Kardut, congratulations again
And since Maverick is traveling, I wanted to add a little visual context to what he mentioned above.
You made an important point in your original post: buying a mattress “sight unseen (and unfelt!)” from across the country is not an easy decision. That is where the knowledge and experience of the people helping you become especially important. Daniel may not have been able to put you on a mattress in the showroom. Still, an in-depth conversation about your body, sleeping position, comfort preferences, current mattress experience, and what you are trying to change will go a long way toward narrowing down the right construction and firmness range.
This is part of the Mattressology area at Mattress Makers that Maverick visited this week. What struck us about the showroom is how strongly it is built around education and fitting rather than simply presenting rows of mattresses and asking someone which one feels best.
Maverick also went through their Comfort Mapping process himself.
In the showroom, they can use pressure mapping as another piece of information to better understand where a person needs pressure relief and support. Obviously, an online customer cannot go through this physical measurement, but it illustrates the kind of thinking behind their fitting process: comfort and support are considered separately, and the goal is to match the mattress to the individual rather than simply assign everyone a generic “soft,” “medium,” or “firm.”
This one is Maverick’s own result. You can see where he landed on their comfort/support map. Afterward, he did what only Maverick would do when given access to a mattress showroom — he proceeded to try just about everything. 
That is why his comment above carries much weight. He didn’t simply stop by and look around; he tested the Carmel you ordered and worked his way through the other Mattress Makers models as well, and came away impressed with the consistency of what he found.
For someone purchasing remotely, this can be especially reassuring when working with experienced mattress makers. The particular Carmel configuration you chose - with its zippered design and replaceable latex layers = gives you the ability to fine-tune the comfort after you have actually slept on it, rather than making the original configuration a final, irreversible decision. That flexibility was one of the features you mentioned appreciating when you placed the order.
None of this can guarantee that any mattress will be the perfect match before someone has actually slept on it — bodies are wonderfully inconvenient that way — but experienced guidance, good information about the sleeper, transparent construction, and the ability to make meaningful comfort adjustments afterward can substantially improve the odds of a successful remote purchase.
So I thought I would add these photos while Maverick is away. They give everyone following the thread a glimpse behind the scenes at the fitting and educational approach he experienced at Mattress Makers this week.
Now we wait with you for that Carmel to make its cross-country journey. Please do come back and tell us how it feels once you’ve had some real sleeping time on it.
Phoenix
@SDMattressMakers
