My father and I are moving in two weeks, and we need new beds for the both of us. Skip to the bolded section for the main points.
We’ve done some research on mattresses. I’ve read through every page listed on the Quick Find Menu on the non-Forum part of this website for preparation. I’ve also read the FAQs and DIY Mattresses Introductory Guide on r/Mattresses for notes on specific mattresses. All in all, it was a lot to take in, but the main takeaway I received was that in-person testing was key.
So, that’s what we did. We went to multiple mattress stores to test as many as possible. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t really tell what we liked most. The main problem is that we’ve been sleeping on awful mattresses for many years, so we could only really tell that every mattress we tried was a substantial improvement to what we’re already using. I sleep on an extremely soft mattress, and while I generally preferred the softest mattresses available at the stores (likely due to the combination of my relatively low weight and side sleeping preference), I don’t know what my ideal is because their softest didn’t even approach my current mattress. My father, on the other hand, sleeps on a firm 3 inch mattress that’s likely the equivalent of sleeping directly on the support layer of a more normal mattress. He gets no pressure relief from the mattress whatsoever. We have opposite problems, but the result remains the same: we both have such extreme mattresses that everything we tried feels great.
The other problem with the stores was just information overload, though of a different kind. I thought my preparations would have given me some knowledge, but I was left blindsided by a whole bunch of terms for proprietary jargon that I couldn’t make sense of at all. Instead of seeing three- or four-layer mattresses that I had seen recommended online, I saw mattresses with six layers or more. I believe I tried something with eleven layers at one point, and I had no idea how to make sense of anything. It didn’t help that they didn’t have any of the specs I expected like ILD, foam type, coil gauge, etc. In hindsight, I realize that’s the point for these companies, but at the time, I was just left completely lost. I still feel lost.
I’m now deferring to experts.
Here are my father’s preferences. He’s 5ft 8 and 185 lb, putting his BMI at 29. He’s primarily a side sleeper with occasional back sleeping and wants a Full-size bed. My father often wakes up sweating in the middle of the night, so he wants something cool. I believe that means pocket coils would be good for him and he should avoid memory foam. The mattresses we tried did mostly use memory foam, but they had this cooling layer on top (with proprietary names, of course) and the rooms were air-conditioned anyway, so it was hard to tell if he would be hot on a memory foam mattress. He wants something less firm than what he has right now, but we don’t know where that range is. He has low expectations for mattress durability because of planned obsolescence in most consumer products today, so anything lasting 5+ years is good enough.
Here are my preferences. I’m 5ft 9.5 and 130 lb, putting my BMI at 19. I use a body pillow to give my legs some support, and like my father, I primarily sleep on my side, but unlike him, I spend a lot of time reading on my back on my bed. Thus, I’d like something that works for both back sleeping and side sleeping with no preference between the two. I prefer a Twin XL/Twin Long bed for the extra leg room, and I’ve noticed that size is less popular and have had more trouble finding mattresses and bed frames that support it. Complicating things a bit is that I will be having a surgery in a month that will require recovery time, and I’ve been told that because I will be restricted to a liquid diet for two months, I will likely lose around 10% of my weight by the end of it. I’m fairly skinny right now and usually have trouble gaining weight, so I anticipate I’ll be around 120lb for the purposes of the mattress. I have no trouble with sleeping hot, so breathability is not a major concern. I do have a lot of allergies, so something natural would be ideal. I’d pay extra for an organic mattress, and I’d prefer a company that has a proven environmental track record. The FAQs I’ve read have noted that companies do not sell returned mattresses or layers. These FAQs do not note what is done with the returned products, which I take to mean they’re usually trashed or donated, but given donating would generate good PR, the fact that few advertise the latter, I’m guessing a lot is just trashed, which is just extremely wasteful. Thus, I’d also want a durable mattress. Ideally, I want to support a local business (we live in NYC) to reduce shipping and since local businesses deserve it, an ethos I’ve noticed Mattress Underground endorses. Currently, I’m thinking of an all-latex mattress, but I have been having trouble finding bed frames that will support latex and come in Twin XL size. Many either have slats with spacing beyond 3in or do not come in Twin XL size.
Thanks for reading this long post! Sorry it’s so long, but I just wanted to be thorough. There’s no need to actually follow everything I wrote down, and I was so thorough because I know it’s hard to match everything.