I made a short visit to an independent mattress supplier today.
I was happy he appeared to know what he was talking about, even though he didn’t always have the specs of his different foams. One of them he suggested some kind of gel foam called “cool blu”, and was very pleasantly plush, with an almost “oily” feel, without memory but felt a bit like it. I was told the density is 3.75. This site claims that it’s twice as breathable than latex.
Has anyone heard of this? Is there anyway for me to assess the durability of this?
Thanks
Another factory direct supplier I visited today talks highly of that “gel foam”, as they call it. It’s apparently made in Italy, and it’s about 30% more expensive than latex.
Hi marcandre,
Blusleepproducts is connected to the family that owns Essentia (see post #5 here).
It is a type of gel foam and would be similar to the watergel made by GommaGomma here.
Elastomeric gels are a type of polyurethane and are a very durable material. It can be made as a solid gel layer, foamed, or added to other materials like polyfoam or memory foam. As you mention, it is more expensive than polyurethane or most other types of foams which is why mattresses that contain it (especially as a gel layer rather than a foam that has gel added to it) can be more expensive.
They are very safe and non toxic and have a “somewhat” viscoelastic feel but as you also mentioned it is not the same as memory foam and it also depends on whether it is “pure” or added to another material. It is a high quality material IMO.
Technogel is another example (and there are several others as well).
Phoenix
Although Robert of Matelas Excellence preferred not to name the maker, the owner of Matelas Sélection confirmed that what I saw was made by GommaGomma.
It might be worth adding a category in “Mattress comfort layer materials overview”?
I ended up opting for 15 ILD latex which has a similar feel, but thanks a lot for reassuring me that the gel would have been a good possibility.
Hi marcandre,
I completely agree with you and its a near term priority. Actually there are two more categories that I’m working on as I do more research and as more information becomes available about the variations of the different types of gel materials (pure gel and various types of gel co-polymers). The other category is recycled PET fibers (recycled plastic bottles like this from Indratech).
Some of the information that will be on the page is in post#2 here.
I just wish I had more hands, fingers, eyes … and a couple more brains … to add more of the information to the main site faster rather than having to point to most of it in the forum but sometimes the research can be laboriously slow … especially with emerging material categories 
Phoenix