I am looking to purchase a new mattress. Ive always used medium firm memory foam mattress. I really like the Tempur-pefic Contour line (Elite). I have seen so many online DTC mattress companies that have good reviews, but naturally, I’m a skeptic. I was wondering if anyone can guide me in the right direction. Which of all the DTC mattress companies is closest to the feel of the Tempurpedic Contour line. Im worried that these cheaper online options will break down much faster.
The mattress shopping tutorial (which is where I would start your research) includes this link to a list of some of the better online memory foam providers that I’m aware of. Most of them are very familiar with the various Tempurpedic mattresses and would be able to tell you which of their mattresses are closest to a particular model in the Tempurpedic lineup and some of them sell a mattress that is specifically designed and listed on their sites as being closely comparable to the Contour Elite. Post #9 here and the posts it links to also has more about the different ways that one mattress can “match” another one which you can use as a reference in your conversations with them.
There are several ways to “duplicate” the feel and performance of another mattress.
The first of these is by equivalence which is possible if a manufacturer with enough experience and knowledge designs and builds a mattress that is reasonably close to the softness and support of another mattress that is known to them and this is confirmed with their own personal testing (and preferably the testing of a larger group of people like their customers as well). These may not have the exact same layering or even quality of materials (there are many ways to achieve the equivalent performance and/or feel in a mattress that has a different overall design) but they would be made in a way that they would be very similar in the experience of most people in terms of softness and support levels. Of course, this depends on a retailer or manufacturer being familiar enough with another mattress you were trying to match that they could give you a meaningful comparison that would be accurate in most cases. Most manufacturers would only do this with mattresses that are widely available and popular enough to justify the time, effort, and even risk involved to compare their mattresses to another manufacturer and take the risk that their comparison wasn’t accurate enough and many of their customers didn’t agree with their comparison (which could lead to returns with customers that were using their comparison as their primary guideline)
The second is by feel which is a more subjective comparison and can be tested with side to side testing in real time. This needs to be very close together without any other mattresses “in between” because our subjective memories are not very long lasting. We have all for example experienced testing half a dozen mattresses in a store and not remembering exactly what the first one felt like or realizing that the “feel” of it seemed to change as we tested other mattresses which became new reference points. This also won’t tell you how they may compare a year down the road because lower quality materials can have a similar “showroom feel” to higher quality materials and lower density/quality will soften and degrade faster than higher quality materials. Feel is the most subjective of all the ways to match a mattress and is the result of how all the materials and components in the mattress interact together with each person and their individual perceptions.
Third is by quality of materials. This means that both mattresses use the same quality of materials and would have similar durability but the feel or the softness and support may be different. The quality/density of the foams is the most important part of durability but it has little to do with how a mattress feels. While Tempurpedic has stopped publicly sharing the specifications of their mattresses for a few years now, you can visit the Jordan’s Furniture site and they still list the specifications of the Tempurpedic mattresses that they offer.
Finally a mattress can match by design. This means that the type and quality of materials and the layering are all the same and in effect you are duplicating every layer and component in the mattress in terms of quality of materials and layering with foams made by a different manufacturer. Foams that may seem similar in some of their specs may have different properties in other ways or different firmness levels so this may not lead to a mattress that “feels” the same or has the same softness and support. For example, two different memory foams of the same density may have very different temperature sensitivities, response rates and recovery times, firmness/softness levels and other properties that would create a different feel and performance between two seemingly very similar mattresses. You would need to know not only the density and thickness of each layer but would also need to know the firmness level and other properties of the foam and how they matched to the foam you were using to “duplicate” it.
So different mattresses may approximate another one (they will not likely be identical) in one or more ways … feel, material quality, and design.
I know you were asking about DTC mattresses, but if you wish to search locally to see if there is anything available that you might like, subject to first confirming that any retailer or manufacturer on the list that you wish to visit is completely transparent ( see this article ) and to making sure that any mattress you are considering meets the quality/value guidelines here … there is a list of some other retailers in the Chicago area here .
