Restava Pearl Gel vs SelectFoam Cirrus Supreme-ES and latex hybrid options

[phoenix]

Hi Wood,

Thanks for your quick response. Decided to do a bit of footwork and went to a mattress store. They steered me away from a Tempurpedic Cloud Supreme and showed me a Pure Latex Bliss latex mattress, pointing out that the store owner and his family only sleep on latex. I remembered you mentioning in one letter that you, also prefer latex.

Yes my own preference is Talalay latex and while it’s a great quality material and a very durable foam … other people may have very different preferences from mine. The Pure Latex Bliss mattresses though are good quality and have no “weak links” although it would be well worth making good value comparisons with other similar mattresses that are available to you because they can sometimes be in a higher price range (although there are retailers that sell it for less than their MAP or Minimum Advertised Pricing.

He then showed me some “Cool Gel” mattresses as an alternative to latex. They seemed very nice too. Are these cool gel mattresses similar to the Restava Ivory Gel and the SelectFoam Supreme moreso than the Tempurpedic might be? While I wasn’t that excited about the Tempurpedic Supreme, I did like both the latex and cool gel mattresses.

“Cool Gel” is just a tradename for memory foam that has some type of gel mixed in with the memory foam. It’s probably made by Classic Brands (you can see an example here). There are many different types of gel memory foams (that you can read about in post #2 here and the posts it links to) but assuming that a mattress that uses it is a good “match” for you in terms of PPP I would use the same quality/density guidelines as I would for regular memory foam. They are all in the same general category (memory foam with some kind of gel added) but there are also many different versions. Depending on the type and percentage of gel added to the memory foam … they tend to have some temporary effect on sleeping temperature when you are first going to sleep but once temperatures equalize then like regular memory foam they can also sleep warmer for some people (although probably a little less than “regular” memory foam).

Read another response from you with a person who was going with latex and mentioned Brooklyn Bedding, so I looked at their site. It looks good but their warranty and trial period programs don’t seem to be as good as Restava or SelectFoam.

I don’t pay nearly as much attention to warranties as to the quality of the materials in a mattress (see post #174 here) but a latex mattress is really not an apples to apples comparison with a memory foam mattress. Their latex mattresses also have “comfort exchanges” (unlike many of their memory foam mattresses which have a 120 day free trial and return option) which means you can exchange a layer for one that is firmer or softer which gives you the ability to fine tune a mattress after a purchase which isn’t usually possible with a memory foam mattress which is usually an “all or nothing” purchase. All of the different designs and options that are offered by different manufacturers (online or local) would be part of the “value” of a mattress purchase based on the criteria that are the most important parts of each person’s personal value equation.

Hopefully you’ve also had the chance to read the tutorial post here which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that can help you make the best possible choices and help you decide on the type of mattress and materials, the features, and the options before and after a purchase that are most important to you.

Phoenix