Going the DIY route with all Latex

Mattress Talk Mattress Selection Process
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My current bed is a 15 year old Tempurpedic queen size which is now hammocking on me. I’m one of those people that loves Tempur memory foam but with the current prices of those beds I’m not going to pay an extreme premium for a name. It’s time for a new mattress and Latex has caught my eye.

At 6’ tall, I’m currently sitting at 195 but traditionally my weight has fluctuated between 210-220 and in the past year I got all the way down to 180. This large range puts me between several setups I’ve seen suggested by the experts on here. I’m a 95% Side sleeper with 5% back sleeping thrown in. I’m very sedentary for part of the week while the other half of the week I’m putting in lots of work in the gym, swimming, martial arts, stretching, and doing physical therapy on my back/hips. I’ve had intermittent low back pain for the past 15 years and hip pain now for a several years. For few years now I’ve also had some arm/hand numbness while sleeping.

There’s probably 100 mattress stores around me but they’re all run of the mill S brand stores. Went and laid on a few but all it did is just remind me how I don’t like spring mattresses. Found one local natural sleep store ($$$) that carries latex beds and was able to try them out. I concentrated on the ones with 3x3 layers which were all dunlop and tried f/f/f m/m/f s/m/f s/s/m with both the medium and soft over medium being what I liked. What I really want to try is 3" soft and medium talalay over medium dunlop over both firm and extra firm dunlop. For me logically these combos are what make sense to me of what I think would work the best. There was one model that had a top layer of 3" soft talalay/2" medium dunlop/6" firm dunlop which felt slight firmer than the all dunlop s/m/f. After trying out those beds, seeing the prices, and then having the realization that all they contain are the exact same components of a DIY bed with their brand name embroidered onto the cover and an extra $2000 tacked onto the price, DIY just makes sense to me.

With all of that said I’m facing a few options of where to go next:
Option 1: Buy a $100 airplane ticket to Phoenix so that I can try out the combos that I want in the showroom. I’d then just order it there to be delivered back home.
Option 2: Order a split queen, one side soft talalay/medium dunlop/xfirm dunlop and the other side medium talalay/medium dunlop/firm dunlop. This would allow me to try all the combos and switch them all up to find what I like. I’d then pick what I want to sleep on and the other side of the bed would just be what it is as no one is sleeping on that side anyways plus it would still be pretty close in comfort to the other side.
Option 3: Pre-decide on either s/m/f or m/m/f, order a full queen, then have to possibly play the repackage/return ship game hoping to find the combo that works best within a minimum number of iterations. This seems to be what most people do, but then again most people also buy crap tier mattresses for way too much money in chain stores, so just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it the best way.

In closing, I’m happy that this forum exists to spread knowledge and help break people out of an industry that pedals cheap materials for the most amount of money possible which happens in so many areas of our lives these days. Knowledge truly is power and I’ve obtained so much knowledge over just a few days reading through the articles and posts here.

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I think you have a lot of good points and I appreciate the detailed approach, since it helps really understand your situation. For my part, I have the unusual insight that comes from designing mattresses that uses memory foam, latex and even more traditional materials. The memory foam mattresses that I design for the Tempflow company (www.Tempflow.com) have that higher density that Tempur-Pedic used on their original designs, only Tempflow has a 40-year limited warranty as compared to Tempur-Pedic’s 10-year. So, there would be an alternative to Tempur-Pedic if you wanted to look at another option that would be less expensive. With regards to your issue with the low back, latex is a good choice in terms of adding a more buoyant support than you would get with even high density memory foam, but you will lose some of that memory foam contouring comfort you did mention that you do enjoy.

I created Back Science to fill that gap between memory foam and latex by using our Hypergel foam that has a more buoyant support similar to latex foam, but with a more comfortable contouring effect similar to memory foam that really excels in keeping the back in proper alignment. I was able to make that determination thanks to an App. I created that called Mattress Checker that is the first objective tool for analyzing the spinal alignment. That was the basis for helping configure a patent pending feature on Back Science that gives a very special interlocking lumbar zoning that shows an objective verification that it really works, which is why 97% of our recent Trust Pilot survey showed 97% of Back Science customers had an improvement in their back pain with their Back Science mattress.

Anyway, either mattress could be a great alternative to both Tempur-Pedic and a DYI latex bed, and with both brands you get long trial, free exchanges and even totally free customizations, so it may be worth looking into. Feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions and you can also call and speak to myself or one of our other sleep experts by calling us at 800 667-1969. If you do wind up wanting to purchase a Tempflow or Back Science mattress, be sure to use the discount code TMU10 to get an additional 10% off.

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Thank you for the information! This is the first time I’d seen any viscoelastic foam beds that are comparable to the original Tempurpedic. I’m currently reviewing all of the information from both the BackScience site and the Tempflow site. I’ll certainly reach out with any questions that come up.

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