I went to Atlas mattress this morning. It was staffed by a hispanic couple who seemed eager to please. However, they spoke very little English, so the language barrier was a problem, as I don’t speak Spanish. Simple questions such as “is this firm or medium latex” got answers like “yes latex”. At one point I asked for the name of a quilting pattern I liked, and the response was that the man brought out several more quilted tops of different patterns for me to look at. Very confusing. Never did find out the name of the quilting pattern I liked. So I wouldn’t recommend you go there unless you speak Spanish, or bring a translator.
They had 2 latex models and both were pretty odd configurations. I knew the stats on the latex layers because the representative I talked to at the Orlando Mattress Company line had researched them for me (I had actually thought they were going to be individual layers in a thin casing just for testing - not so). The first was 6" of 36 ILD Talalay latex on top of 2" of some sort of soft polyfoam with 2" of memory foam on the very bottom. I can only assume that mattress was upside down for some reason. The other had 2" of 22 ILD Talalay latex on top of 2"of memory foam, then 2" of some other foam, then about 4" of a support foam. Not a clue why you’d put memory foam between the core and the latex topper. Both of these had the foam layers glued together, but the mattress was not fully constructed, a quilted topper just layed on top so you can change out the quilted top to try different ones. As I was interested in a soft over firm/medium latex model, this really wasn’t useful in terms of testing.
However, they do custom build, and it seems they have a fixed price and will build pretty much anything you want for that one price. I asked if they would put the 2"of 22ILD latex over the 6" 36ILD latex core. They said yes, and that also they could make it double sided so that there was 2" of the 22ILD latex on each side and with any quilted top I wanted. When I asked about price they said that it was $1200 for a King sized, and there was no price difference between the single sided and double sided. That strikes me as very odd, but certainly it is a very low price. So if you are bargain hunting you might want to consider them.
The other thing that was noteworthy is that the place was not air conditioned! Now that may not be a big deal most places, but this is FL. It is 98 degrees here today, and for the past month or so our heat index has been in the 110 to 120 range. So definetely would not recommend going there in the summer, especially if you are looking at memory foam. This also begs the question - if the warehouse & factory is not temperature controlled, wouldn’t the stock of foam they are using to build mattresses be taking heat damage? What happens to latex if it gets very hot and is exposed to high temps for a long time?
So all in all, I may consider asking the Orlando Mattress Company salesperson (whose English was good) if they would sell the latex layers individually if I want to assemble my own to be sure it contained what I wanted. Otherwise, I’d worry that the communication difficulty would result in me getting a mattress I was not confident matched the specs I ordered.
Hopefully that’s helpful to anyone else considering visiting. If you go, go in winter, and bring a Spanish speaker.
