Hi Diane37,
There were some nights I’d change mattress configurations 4 times before trying to go to sleep, so I hear you on a lot of experimentation. I can share some things I felt I learned, and things I wanted to try, but as you know what works and doesn’t starts with a gamble, and then you refine it and see if you get somewhere good.
For reference, I have my original green sleep in a state that I really really like it, I think oh wow when I sleep in it. That said, I am building a second bed and just getting the final stuff (reusing most of the material I’d bought that wasn’t in the first bed) and anticipate it’ll also be oh wow, but with a totally different feel.
One thing that I did was find a baseline config that allowed me to not be in any pain. Testing a new mattress config with significant pain (hip / shoulder aches from too firm, or back from too soft) is a horrible way to start testing a new config. So once I’d beat myself up enough trying different things, I’d go back to a baseline. My baseline wasn’t my favorite, but good enough to be mostly neutral and not significantly irritate me / cause pain to use. I don’t know if you have anything similar. Even sleeping on a diff bed or something.
Another thing I did was try to start with a certain base configuration, and then iterate that configuration by changing only 1 thing at a time, trying to make it better based on what I’d learned the materials feel like in prior tests. I’d try to sleep at least 1 night, but preferably more, on each config… Although some were so horrible that I’d do multiple changes a night. Once a fundamental config showed some promise, i recorded it and moved on… I circled back to the ones that showed some promise later on, allowing me to see if there was a trend. Only when I started a fundamentally new config did I totally change the mattress.
Also, I tried to avoid huge swings… So if your mattress is too firm, and the aches could be unbearable at times, you might be up in the middle of the night saying screw this I’m making it as soft as can be. The soft is immediately amazing because it remedies the aches from too firm, until you wake up in major back pain. So then you’re like screw this I need firm, and go really firm again. So I tried to avoid that, again by having a neutral baseline… Otherwise I found I’d over correct on each iteration, and the worse the first config was, the worse I’d over correct and then you’re just back and forth between extremes.
I at times found the liveliness of talalay too distracting. I found that a wool topper over it helped a lot, but firmed it up. So I found that a wool over a soft talalay was more conforming than dunlop, but the wool killed the lively feel. When I say wool, I have a 3" wool topper… But I suspect thinner would do better in many cases. Your bamboo poly fill topper over a soft talalay would maybe be similar, or the omalon as you said. None of your talalay is soft enough to do that in the same way I did I don’t think (probably ild 19 or so I’d guess, maybe even 14, since mine is 24 and I’m 185 lbs). There are several ways I surmised this could be done too, and I don’t know which best…nor if you’d even like it. But a thin polyfoam over talalay, thin firm dunlop over talalay maybe, or wool, etc. But the concept of talalay for deeper conforming, almost too soft to use on its own, with a material above it that will deaden the talalay liveliness and firm it up a bit, hence getting it a bit too soft if being used in its own originally. (Of course, that’s theory and so unless you try it it’s just a wild guess).
Polyfoam always underwhelmed me, and I always found myself circling back to having high hopes for it. I have a convoluted 2.5" 35 ild or something, >2lbs density, and 2 layers of a thin firm 50 ild foam. They weren’t bad (and part of my neutral config for a long time), but I was constantly underwhelmed with what it did for feel.
Finally, I prefer more simplistic designs. I found once too many layers were in play it just felt wrong. That may be a mental thing for me though.
I’ll read more, but instead of saying what to do, shared some of the methods I used 