Help Me Decide Which Sealy to Exchange For

[phoenix]

Hi SoCal,

For the past few years we have owned a California King Sealy luxury plush euro pillowtop (known as Bloomburg, Bloomsbruy, etc). We loved it for the first few months perhaps to a year. Then it started to sag where we slept, creating increasingly unbearable valleys with a hill in between. We recently had it tested and Sealy has approved replacing it or giving us a credit towards another of their mattresses. From this experience and “trying out” memory foam mattresses at the store, we are soured on innerspring mattresses and are interested in either a memory foam or latex foam bed, although this will force us to chip in to buy it as the credit most likely won’t be enough.

The biggest issue with all of the major brand mattresses is not so much the innerspring (which are generally good quality) but the comfort layers on the top of the mattress which use lower quality materials and will be the first to soften and degrade. This is likely to happen regardless of whether you choose an innerspring or another type of support layer or component. In almost all cases … the comfort layers on top are the ones that are the most important part of durability and the inability to find out what they are (and when you do, discovering that they are generally low quality) is common in all the major brands.

This thread has a similar theme and may be of interest to you.

If you are “stuck” with an exchange with a brand that has the same problem throughout their lineup (poor quality or poor value) … then the best you can generally do is to buy the mattress with the least amount of polyfoam (or other low quality foam including lower density memory foam which will have the same issues) in the top layers and the firmest foams possible (firmer foams tend to be more durable than softer foams) and then add your own comfort layer in the form of a topper. The topper will improve the durability of thefoams in the mattress and with this type of component sleeping system … the comfort layers would be more durable and if they do wear out before the deeper layers and you lose comfort or support … then just the topper can be replaced without replacing the whole mattress.

[quote]I have my eye on Optimum Inspiration or Radiance (Elation is a bit too expensive). I am also interested in any thoughts on Sealy’s Embody latex mattresses (Shelter and Perspective) and Sealy’s comfort series cape coral plush, although I have not had an opportunity to test drive any of these. [/quote].

You can see my thoughts about the Sealy Optimum series here and as you can see I wouldn’t consider any of them as the best use of an exchange credit because of the lower quality or the “unknown” memory foam in the comfort layers (and in some cases the support layers as well). I would avoid these.

The Embody latex mattresses at least don’t have thick layers of polyfoam on top even though they use the lowest quality of latex (mostly synthetic). If you buy the firmest model of these (the insightful here) and then add a softer topper (if necessary which it probably would be) then at least you wouldn’t have the same issues of low quality polyfoam on top of your mattress. While I would never buy one of these if I was buying a new mattress because there is better quality/value available and because they use a lower quality base layer than I would prefer, … in your circumstances they could make a good choice for a “base” mattress for a topper which together would avoid most of the problems of most of the Sealy lineup and may help you make the best of a bad situation.

The Sealy comfort series is also not a good choice IMO. You can see the Cape Coral layering here and it has far too much lower quality polyfoam in the comfort layers and also has a lower quality base. I think you would be asking for foam softening issues with this and it wouldn’t be suitable for adding a topper (there are already too many thick layers of soft foam on top). If I did choose one of the Comfort series it would be more like this one but even here there is 2" of polyfoam on top (which is still more than you would want) and none of the other materials are very good quality ether.

Hope this helps.

Phoenix