Hi dfisher,
[quote]Queen PLB Best World’s Best Bed - $1,600
Queen PLB Nutrition - $1,500
Original option I was looking at: Queen PLB Beautiful - $2,100 and the mattress is fairly dirty at the bottom and has been on the floor almost 2 years. Mattress cover and old mattress takeaway are extra–roughly $200 for both.
The dealer is willing to let me exchange the world’s best bed for the nutrition within 30 days, or as long as they have one in stock (currently they have 5), should I find it too soft. This is a verbal agreement–nothing in writing. He said that he would monitor inventory and let me know if stock was getting low, should I I want to switch to the nutrition.[/quote]
These certainly sound like reasonable options to me if you are comfortable with the lack of warranty and the options you would have after a purchase to exchange the mattress.
[quote]If I go with the very plush world’s best bed, my reading suggests that I should anticipate, perhaps, an achy back for the first week or two as my back adjusts to the new bed. Is this correct?
My wife was not with me when checking out he world’s best bed, but when I asked the salesperson, he said that while I was lying on my side on the world’s best bed that my spine appeared to be level. No question that my hip dipped into the mattress more than my current bed.
I spent a good 30 minutes on the bed. Very comfortable while lying down and moving about in the bed, but when I stood up, my lower back felt a bit off for a few minutes. Is this a sign of the mattress being too soft for me or, as I wrote above, is this normal as the back becomes accustomed to the softer mattress surface?[/quote]
Unfortunately only you can feel what you feel on a mattress and there is no way for someone else answer this more effectively than your own personal testing and experience. The Beautiful is certainly a soft mattress and I would always be cautious when you are choosing a mattress that is in a much softer range because it’s much more difficult to “fix” a mattress that is too soft than it is to soften up a mattress that is too firm but some people would do very well with it and don’t experience any “symptoms” at all when they first sleep on it and it’s a “match made in heaven” right from the first day. Others may find that they experience some initial symptoms during the initial break in and adjustment period that diminish and go away over the first few weeks and others yet may find that they experience some symptoms either initially or in the first few days or weeks that become worse over time and discover that the mattress they chose isn’t suitable for them and need to return or exchange the mattress.
Your own careful and objective testing that as much as possible approximates your own sleeping experience (including testing with a sleeping partner which can affect how you feel on a mattress), your own knowledge of how sensitive you are to smaller differences between mattresses and where you are in the “princess and the pea” or the “I can sleep on anything” range, and your own “best judgement” about whether a mattress is suitable for you is really the most effective way to predict whether a mattress will work well for you and and for most people this would be “close enough” but there is really no way for someone else to know better than you which group you are likely to be in.
It would certainly be “normal” that you could feel a bit “off” or have some type of discomfort after testing a mattress that is different from what you are used to sleeping on but your own knowledge of your own history and these types of sensations or “symptoms” generally mean for you would be more reliable than anyone else’s thoughts and opinions. It would certainly make me somewhat cautious.
[quote]If I were to go with the Nutrition, I would want to get a 2" topper. as the nutrition is only marginally less firm that my current mattress/pad combination. The topper is not cheap ($400 on Amazon–the dealer does not have any and will not be ordering any more PLB products).
Should I consider a different topper manufacturer or stay with a PLB topper?[/quote]
There would be no specific reason to choose a PLB topper when there are many other similar toppers available to you at lower prices and that have more options available in terms of thickness and ILD. If you did go in this direction I would sleep on the mattress for a few weeks first (if possible) and then use your actual sleeping experience as a reference point for choosing a topper based on the information in post #2 here and the topper guidelines it links to (which also includes the better online sources for toppers I’m aware of).
Phoenix