hello, i stumbled across your site today and am hoping you might be able to help me in my quest for a new mattress. my husband and i are looking to buy a new king mattress. we went to two retail stores today and like the dr. buers latex (appx $2300), the icomfort ($2500) and the phenom ($2500). i think we are leaning toward a latex mattress b/c we are hot sleepers but my concern in that we are going to wind up paying way more than we need to and get less than we expect. after reading the info on your site about purchasing from national chains i have much reservations but cannot find an alternative near me.
we are both primarily side sleepers, my husband is 6’4" 230 lbs and i am 5’6" 150 lbs, we like a soft feel but want something with support as well b/c we find ourselves tossing and turning to relieve pressure in shoulders and hips.
any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated
I’m assuming that at least one of the stores you went to was Sleepys since they carry all these mattresses.
The Dr Breus IMO is a gimmick. While they are “promoted” as being a latex mattress, they are only partly latex at best (in the higher models) and in the lower models only have a small percentage of latex. They are way overpriced and are a classic example of several questionable marketing practices. One of these is using a “famous name endorsement” to sell a mattress at prices much more than the materials would justify and secondly is the “story” of sleeping cool when the materials that are used to accomplish this so called “unique” quality are widely available (Celsion latex and a ticking made of a “cool” fabric such as coolmax or outlast). A quick look at the law tag will confirm that they are nowhere near what could reasonably be called a latex mattress (and the law tag lists the latex by weight not by thickness and since latex is much “heavier” than other foams, the law tag would be overstating the latex in terms of it’s thickness).
The iComfort is also poor value IMO as better quality memory foam mattresses are widely available for a lower cost and the “gel beads” are IMO another gimmick used to justify a higher price. There is a fairly long thread about this mattress in the forum here which goes into more detail.
Finally the Phenom at least uses good quality memory foam however I believe it too is way overpriced. The foamex Aerus memory foam it uses (what they call NXG foam) is IMO the most breathable of all the memory foams and the advanced NXG version which is 5.5 lbs is certainly high quality. The regular NXG is only 3.5 lbs and would not be nearly as durable. All in all … there are memory foam mattresses which use the same Aerus memory foam and have a similar high quality (HD) polyfoam base for much less.
The “best” mattresses that sleepys offers IMO are the pure latex bliss mattresses which are all latex (except a 1" base layer at the bottom which they use for ease of handling) and are available in a wide variety of different layering schemes both with and without the 2" or 3" latex topper. If you can find a version of this mattress that “works” for you then it would not be difficult to duplicate a similar mattress from a DIY manufacturer such as several of the members here using the same materials at a much lower cost.
The only local manufacturer that I know of near you makes several mattresses with Talalay latex comfort layers (with 1/2" - 1" of polyfoam over the latex) and uses a polyfoam support core. Thy are http://www.ashleyfurniturehomestore.com/storelocator/storelist.aspx?countrycode=USA&country=United%20States&zip=21015 . This would give you a good idea of the feel of latex comfort layers in several thicknesses. I have the specs for these mattresses if the store does not know them so they would be easy to “duplicate”.
While this field testing will help you narrow down the type of layering that works best for you, I would not buy from these outlets because the same or functionally similar layering is available from DIY manufacturers such as those that are members of this site at a lower cost.