Hey Phoenix, thanks as always for a detailed reply. I’ve decided that I might try a DIY route if I can find a suitable, good quality soft-thick mattress ticking, which I’ll explain in a minute.
I tried out some latex mattresses today at a local Savvy Rest. There are four different feelings I get from my too-firm-base mattress right now; pressure on my lower back when trying to back-sleep; a crushing feeling on my shoulder, upward twisting of my lower back, and more pressure on my hip during side-sleeping.
I experienced none of these on an unzoned three-layer soft tal/medium dun/medium dun (I don’t know the ILDs for these, sadly) from top to bottom, with a thickly wool-stuffed organic cotton ticking. The mattress seems absolutely phenomenal- Everything organic/Oeko, was customizable on both sides of the bed for two sleepers (not that this is a huge issue at the moment), and allowed 90-day tryouts during which latex layers could be freely swapped… And it was all exorbitantly expensive, as might be expected. Coming in at over $3200 retail, it was pretty well outside my budget.
With that in mind, do I have any options similar to this at about a grand and a half lower? Apart from trying to cobble together a mattress from parts that don’t necessarily match what I just tried and that may not sleep or hold together the way I expect, have I got any good alternatives that top out at 2K?
Spindle seems like it might be a good option, but I’m afraid I might get shot in the foot by zoning and rigid setup schemes - The softest they have is soft/medium/firm, and I noticed problems on the same setup at SR. I’m also rather short; zoning sounds like it would have to be negligible in the bed’s feel or be specifically tailored for a specific person’s size and sleeping spot/position to be useful and comfortable.
This leads me to give DIY a more serious thought. Having been shown the showroom mattresses, with their swappable layers, they seemed to be quite similar to the DIY setup I had in mind, which was just to throw some latex slabs in an encasement (though now I know why an honest-to-god ticking would be much more appropriate) and call it a day. The problem is returns if I don’t like it.
Two questions…
How do I know whether or not I’ll be getting enough support, even when I have enough pressure relief;
and do you have any strong opinions about what direction you’d go with this?
Thanks again - GMS. Hope my experience will be able to help someone make this decision faster down the road.
EDIT: I just checked your list in post #3 here and found a bed with apparently an identical loadout to SR at 2K from SleepingOrganic. Not bad, but am I losing something for paying less? Could I do better still?