My wife and I went to sleepy’s this weekend to try laying on a bunch of mattresses. I went armed with alot of knowledge from this site. My wfie and I found 2 mattresses that we both liked. Serta Perfect Day iSeries Flattery Firm, and the TempurPedic Weightless with Float Foam mattress.
Herein lies our dilema. The woman helping us at the store could not provide us with any specific information on the layers or the foams used in any of the mattresses in the store. I was able to figure out that its a “hybrid” with a pocketed spring core with some unknown layer of memory foam over top. So this gives me 2 questions.
How can I go about finding what foam types and densities are used in a mattress?
Is a true latex foam mattress similar in feel to the TempurPedic Weightless with float foam?
This may seem odd, but based on all that I have read on this forum. I may buy a full latex mattress sight-unseen with a good return policy just to try one out.
The first thing I would suggest is post #1 here which will provide you with the information, steps, and guidelines that can help you make the best possible choices.
Perhaps even more importantly it will help you avoid wasting a lot of time at chain stores or testing major brands for the very reasons you mentioned. At least you would be able to use your experience with the Tempurpedics when you talk with some manufacturers as a guideline or “model” for a memory foam purchase (either locally or online) because many memory foam manufacturers will have a fairly good idea of how well their memory foam mattresses approximate the Tempurpedic lineup in terms of “feel”, quality, or design (or in some cases all three). Most of your testing in chain stores will end up causing more frustration and wasted time than anything else though because the major brand mattresses they carry are not great quality or value and they won’t provide the specs that will allow you to make any kind of meaningful comparisons with other mattresses.
As you can see in the first post I linked … in most cases you can’t because the major manufacturers don’t want consumers to make any kind of meaningful quality or value comparisons. To find this type of information you have to first research better manufacturers or retailers in your area who are willing and able to disclose this information so you can know what you are testing. Who you deal with can be just as important a part of mattress shopping as the mattresses you look at.
No … they would be quite different for most people. The Tempurpedic uses memory foam in the top layer which is a slow response material while latex is a fast response and much more resilient material with a very different feel and performance. You can read more about memory foam here and about latex here.
Almost every area of the country has some latex mattresses that you can test and I would strongly encourage you to at least test a few before buying. If you let me know your city or zip I’d be happy to let you know of any options in your area I’m aware of.