Before buying my mattress, I read extensively on this forum and learned quite a bit. So I thought I would share my mattress buying experience with others.
The first thing I realized was that I did not want a DIY mattress. I understand the value proposition, but for a variety of reasons, it’s not for me. I wanted to be able to test the exact mattress before buying; I try to shop at local merchants wherever possible and the idea of possible layer returns was not appealing to me personally and a non-starter for my husband.
We are in the NYC suburbs. Our first stop was The Clean Bedroom. Besides very high prices, their mattresses are almost all Dunlop latex, and we found by testing the one Talalay mattress in the store that we far preferred Talalay. Next stop was Scott Jordan in the city to look at Berkeley Ergonomics. The sales person was extremely helpful there and the mattresses seemed of high quality. They were also running a sale, which was appealing. But we preferred the all latex to the latex/innerspring combo and basically the selection was limited (you could choose either “soft” or “firm”), so we continued to look.
We then went to Healthy Choice. They had a great selection, offering choices with one, two or three layers in different combinations. The sales person was helpful and not at all pushy. They were offering a pretty good sale at the time, and they agreed to extend the sale price to us for several weeks after so as not to rush our decision. My husband and I both fell in love with the “Violet,” which has a firm bottom layer, then a softer one, topped by a medium. It seemed a unique combination-- I’m sure it could be replicated in a DYI fashion, but with the sale price we felt like we were getting a decent value for a good quality mattress that we had experienced in person. And since it was manufactured by Restopedic in Connecticut about an hour from us, it was about as close to locally sourced as one could get. Their mattresses are made to order, but arrived in about 2-1/2 weeks, so the wait wasn’t excruciating (though we were quite excited to get it). So far, we are really happy. It’s so comfortable, and the buying experience was pleasant.
