Latex firmness comparable to firm I Series?

My wife and I have decided to retire our 5 yr old King Koil to the guest room and get a new mattress for our use. The KK has actually been a great mattress especially at the price I was able to get it for from a national chain. This is making it very difficult for us to find one comparable in quality and price as it seems the same chain store is nowhere near as accommodating with pricing as they were when I bought the King Koil.

This has led me to going on full research mode and “alternative” option hunting. This site has been a very good source of knowledge and has reaffirmed my belief that the offerings at the big box stores, while some may be perfectly fine in terms of quality, are grossly overpriced.

Of those the one we liked the most was a Serta I Series Firm Pillow/Euro top but we are definitely not willing to go for the price they were asking for that. So we’re now thinking of taking a gamble on ordering one of the very well reviewed offerings from Brooklyn Bedding/Amazon Dreamfoam. I’m sure Chuck would be able to help as well but was wondering if anyone knew the firmness setting that would be equivalent to the Serta mentioned above. Also if there is a big difference between the BB standard 10inch offering and the 13inch eurotop other than the replaceable top layer.

We’re out on the island in NY if that makes any difference as well in terms of other recommendations.

Hi ryk,

Post #3 here talks more about the 3 ways that it may be possible to “match” one mattress to another and I don’t think that any of them would be really possible here. I would also keep in mind that firmness and softness itself can have different meanings to different people (see post #15 here about the different types of softness) .About the closest you could get would be for you to estimate how firm or soft the Serta iSeries pillowtop felt for you on your own personal “firmness scale” (from a hard floor to the softest you could imagine) and then talk with Chuck about which choice on their firmness scale may be similar. This would be a very subjective exercise and would depend on how similar your two scales were and on whether you were talking about the same type of softness but it would be as close as you could get. I would also bear in mind that the firmness/softness that you tested may not be the one that is best for your body type and sleeping position unless you tested specifically for PPP (Pressure relief, Posture and alignment, and Personal preferences) when you were in the store (see the links in post #1 here about testing mattresses for pressure relief and alignment). Besides just the overall “feel” of a mattress it also needs to “match” your body type for both comfort/pressure relief and support/alignment and for some peoople the Serta iSeries pillowtop could be a very risky choice in terms of alignment because it is the softest of the line.

Post #2 here talks about the main differences between them. For most people (but not all) they would “feel” very similar with the same comfort choice. In case you haven’t seen them they also have the new line they are launching on their site and the Camilla there also has a replaceable layer at a lower cost than the Eurotop on Amazon.

Some of the better options I’m aware of in the NYC area are listed in post #2 here and there is a more “categorized” list with more detailed descriptions for some of them in post #7 here.

Post #4 here also has a list or “possibilities” centered around Setauket in case any of these are close enough to you to be worth visiting.

Phoenix

Phoenix, thanks for the recos.
We took a trip to sleepworks in massapequa and was finally able to try out a couple of different latex offerings. First was a thermopedic with 3in talaly over 7in polycore, similar to the amazon dreamfoam. We also tried out a full latex from latex bliss I believe but that was well over our price range. Ended up getting the first hybrid model for 300 off their initial asking price with free delivery. Firmness was about 6 they said and according to them was the firmest offered by thermopedic.
Most important was the fact that the mattress felt great for my chronic lower back pain especially after pulling an all nighter putting flooring down in the den.
Actually the biggest win was convincing the wife that latex was the way to go. She had been stubborn about sticking to a coil mattress and the foam offerings in the chain stores was not enough to convince her otherwise. A few minutes into trying out the latex and she was sold.
The thermopedic ended up being just above the dreamfoam in price but we decided the local option was worth the small up charge. I wasn’t able to find much info about this brand/model so I’m just hoping it’s good quality and value.
The salesman did confirm that it was made in the US and had an organic cotton cover.
Any experience/comments with this brand? Thanks.

I made a mistake in the brand. It’s a therapedic not thermopedic.

Hi ryk,

Therapedic is a larger wholesale manufacturer (in the middle range of the top 15 manufacturers) that is manufactured through a group of licensee factories … some of which have been making mattresses for generations. When you have licensee groups like this (Restonic, Englander, and King Koil/Comfort Solutions are a couple of other larger examples) they will often make their mattresses differently in different areas of the country. Therapedic can be good quality and value in some cases (depending on the area and retailer) and in most areas of the country they make a latex/polyfoam hybrid similar to what you tried but of course the only way to know the quality/value of any mattress is to know the specifics of all the layers and materials in the mattress (type and blend of the latex and the density of any polyfoam and memory foam). The cover sounds like good quality. It’s always the materials that determine the quality and value of a mattress … not the brand.

I also agree with you that the lower risk of buying a mattress locally that you can actually test for PPP (Pressure relief, Posture and alignment, and Personal preferences) would justify a higher cost. I normally use something in the range of 20% - 25% to get to “comparable value” between an online choice and a local choice but each person may use a different number depending on their risk tolerance, their confidence in either choice, and the other objective, subjective, and intangible benefits that are part of any mattress purchase. Your testing certainly seems to indicate that this could be a good choice.

Phoenix