This forum helped me in 2011 and I purchased a 3 layer mattress (Firm-synthetic, Med-Talalay, Soft-Talalay) now 9 years ago. Its truly the best mattress I’ve ever had and I expected to get something like 15 years of use out of it. Lately, I’m waking up with some neck pain and my hands fall asleep at times, especially if I’m just laying in bed looking at my iPad in the morning. I hope its not the mattress, but I’d like to rule it out.
With innerspring mattresses you can visibly see them sagging as it wears out. I don’t see anything like this in my latex mattress. So how does one know if there mattress is reaching the end of its life?
Our talalay latex mattress got body impressions in just a few years. We rotated and flipped the layers for a number of years but eventually it was just flat feeling with arm numbness, more back pain, hip pain etc. Sounds like yours is worn out also. There was never any visible sagging. It always looked just fine so no warranty support. One way to tell is to lay on an area that you don’t normally sleep on. For our king size this was the center of the bed. You could tell the foam was better there. However they also dry rot and get crumbly. You could open the case and see if that is starting to happen to the foam. When I talked to the manufacturer they said after 13 years they expected it to be all crumbly and need to be replaced.
Thanks for the quick reply. I feel the same as you. Its not crumbling and it looks normal. I do rotate it regularly but do not flip it. I decided to flip it over and will try sleeping on it soft, med, firm and see if that makes a difference.
Welcome back to the TMU Forum ! Thanks for your question.
[quote]This forum helped me in 2011 and I purchased a 3 layer mattress (Firm-synthetic, Med-Talalay, Soft-Talalay) now 9 years ago. Its truly the best mattress I’ve ever had and I expected to get something like 15 years of use out of it. Lately, I’m waking up with some neck pain and my hands fall asleep at times, especially if I’m just laying in bed looking at my iPad in the morning. I hope its not the mattress, but I’d like to rule it out.
With innerspring mattresses you can visibly see them sagging as it wears out. I don’t see anything like this in my latex mattress. So how does one know if there mattress is reaching the end of its life?
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Thanks Kristen for the kind words on the site . Happy to hear that you found helpful resources here for making your last mattress purchase, hopefully as well as your upcoming one. To better help with your question (and its an excellent one, BTW), please share what brand/ model your current mattress is, that would be a good starting point.
I bought it from SleepEZ. I thought I could flip it over, but the bottom of the cover is rubberized, stinky and not soft. So I ended up pulling all the layers out and inspecting them before reconfiguring. The firm layer is Dunlop and was on the bottom. It is yellowed where there are gaps in the foundation the slats, where the air hits the mattress. It is also yellowed and hardened slightly around the edges. Both the medium and soft layers are Tallalay and are a little cratered on one side of each sheet. I cannot recall if it came like that. I seem to remember something about slight surface abnormalities being normal on Tallalay.
Other than a couple of mouse nibbles around the edges of all layers and one small gash in the medium layer from moving everything else looked good. I put it back together again with soft on the very bottom, then firm, then medium.
I’m not sure the amount of discoloration I’m seeing indicates I need to throw out an $1800 mattress and start over. The amount would possibly indicate that its starting to show its age, but not that its now worthless.
Question for Sensei and Phoenix… When I was moving around the layers, I noticed that there were two dates stamped on the medium layer: 11/01/2012 and 11/01/2013. I was invoiced for the mattress in March 2011, so I’m curious why there are future dates stamped on the foam sheeting. That sheet also has info stamped that indicates it was made in the Netherlands…which could mean that the date is to be read January 11 rather than November 01, however the year would still be the same in either date format.
Good question, Kristin. From your initial post #1 “How to tell if your latex mattress is worn-out?”, you describe your Sleep EZ mattress as “a 3 layer mattress (Firm-synthetic, Med-Talalay, Soft-Talalay)” build. The medium layer with the stamped dates you describe then would be the Talalay layer? Do you have an easy way to take a quick snap of the stamp and add it to your post? It would be helpful to see exactly what you are describing rather than me speculate sight unseen.
Hi Kristin and thanks for reaching out! Those actually aren’t dates, although I certainly understand why you would interpret them as such. They’re internal product codes and batch markings used for lot traceability, so it just helps them identify what batch of liquid latex your specific layers were made from.
Regarding the mattress, please keep in mind that latex is a natural and biodegradable product that does dry out as it ages, so what you’ve encountered is certainly natural. Our warranty covers a 1.5" body impression over the entire mattress or ¼" per layer, and even if your mattress doesn’t meet these requirements, it doesn’t mean you have to throw the entire mattress out. Normally the top layer takes all of the wear, compression, and decompression over the lifetime of the mattress so you should be able to just replace your top layer of soft or medium Talalay to eliminate the arm numbness.
! Thanks for your question.