Hi marie,
Over half the battle when you are shopping for a mattress is knowing which outlets to exclude and which to include before you start looking at mattresses themselves. The better outlets are generally factory direct outlets and local sleep shops that sell local or smaller alternative brands. You will usually find much better quality and value mattresses in these types of outlets in every price range and with every type of material. They also have higher levels of knowledge, experience, and service and are more focused on helping you find a mattress that will “fit” your long term needs and preferences more than they use marketing and sales techniques that do more for their profit margins or commissions than they do for you. This article will give you some guidelines that will help you avoid most of the worst choices when you are mattress shopping and focus on the better ones.
Post #2 and 4 here includes some of the better choices in the Chicago area. In particular I would recommend Quality sleep / My Green Mattress. As you know they are a member here and like all the members were invited because I consider them to be among the best of the best in the country in terms of quality, service and value.
As you may also know from reading the site … chain stores that carry mostly major brands are among the worst places to shop (although they are also the places where most people buy because they are more heavily advertised and visible) and mattresses like iComfort and iSeries use lower quality materials and sell for much higher prices. you can see some of the comments about some of the iComfort models in post #11 here but the poor value would extend through the entire lineup. Tempurpedic uses higher quality memory foam and polyfoam (except in the new Simplicity line which uses one of the lowest quality/density memory foam available anywhere at 2.5 lbs) but there are many other manufacturers that use the same quality memory foam and polyfoam that sell for much less.
Many years ago they were the only truly high quality memory foam mattresses available and this built their name and reputation so that people would buy on brand alone. The perception that they are still the highest quality memory foam mattresses has been continuously promoted in their advertising even though this has not been the case for many years but because there is so little quality information available to consumers that can help them make meaningful comparisons … they will often take the “safe” choice and pay significantly higher prices for these mattresses because they don’t know how to make meaningful comparisons with other alternatives and it can be very frustrating to “wade through” all the competing marketing stories and advertising copy to know what is fiction and what is true. There are also many manufacturers who sell lower quality memory foam mattresses that unfairly compare themselves to Tempurpedic even though they use low quality materials and these are not “apples to apples” comparisons but if an “apples to apples” comparison is made between similar foam quality, density, and layering … then it is easy to see that Tempurpedic is poor value in spite of it’s “mostly” high quality.
Scanning the overviews in the mattresses section of the site will give you the basic information you need to ask better questions and better understand the answers or be able to know the difference between those who are trying to “sell” you and those who are focused on “educating” you and really helping you to make your best choices.
Post #2 here also has some good information and includes a step by step process at the end that can help you find your “ideal” mattress in terms of quality and value as well as one that fits your short and long term needs and preferences.
Good luck in your search and feel free to post with any questions you may have along the way.
Phoenix