Cheaper but just as good alternative to Sealy Elation

[phoenix]

Hi TheholyLancer,

My personal preference is soft, TBH I like sleeping on the soft sofa (which is just foam cushions) over my current spring bed that have been sagging. Hence I would love to have a softer feeling bed, be it memory foam or otherwise (that don’t produce pains as the sofa is not exactly ideal). The little amount of time I’ve tried a memory foam in stores (the sealy in a Canadian store), I’ve found it to be nice and the feeling of being enclosed in memory foam to be acceptable (for the short 1 minute or so I was on it).

Softness and firmness is very subjective and relative to different body types, sleeping positions, and individual sensitivities and different people can have very different ideas about what a “soft” mattress feels like. A mattress that is too soft for one person can be too firm for the next so if you like softer mattresses then it’s important to make sure that it feels soft for you even if someone else has a different perception. I would also keep in mind that sofas are meant to hold up the more concentrated weight of sitting and are generally firmer than mattresses. Like any type of mattress … memory foam mattresses come in a wide range of firmness levels from soft to firm. I would also make sure that you test mattresses for much longer than a minute or so (using the testing guidelines in the tutorial post) and this would be especially important with memory foam which is temperature sensitive and will change how it feels as it warms up with your body heat as you spend more time on it.

My budget is around 2k, lower preferable but that is kind of the upper limit of where my budget lies.

Your budget is easily high enough to purchase a good quality mattress.

Remote / Online shopping of phones or electrics is fine, given specs is all you need but I think brick and mortar shopping is needed for things like mattress, shoes, cloths and what nots.

There are many people that are very comfortable buying a mattress online if the store has a good exchange or return policy that allows them to test the mattress at home with little risk while others are only comfortable with a local purchase. This is always part of each person’s preferences and their personal value equation. There is more about the different ways to choose a mattress (either online or local) and how to minimize the risks involved with each of them in post #2 here.

If the national brands are as bad as this (and kind of suspected), I would need to look at some of the local shops listed in that thread and get a feel for their price then. Do generally they offer similar or higher price for a mattress? I know that in the computer industry (where I work in and is knowledgeable about), specialty and higher quality items generally cost more. But I’m not entire sure the different between say a custom bed made by someone with specified materials and softness to something from sealy and etc.

Lower quality materials are much less costly than higher quality materials but if you are making apples to apples comparisons between mattresses that have a similar type and quality of materials then in general … the smaller independent manufacturers are generally significantly less costly than their major brand competitors (see the articles on the front page of the site and post #12 here). In most cases you won’t need to purchase a custom built mattress (although some of them will make one for you if you wish) because they normally make a wide range of mattresses that you can test in person in their showroom (or the showroom of a retailer that carries their mattresses) just like any other manufacturer and one of these would usually be a good choice.

Phoenix