I currently have a select comfort special edition bed that is not working out for me. I am a stomach and side sleeper. Can’t find a number that works for both, net result is either a sore back or sore hips. SC recommends a 2 inch memory foam topper but I am concerned about it working, the heat of the memory foam and spending $400 as an experiment.
Restwell Mattress in Minneapolis has two nice memory foam mattresses. The core of both is 5 inches of polyurethane. One has 4 inches of 5 lbs memory foam ($1,500 with 20 year non pro-rated warranty) and the other mattress has 3 inches of 3 lb foam ($1,200 with 15 year non pro-rated warranty). Both pieces of memory foam have 1/4 inch holes through the foam, they are suppose to make the foam feel “cooler”. Does drilling holes in memory foam actually make the foam cooler?
On top of the memory foam are 2 pieces of 5/8 inch poly a gain this is suppose to also make the mattress surface cooler. Would this actually work to make the surface cooler?
If I want good back support when sleeping on my stomach and pressure point relief when on my side. Also want to minimize the compression of the mattress over time. What would you recommend?
This is one of the weaknesses of airbeds because they don’t have any progressive support and unlike other types of support layers the air bladders are either fully compressed or not compressed at all (see this article).
Yes … memory foam with holes punched in it can be one of the factors that can affect sleeping temperature although they work better if there are also air channels or a highly breathable reticulated foam under the punched memory foam so the air can escape more easily. There is more about cooling down memory foam and temperature regulation in post #6 here and the other posts it links to.
In general … polyfoam would allow more airflow than memory foam so this could also have a beneficial effect on sleeping temperature but it will also affect the “feel” of the mattress because the polyfoam would affect the amount of heat that reaches the memory foam and would affect how it feels and responds. Whether this was beneficial or detrimental would be based on your preferences and your own personal testing on the mattress. There is more about this in post #2 here.
Nobody else can feel what you feel on a mattress so the most effective way to know which mattress is best for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) would be careful and objective testing using the testing guidelines in the tutorial post (see mattress firmness/comfort levels in post #2 here).
Post #4 here also has the general guidelines I would tend to use for assessing the quality of the materials in a mattress and identifying any weak links in the design. As you can see I would tend to avoid lower density memory foam in the 3 lb range or less in layers that are thicker than about an inch or so.