Hi Syracusa,
Your best chance of success would be to follow the steps in the mattress shopping tutorial one at a time. Only you can feel what you feel on a mattress and only your own personal testing or experience can assess whether a mattress is a good match for you in terms of PPP.
Other than PPP … the most important part of the “value” of a mattress purchase is making sure you know the quality of all the materials inside it so you can identify any weak links (generally lower quality polyfoam, memory foam, or synthetic fibers) and make meaningful comparisons to other mattresses.
When you are confident that a mattress is suitable for you and that it uses durable materials then the last part of the value of a mattress purchase would be based on the other parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you (including price, return or exchange options etc).
[quote]Trouble is that just about everything on the market today seems to have some kind of foam in it.
I thought that going with all natural latex would solve this problem but some people seem to argue that even all natural latex will sleep hot compared to just wool and cotton. Great.[/quote]
Latex is the most breathable of all the foam materials but it isn’t as breathable or temperature regulating as natural fibers. Post #2 here has more about all the variables that can affect sleeping temperature outside of just the foam used in the comfort layers of a mattress (including the cover, quilting, mattress protector, and your sheets and bedding) but it would be very unusual for someone to sleep hot on a latex mattress with wool quilted to a breathable cover.
You may be OK with blended latex (which isn’t the same as synthetic polyfoam, memory foam, or synthetic fibers and is breathable like natural latex) however there is also 100% natural Talalay and 100% natural Dunlop latex if you are more comfortable with the all natural versions of latex. There is more about the different types and blends of latex in post #6 here.
They certainly carry some high quality mattresses but they are also in a more premium budget range than many similar mattresses that use the same or similar materials. I would also be cautious because their description on the site indicates that their PLB mattresses use 100% natural Talalay but they also say that the mattresses have a 20 year warranty which is the length of the warranty for their blended Talalay mattresses. The PLB mattresses that use 100% natural Talalay have a 10 year warranty.
Post #4 here has a list of some of the manufacturers that make natural fiber/innerspring mattresses and you can check the retail store finders on their site (or call them) to check if any of them have any retailers in the Atlanta area. Many of these also make innerspring/latex hybrids with wool quilted covers as well.
You’ve probably seen this as well but just in case you haven’t the better options and possibilities I’m aware of in the Atlanta area are listed in post #2 here. You would need to check their websites or call them to see which retailers or manufacturers carry mattresses that you would be interested in testing.
Post #2 here may also be well worth reading since their criteria seems to be similar to yours.
There are certainly many high quality and durable options available to you in a significantly lower budget range that what you’ve been looking at but your best chance of success would be to follow the steps in the tutorial post one step at a time.
Phoenix