Thank you for creating the best mattress site on the web, by the way. It’s such a difficult topic because it’s so entirely subjective, but it’s great to have this amazing resource.
As far as FloBeds go, I was an owner for a year and I thought I’d share my experience.
First and very, very important, the customer service at FloBeds is about the best anywhere. These people seem to truly care about your experience with their bed, even long after you’ve purchased it. They will work with you layer by layer to help you create the best sleep experience possible.
Because of that, my husband and I were determined to make it work. We swapped out layers, rearranged, shuffled, replaced and shifted until long after the return window (which was a generous window, don’t get me wrong). My husband is an engineer and actually seemed to enjoy the process (it is a lot of work, by the way, so if you’re not excited about assembling and disassembling, you won’t find it nearly as enjoyable). Unfortunately, even after a year, we were unable to find a workable system for either of us. My husband has arthritis in his lower back, as well as multiple small bone spurs. We thought this bed might be the answer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I can’t blame the bed, per se, I’m sure for people who like the latex feel it is probably one of the best options out there. But for us, it only felt like various configurations of wet sand. By the end of the year my husband was missing work due to back pain, and I felt like I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in… well… a year. There’s a sense of “dead weight” that came with the bed, for me. It was a passive resistance rather than an active one. Moving and rolling over were difficult, and I found myself waking up several times a night as I worked to shift position to get comfortable. I also found the bed unbearably hot, and as a middle-aged woman this is a big issue.
In retrospect, I wish we had gone with our gut instinct and returned the bed within the return window. The company was SO helpful, though, we were just sure it could work. It’s an expensive mattress, and it did sting our bank account to have to go out and buy a different bed after that investment.
If you do purchase from them (and again, it is a really solid company and they will really work with you to help you get the right “fit”), you can judge fairly quickly whether or not the bed will work for you. If it’s just a bit “off,” I’m sure they can make it better. But if you get that sense fairly quickly that latex is not for you, don’t hold out hoping that there is a magical configuration that will fix it. It will never stop being latex no matter how you shift it around. The idea that it can be made to feel like “anything” really isn’t true, even if we wanted it to be.
For perspective on us and our preferences, we ended up purchasing a high-end Vi spring innerspring mattress. The first night was heaven. I’ll wait several months before giving a review on it and whether or not it was worth the prohibitive cost. I think we spring people may be a dying breed, but I’m afraid I’m a spring sleeper for life.