Live in Rochester, NY area. Tried Prana and liked it a lot though it was way too hot so returned. Then tried top of line Restonic and found it too hard and uncomfortable - gave it away. Am now using 3 inch memory foam topper on very firm bed my husband picked out. Again, it sleeps pretty hot (which wakes me up) but feels very comfortable. Question: how do I get the comfort of a foam without the heat? Is a pillowtop mattress the way to go? And, if so, what brands should I be looking at? Have felt pretty comfortable in the Westin bed and in the new Hampton Inn beds Help please and thanks a lot.
Hi jeanneny,
The first place to start your research is the mattress shopping tutorial here which includes all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that you will need to make the best possible choice … and know how and why to avoid the worst ones.
Two of the most important links in the tutorial that I would especially make sure you’ve read are post #2 here which has more about the different ways to choose a suitable mattress that is the best “match” for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) that can help you assess and minimize the risks of making a choice that doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for that are involved in each of them and post #13 here which has more about the most important parts of the “value” of a mattress purchase which can help you make more meaningful quality/value comparisons between mattresses in terms of suitability, durability, and value.
There is more about the many variables that can affect sleeping temperature in post #2 here that can help you choose a choose the combination of materials and components and the types of mattresses that will have the best chance of keeping you in a temperature range that you are comfortable with.
There are three main types of foam materials (memory foam, polyfoam, latex foam) and in very general terms memory foam tends to sleep warmer than polyfoam which in turn tends to sleep warmer than latex although there are many other variables involved in sleeping temperature as well besides just the type of foam material that you are sleeping on.
A mattress that sleeps warm for some people may be well inside a comfortable temperature range for others depending on where they are in the “oven to iceberg” range and on the temperature and humidity in their bedroom and the mattress protector or any mattress pad you are using, your sheets and bedding, and your bedclothes, which can all have a significant effect on sleeping temperature regardless of your mattress and in some cases changing these may be all that is necessary to keep sleeping temperatures inside the range that you are comfortable with even if one mattress tends to sleep warmer than another.
You are the only one that can feel what you feel on a mattress and there are too many unknowns, variables, and personal preferences involved to use a formula or for anyone to be able to predict or make a specific suggestion or recommendation about which mattress or combination of materials and components would be the best “match” for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) based on specs (either yours or a mattress) or “theory at a distance” that can possibly be more accurate than your own careful testing or personal experience … hopefully using the testing guidelines in the tutorial post (see mattress firmness/comfort levels in post #2 here).
A pillowtop is a type of mattress that has a separate “pillow” that is sewn to a mattress with recessed edges (like this) and is just a method of construction that allows the top layer in the “pillow” to respond more independently than it would if the same layer was inside the main mattress cover. The problem with most pillowtops that are sold by the major brands or in the mainstream industry isn’t so much the pillowtop design itself as the quality/density and durability of the materials inside it because pillowtops that use lower quality materials in the mattress or the pillowtop will tend to develop soft spots and premature impressions much more quickly. Other than the quality and durability of the materials there is nothing about a pillowtop that would make it inherently better or worse than any other type of mattress. It would all depend on which type of mattress your careful testing indicated is the best “match” for you in terms of PPP.
Brand shopping can also be among the most risky ways to choose a mattress because you are buying a specific mattress not the brand and all manufacturers have access to the same or similar components and materials. Most of the most heavily advertised and most commonly available brands that you would recognize are the ones I would avoid anyway (see the guidelines here) and many of the better manufacturers are smaller and are only available locally or regionally. The name of the manufacturer on the label also won’t tell you anything about whether a specific mattress is suitable for you in terms of PPP or whether there are any lower quality materials or weak links in the design. There is more about the risks of brand shopping in post #5 here and post #12 here).
The better options or possibilities I’m aware of in the Rochester, NY area (subject to the quality/value guidelines I linked earlier in this reply) are listed in post #11 here.
Phoenix
We are also seeking the best mattress (as opposed to anything else LOL!)
This MU site is the “bomb” of all sites I would only wish whatever the product or service could have something as informative / researchable as this!!
Hats off! to you Mr. Phenix as I have read for hours on many of your posts and I never knew so much went into a mattress purchase but so glad I have found the information to better help get the 3 -P’s right and Values. (I ran my existing mattress thru the criteria and it made me even more sore trying to sleep on it!!..information is powerful)
Ok-on to my point- After studying this site we went for our 1st sampling and found the gentleman to be knowledgable at our local UM store here in Colorado.
Being older, major back problems & active, I always thought firm was what I needed and went for a memory foam many years ago and while traveling recently I stayed in a Boutique Hotel and got a fantastic nights sleep and it made me start thinking…
So armed with the information we looked up what we had slept on in the Hotel and used as a starting point when we got to the store and he proceeded to show us lines that had a similar feel or better and began to work our way up thru the construction differences and all were in the "plush mix btw.
(After reading I would agree we are seeking something that does the supportive measure followed by the big parts kept in-alignment.)
We so far have narrowed our search (Full, we could fit on a Twin which is another problem for matresses when sleeping like spoons) to a Dunlopillo Ambiance and a Prana Super Vinyasa,
I do not plan to turn this into a mattress hunt for months, more like this week so I was curious as to others /Brands I should consider as I’m totally new in this…and/or thoughts on our choices so far…
I can copy the specifications into this if you prefer for future references.
Sincerely,
CD
Hi cdisracerx,
[quote]We are also seeking the best mattress (as opposed to anything else LOL!)
This MU site is the “bomb” of all sites I would only wish whatever the product or service could have something as informative / researchable as this!!
Hats off! to you Mr. Phenix as I have read for hours on many of your posts and I never knew so much went into a mattress purchase but so glad I have found the information to better help get the 3 -P’s right and Values. (I ran my existing mattress thru the criteria and it made me even more sore trying to sleep on it!!..information is powerful)[/quote]
Thanks for the kind words … I appreciate it 
[quote]Ok-on to my point- After studying this site we went for our 1st sampling and found the gentleman to be knowledgable at our local UM store here in Colorado.
Being older, major back problems & active, I always thought firm was what I needed and went for a memory foam many years ago and while traveling recently I stayed in a Boutique Hotel and got a fantastic nights sleep and it made me start thinking…
So armed with the information we looked up what we had slept on in the Hotel and used as a starting point when we got to the store and he proceeded to show us lines that had a similar feel or better and began to work our way up thru the construction differences and all were in the "plush mix btw.
(After reading I would agree we are seeking something that does the supportive measure followed by the big parts kept in-alignment.)[/quote]
There is also more about primary or “deep” support and secondary or “surface” support and their relationship to firmness and pressure relief and the “roles” of different layers in a mattress in post #2 here and in post #4 here that may also be helpful in clarifying the difference between “support” and “pressure relief” and “feel” that but this may also be more than you really need to know because the most reliable way to know whether a mattress has good primary support, secondary support, and pressure relief in all your sleeping positions is based on careful testing (hopefully using the testing guidelines that are linked in step 4 of the tutorial).
Many consumers believe that “firmer is better” or somehow more “supportive” but if this was the case then everyone would be sleeping on the floor and of course a flat floor doesn’t contour to the shape of your body very well and provides very poor support for the recessed parts of your body profile which would only have air underneath them.
[quote]We so far have narrowed our search (Full, we could fit on a Twin which is another problem for matresses when sleeping like spoons) to a Dunlopillo Ambiance and a Prana Super Vinyasa,
I do not plan to turn this into a mattress hunt for months, more like this week so I was curious as to others /Brands I should consider as I’m totally new in this…and/or thoughts on our choices so far…
I can copy the specifications into this if you prefer for future references.
Sincerely,[/quote]
You can read a little more about the Dunlopillo Ambiance in this topic and I would be cautious with any mattress that has more than “about an inch or so” of lower quality and less durable materials or “unknown quality/density” materials in the upper layers of the mattress. A forum search on “Ambiance” will also bring up more comments and feedback about it as well.
You can see some comments about the Prana mattresses in general and the Super Vinyasa in particular in post #4 here and the posts it links to. While there are no lower quality or less durable materials in the design since they introduced version 5 of the Prana mattresses … they still have about 3" of polyfoam in the top layers so you are sleeping more on polyfoam than on latex.
When you are considering a mattress in a higher budget range such as the Prana I would make some careful “value” comparisons with other latex mattresses that are in lower budget ranges. In some cases a mattress in this budget range may be “worth it” for a particular person that isn’t price sensitive and that has specific criteria that aren’t available in lower budget ranges but this would be unusual and in general I would need a very compelling reason that clearly indicated there was “enough” of a difference in “real life” compared to many other mattresses that may be just as suitable in terms of PPP, just as durable, and that are in lower budget ranges to justify the higher cost based on all the parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you.
Phoenix
Thank you very much for the reply Mr. Phoenix!
Spent another afternoon applying more info and criteria picked up from your comments…
I think what is going on for us right now is this;
When I settle into a Plush" top regardless of what the initial comfort layers are it feels great with what seems to be all the body parts getting in contact with something prior to it coming to rest with the core layers and the pressure points have been clouded…but sure feels good…LOL…
I figured this out when I crawled onto a Vi-Spring Coronet …(yes I can appreciate the Art of it’s making and was purposely trying to avoid getting on one to keep my focus)
This is where I determined that the initial plush top plays a huge role…The Vi-Spring appears to be a incredible mattress and one I would enjoy but without that soaking into it…clearly puts it at a dissadvantage regardless…If one could marry the 2 or even the initial feel on the Dunlopillo Retreat I think it would have been perfect…
I sincerely hope this make some sense and is not a put confusion into the mattress preference process or what to look for as it is not my intention at all…
Just trying to wade thru it all and give more detail to my experience for you and others…so sorry if I blew and great if it makes sense!
Sincerely,
Clay
FYI…I would much rather buy Automobiles than a Mattress! This is #!_*%() ! difficult!
Thanks again!
Hi cdisracerx,
[quote]I sincerely hope this make some sense and is not a put confusion into the mattress preference process or what to look for as it is not my intention at all…
Just trying to wade thru it all and give more detail to my experience for you and others…so sorry if I blew and great if it makes sense![/quote]
It certainly makes sense to me
Choosing a mattress that is “best for you” really comes down to 3 separate but connected factors.
The first is PPP which is all the things that you will “feel” when you sleep on the mattress either when you first lie on it or when you wake up in the morning. This is why it’s so important to test a mattress very carefully so that your testing does a good job of predicting how well you will sleep on the mattress because a mattress that would be “perfect” for one person or that has a “feel” that they strongly prefer over the other mattresses that they have tested may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on or it may not match the type of “feel” that other people would prefer at all.
The second is the things that you can’t feel that are connected to the durability and useful life of the mattress. This is all about how long you will sleep well before the materials begin to soften or break down and you lose the comfort and support that was the reason you bought it in the first place. This is why it’s also important to make sure you know the quality and durability of all the materials inside the mattress because this is the only way to identify any lower quality and less durable materials that can soften or break down prematurely and could be a “weak link” in the mattress because you can’t “feel” the quality or durability of the materials inside it.
The third is all the “other stuff” that can affect the “relative value” of a mattress compared to the other mattresses you are considering which includes the price of course along with the options you have available after a purchase just in case your testing didn’t do as good a job at predicting how well you would sleep on the mattress as you hoped for.
Phoenix
Mr. PhoenixI,
We sincerely appreciate the response !
I’ve noticed this in a thread and wondered if there is a prediction for this as this is how we have killed prior mattresses
+++ Roll together" for those who sleep close together in the center of a mattress…
I’m 200 and the wife is 100 and we literally sleep spooned or she is under my shoulder…LOL
…have I reached the TMI yet…? …This has been the case for the past 26 years too. and 4 mattresses later!
I’m confused a bit on the Prana as I have been told the v5 is not on floors yet…so worth the wait?
It was my fav today among them I tried…but you are absolute in you cannot feel durability and the wear characteristics or peer into the future…These are projected with the specifications and materials used.
The latter being the part where knowledge is POWERFUL…I’m trying to get there!
Sincerely,
CD
Hi cdisracerx,
[quote]+++ Roll together" for those who sleep close together in the center of a mattress…
I’m 200 and the wife is 100 and we literally sleep spooned or she is under my shoulder…LOL
…have I reached the TMI yet…? …This has been the case for the past 26 years too. and 4 mattresses later![/quote]
Roll together (and any “roll off” on the edge of a mattress) is a function of the softness/firmness of the support layers along with the thickness and softness of the comfort layers relative to the weight and weight differential of a couple on a mattress. It’s something you can “feel” so it’s part of PPP that you can test for. I would always make sure that if a mattress is for a couple that you test the mattress together both for roll together and for motion isolation.
The version 5 is already available (you can see here that Jordans Furniture carries them for example) but they may not be available at Urban Mattress yet. While it would likely “feeL” the same as version 4 … I certainly wouldn’t purchase the version 4 because of the lower quality/density polyfoam it uses in the top layers.
Whether waiting is “worth it” or not is something that only you can decide but I would be very cautious about buying a mattress in this budget range when there are other mattresses that use the same or similar materials that are available either locally or online that are in much lower budget ranges that may be just as suitable, just as durable, and may be better “value” based on all the criteria that are most important to you. As I mentioned in an earlier reply I would need a “compelling reason” to consider it.
[quote]It was my fav today among them I tried…but you are absolute in you cannot feel durability and the wear characteristics or peer into the future…These are projected with the specifications and materials used.
The latter being the part where knowledge is POWERFUL…I’m trying to get there![/quote]
Yes … the only way to compare the durability and useful life of a mattress relative to other mattresses is by knowing the type and quality/density of all the materials inside them because both lower quality and higher quality materials come in a wide range of firmness levels that can feel very similar or the same … at least until the lower quality materials begin to soften or break down.
Phoenix
Thanks again! Mr. Phoenix,
Where i am lost is I don’t know the other better value Brands to consider but can try to continue researching to figure out the “WHO” and who might carry them in the interim…
If there is a link of price points by materials or rankings of brands by organic etc it would be much appreciated.
However like i mentioned I do not want to turn this into a new hobby for me for the next couple of months…LOL!!
I just want to get some …ZZZZZZZZZ…
You have been as well as many others extremely helpful!
Sincerely,
CD
Hi cdisracerx,
I switched your posts and my replies to a new topic of your own since it was starting to “take over” another member’s topic.
Brand shopping can be among the most risky ways to choose a mattress because you are buying a specific mattress not the brand and all manufacturers have access to the same or similar components and materials. Most of the more heavily advertised and most commonly available brands that you would recognize are the ones I would avoid anyway (see the guidelines here) and many of the better manufacturers are smaller and are only available locally or regionally. The name of the manufacturer on the label also won’t tell you anything about whether a specific mattress is suitable for you in terms of PPP or whether there are any lower quality materials or weak links in the design. There is more about the risks of brand shopping in post #5 here and post #12 here).
I also don’t have a “top 5” or a “top 10” or even a “top 100” in terms of manufacturers (see post #2 here) because it would be meaningless when it comes to choosing a specific mattress.
The “value” of a mattress purchase is also relative to how it compares to the other specific mattresses or “finalists” you are considering (in the same size of course and based on “mattress only” to “mattress only” comparisons) or that are available to you either locally or online and there isn’t a “formula” you can use to assess the value of a mattress because it depends on each person’s criteria which can be different from person to person. There is more about the most important parts of the “value” of a mattress in post #13 here that can help you make more meaningful comparisons between mattresses based on all the parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you.
Your best chance of success is following all the steps in the mattress shopping tutorial one step at a time which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines you will need to make the most suitable, the most durable, and the best value choice … and know how and why to avoid the worst ones.
In many cases one of the best shortcuts is the knowledge, experience, and transparency of the retailer or manufacturer you are dealing with because they will already know what you would otherwise need to learn and who you deal with can be one of the most important parts of a successful mattress purchase.
If you let me know your city or zip code in Colorado I’d be happy to let you know about the better options or possibilities I’m aware of in your area.
Phoenix
Sorry to infringe on another.
.Yes I get the risks of shopping for Brands…Also a deal is strictly a “state of mind”…the more educated in your passion the more satisfaction is gained as I would expect you see a lot of based on the amount of help and assistance you offer.
We are in Ft Collins CO 80521 but willing to travel bit if needed I’m in Denver regularly and the surrounding areas if that is beneficial.
Sincere Thanks for your help!
CD
Hi cdisracerx,
The better options or possibilities I’m aware of in the Fort Collins area (subject to the quality/value guidelines here) are listed in post #4 here and the Denver list (with some duplication) is in post #2 here.
Phoenix