Hello! For the past few weeks, I’ve used your website as a fantastic resource as I’ve been mattress shopping with the significant other. Having read all of your pages (and taken notes!), I made up an extensive spreadsheet before hitting the stores, so that I would know what I was looking for, and was determined to write down as many specs as possible. As you warned about, there were so many blank boxes on my sheet that I was certain that gaining the information we wanted was going to be hopeless.
Long story short. We wound up at a small local place (Mattress Mart in Portage MI), and had the experience with a wonderful salesman like you describe - incredibly knowledgeable, and very excited to find that I’d done my research - I even pulled a few difficult questions out from this site in order to test his knowledge level vs marketing tactic, and was not disappointed. Larrs had great suggestions, and we ended up trying a few that we really liked. However - my significant other is 6’6 to 6’7. This means we are getting a California King, so price is a concern. We tried a couple from the pureBlissLatex line and really liked them, but the price was far beyond our budget of 2000. I said as much. Our salesman (Larrs) didn’t bat an eye, and led us to a very firm King Koil mattress with basically no comfort layer, put a 3 inch, Fast Response Pure Bliss Latex topper on it and told me to “just try it”. It was wonderful! Even better- the price for the mattress was 1400, with the topper around 500, allowing us to hit our budget on the mark (give or take for taxes and extra fees, etc).
My question for you is this: before I write a check, what are your thoughts here? I’m pretty confident in the King Koil- he had all the specs presented, and even sent me to a couple sites online for more, and encouraged me to do more research and get a second opinion after some thought. Overall, the supportive nature of the firm mattress was very well matched with the topper, and i felt both comfortable and supported. We checked our alignment too - spot on! Concerning the topper- it has a good reputation and is extremely comfortable. So individually, we are confident in the components and feel that the price is worth it. However, there is not much research on “building” a mattress this way - yet so many of the complaints these days are about comfort layers dying and making their owners miserable. This seems to be a great, cost effective way to avoid that trap. But is this too good to be true?
Now again, I understand from your website that this is simply a method of pseudo-building a mattress tailored to both our comfort level and our price range. The very firm King Koil provides the support layer, with the topper providing the comfort layer that can be replaced as it wears out or our comfort needs change. This seems almost too simple, and it makes me hesitant. Nothing in my research notes indicates that this is a poor decision- your website as well as Sleep Like the Dead continuously emphasize that the weak points of most mattresses is in the comfort layer, and that it tends to kill mattresses for people far earlier than they would like. The weak point that I can find is in the Bonnell continuous coils, and yet they are at 12.5 gauge, which is the best. The polyfoam is 2.5 lb, as you indicate to be high quality, so that is not much of a concern either (beyond that, there isn’t much of it). I’m pretty sure the box spring could hold up a house, and in general solidity and durability are pretty good in firm mattresses, as well as in the King Koil line, as i understand it.
I suppose I’m looking for reassurance? Have I interpreted and applied your methods correctly here, in order to maximize quality in the face of cost limitations? So much of what I have read implies “if it seems too good, it is”. Yet I can’t find a problem. Any advice you can offer would be incredibly appreciated.
Thanks very much for your time! Again, your site is a wonderful resource for those of us facing the monster that is mattress shopping. SleepLiketheDead is great for general data (though their explanations have some flaws), but I found the detailed and instructive information here on The Mattress Underground to be far more useful in practice. Thanks for all you do!
–CL