Hi,
I’ve read all the information here in order to make an informed choice. Thank you for providing it. Here’s where I’m getting confused. 13 years ago I bought a sealy posture pedic and loved it. Everyone I know really liked their mattresses. There wasn’t all this discussion and disappointment after purchase. Now we have all these “new and improved foams” such as memory foam, talalay latex, cool gel, etc. my guess is all those old mattresses were innerspring and polyurethane foam. That’s the cheapest foam. Yet they lasted and were comfortable. Unless I’m missing something, the old construction was better. I realize 2 sided doesn’t exist anymore, but even without that, the old style was a better choice, in my opinion.
In very general terms, you are correct. Mattresses two decades ago used denser foams. However, we still had plenty of lousy mattresses back then as well. And those foams tended to contain more chemicals that most people consider harmful.
Overall, the industry used foams that were a bit more dense, combined with denser pre-compressed felt layers deep down. The foundations also were usually a torsion system that flexed a bit and the beds were two-sided. The spring units weren’t necessarily too different, although certain units have become more popular with the advent of the one-sided mattress.
We’re also seeing more versions of lower-density memory foam, with a lower polymer density when using gel particles.
Latex foam has been around for a long time and I would argue that we’ve actually seen improvements in the offerings in that area.
Overall, yes, the quality/durability of the foams used in the major brands has declined over time, as has the transparency of what is inside of these mattresses. All the more reason to become an educated consumer!
Hi zumba1,
I would add a “ditto” to Jeff’s comments.
The more widespread use of lower density and less durable materials and the fact that the major manufacturers stopped making two sided mattresses along with some of the other changes in the industry over the last decade or more has resulted in significantly less durable mattresses in the mainstream industry than you would find `15 years ago when higher quality/density materials and two sided mattresses were more common. There are more detailed comments about some of these unfortunate trends in the industry towards lower quality materials and mattresses in post #3 here and in post #12 here and in post #404 here.
There are still many two sided mattresses being made today by smaller manufacturers … just not by the major manufacturers.
As Jeff mentioned … latex (including both Talalay and Dunlop) predates polyurethane foam and were the only foam materials that were available before polyfoam was invented and became more widespread in the industry (see post #9 here). Latex has a very long track record of being a very durable material.
Some of the other “new and improved” foams are also very durable but many of them aren’t (and these are more common in the major manufacturers and the mainstream industry) so when it comes to durability the key is to know how to tell the difference and of course to stay away from manufacturers or retailers that aren’t transparent about the type and quality of the materials in their mattresses.
Phoenix