of the tutorial (deciding where to visit) I generally suggest first calling the retailers/manufacturers that are of interest to you based on their websites or what you know about them and talking to them about your criteria and the type of mattresses you are looking for and the results of your testing so that you can narrow down your options and spend your time visiting the ones that carry mattresses that meet your general criteria.

There are also manufacturers (including Berkeley Ergonomics) that carry mattresses with “split” layering so that each of you can have a different firmness level on each side of your mattress

The Nutrition is three layers of Talalay latex (with a hydrated silica barrier): 3 inches of 27 ILD, over 2 inches of 19 ILD, over 6 inches of 36 ILD. I don’t really understand the logic behind this medium → soft → firm construction, or why it seems to work for us – does anyone have any idea?

This is called a dominant layer and there is more information about it in post #33 here and the posts it links to. I wouldn’t focus too much or get “locked in” to the more “technical” specifications of a mattress design though and would tend to rely more on your own personal testing because general design concepts that work for one mattress (such as dominant layering) may not “translate” well into other mattresses that also use a dominant layering in a different design that may not work as well for you as the specific mattress you tried.

Phoenix