Can anyone offer insight into the BME vs The Love Bed? Plus my internet mattress journey....

Hey all,
I posted a bit back regarding places to find a mattress in New Orleans. Had a bit of trouble with that, as the available options were mostly big box stores (Mattress Firm) or local stores with not so great return policies. I instead elected to do the internet mattress thing… which has has not been great.

Tried the T&N and wanted to love it-- but felt like I was consistently crashing through the comfort layer into the hard polyfoam underneath. Put my shoulder to sleep and kept the rest of me awake. Gave it a month and a half before returning it. Then tried the Casper, which oddly felt almost exactly the same as the T&N, but was much much hotter. Didn’t work out either. So now I’m back on my old rock hard innerspring and not sleeping well at all. I’m 5’8" and about 140 lbs. I sleep on my stomach and side. Does anyone have experience with the BME and Love Bed and can offer insight into their supportiveness for stomach sleeping vs their comfort for side sleeping? I understand that comfort is all relative and what feels soft to one will feel different to another… but I feel like I need some more info to make an educated decision here lest I get burned again. I’d be considering a medium in both options.

Phoenix- I also located this local seller.: http://www.capitalbed.com/ Spoke with sales and the owner-- both very nice. They use a mix of polyfoams-- some 1.8lbs and some 1.4lbs-- but their beds seemed a little soft to me. Not sure if you have a running list of every mattress seller in America (and it kinda seems like you do), but thought they might be worth looking at.

Thanks all!

Hi EnFeugo,

I would keep in mind that the first “rule” of mattress shopping is to always remember that you are the only one that can feel what you feel on a mattress and there are too many unknowns, variables, and personal preferences involved that are unique to each person to use a formula or for anyone to be able to predict or make a specific suggestion or recommendation about which mattress or combination of materials and components or which type of mattress would be the best “match” for you in terms of “comfort” or PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and your Personal preferences) or how a mattress will “feel” to you or compare to another mattress based on specs (either yours or a mattress) or “theory at a distance” that can possibly be more accurate than your own careful testing (hopefully using the testing guidelines in step 4 of the tutorial) or your own personal sleeping experience (see mattress firmness/comfort levels in post #2 here).

While other people’s comments or reviews about the knowledge, service, and guidance of a particular business can certainly be helpful … I would generally avoid using other people’s experiences or reviews on a mattress (either positive or negative) or review sites in general as a reliable source of information or guidance about how you will feel on the same mattress or how suitable or how durable a mattress may be for you and in many if not most cases they can be more misleading than helpful because a mattress that would be a perfect choice for one person or even a larger group of people may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on (see post #13 here).

There are also no “standard” definitions or consensus of opinions for firmness ratings and different manufacturers can rate their mattresses very differently than others so a mattress that one manufacturer rates as being a specific firmness could be rated very differently by another manufacturer. Different people can also have very different perceptions of firmness and softness compared to others as well and a mattress that feels firm for one person can feel like “medium” for someone else or even “soft” for someone else (or vice versa) depending on their body type, sleeping style, physiology, their frame of reference based on what they are used to, and their individual sensitivity and perceptions. There are also different types of firmness and softness that different people may be sensitive to that can affect how they “rate” a mattress as well (see post #15 here) so different people can also have very different opinions on how two mattresses compare in terms of firmness as well and some people may rate one mattress as being firmer than another and someone else may rate them the other way around. This is all relative and very subjective and is as much an art as a science.

When you can’t test a mattress in person then the most reliable source of guidance is always a more detailed phone conversation with a knowledgeable and experienced retailer or manufacturer that has your best interests at heart and who can help “talk you through” the specifics of their mattresses and the properties and “feel” of the materials they are using (fast or slow response, resilience, firmness etc) and the options they have available that may be the best “match” for you based on the information you provide them, any local testing you have done or mattresses you have slept on and liked or other mattresses you are considering that they are familiar with, and the “averages” of other customers that are similar to you. They will know more about “matching” their specific mattress designs to different body types, sleeping positions, and preferences (or to other mattresses that they are familiar with) than anyone else.

A forum search on Love Bed BestMattressEver (you can just click the link) will also bring up more comments and feedback about them as well.

You can see some comments about them in the Baton Rouge list here. They would certainly be well worth considering.

Phoenix