My wife and I need a mattress as soon as possible and have been shopping around for a while. We like very firm mattresses (our best sleep in recent years has been on an older Simmons Beautyrest extra firm innerspring in a relative’s guest room). It seems that memory foam is more the way to go these days so we went around and tested some at the local Healthy Back store. We also tried some latex beds at the local Savvy Rest location. We did not like the latex mattresses (especially the bouncyness).
Our main requirements are:
motion isolation (my wife moves a lot and I’m a light sleeper)
firmness
not hot
durability (otherwise we might as well go for the extra firm innerspring mattress we know we like)
budget at $1000 maximum - hopefully more in the $600 or $700 range if possible (I know this is low)
Among the limited number of mattresses we have tried that we liked was a Simmons Beautyrest firm/extra firm innerspring at a typical mattress store (similar to the mattress I mentioned above that we liked) and the Tempurpedic Rhapsody. The Rhapsody seemed to be firm enough for us, but of course it is quite expensive (north of $3000).
A good friend has a Bed In A Box (PacDown model from ~5 years ago) which my wife slept on one night and thought felt good in that brief experience.
Again, it seems that memory foam is the way to go these days for comfort and durability. We do not like the heat we’ve experienced from cheap memory foam mattress toppers, but I understand that may not be an issue with nicer memory foam in a full mattress. We do tend to sleep on our sides, which it seems the memory foam would help with (conforming to our bodies’ pressure points).
I’m usually great at “geeking out” while researching purchase items, but the complexity of mattress shopping has just about beaten me and I’m about to go ahead and just purchase the Bed In A Box PacBamboo (because of the bamboo cover which apparently keeps the memory foam heat at a lesser level.
Can anyone recommend a mattress for us that is affordable? It seems that Bed In A Box is not recommended around here, but it is pretty affordable. If a recommended mattress could be bought on Amazon that would be a plus.
I don’t believe that anyone … no matter what their degree or knowledge and experience … can recommend a specific mattress for anyone else … especially with the very limited information you have provided. I would strongly encourage you to begin the research process all over again and “reset” from the beginning.
The first place to begin is post #1 here and the information it links to which will help you avoid most of the worst choices and focus on the better ones. More importantly … it will also help you understand WHY they are better choices and why your own personal experience and your own unique body type, sleeping positions, and preferences play such an important role in choosing the most suitable and “best” mattress for you. A couple of hours of reading before you go any further in your search will help you greatly IMO … before you make a decision for all the wrong reasons.
So, based on the two mattresses I mentioned, there aren’t comparable mattresses out there that would be better for the money? Or do you just not have experience with those mattresses? Even a general recommendation for an affordable, extra firm memory foam bed would be appreciated. If Bed in a Box is the best <$1000 memory foam mattress, then that would be helpful information too.
The advertising hype certainly suggests this, and we believed it too at first. You mention you don’t want to sleep hot, and memory foam definitely sleeps warmer than other materials, everything else being equal. This is why you see all the “cool gel” types of memory foam out there now. It’s a recognized problem. I can only second Phoenix’s suggestion that you start again at the beginning, and read all the information linked. As you said, mattresses are “complicated” and it’s all-too-easy to make a bad decision. Once you learn some of the basics it will change the way you think about and shop for a mattress and you’ll have a better chance of making a good choice. Good luck!
I think that the quality of your sleep has a bigger effect on your overall health and well being than almost anything else and since your mattress plays such an important role in this (even though it may not always be obvious and its effects are cumulative and incremental) it can be one of the most important purchases you make in the next decade or so. IMO … it’s well worth doing right.
I also think that it’s important to ask “why” you believe what you do about memory foam (or any other material of style of mattress for that matter) and whether it’s just about marketing, facts, or based on your own personal experience. The marketing of mattresses and the misleading and inaccurate information that it usually includes is one of the biggest reasons so many people are making such poor mattress choices. A recent study even clearly indicates that most people’s choice of mattress and the methods they use to choose it is worse than if they used random chance as their main criteria.
I’m not sure which two mattresses you mean (you mentioned several including a Simmons “extra firm” … model or layering unknown … Tempurpedic Rhapsody, and the Bedinabox Pacdown) and it would depend on whether you were comparing the feel and performance of a mattress and how it felt to you or the quality of the materials. I certainly wouldn’t want to match the quality of the memory foam of the Bedinabox or the quality of the materials in the Simmons. There are really only three ways to “match” a mattress in terms of feel and performance (see post #3 here) and most of these would not be possible in your case except perhaps with the Rhapsody. Every person can have a different definition of firm and soft as well and your body type, sleeping positions, perceptions, and preferences play as big a role as the mattress itself. My personal experience (or anyone else’s as well) with any mattress and how it felt could be and likely would be very different from your own.
This is not actually not accurate. Comfort is subjective and means different things to different people (for most people it’s mainly about the pressure relief of a mattress) and memory foam is certainly not the most durable mattress material (although higher density memory foam is quite durable and better than lower quality materials). Each person may have very different needs and preferences. No matter how a mattress feels or performs initially in terms of comfort and support … the quality of the materials will determine how long the comfort and support will last and the loss of comfort and support from softening or other changes in lower quality materials is not covered by any warranty. You can’t “feel” the quality of the materials in a mattress and you can only know them if you know the details of every layer in a mattress.
If you do decide to take the additional risk of an online purchase vs a local purchase … then some of the better memory foam options I’m aware of are listed in post #12 here.
The knowledge and experience of who you buy from and their ability to help you make good choices that are suitable for your body type, sleeping style, and preferences can be just as important as what you would buy based on marketing or any other information that is only partly true at best.