Thank you for creating this website! I’ve learned a lot over the past few months, and I feel like I’m finally ready to purchase a latex mattress.
My family and I returned to the U.S. two years ago after living abroad in China for almost a decade, and when we came back, we were overwhelmed by all the mattress choices in the department stores we visited. After a while, it was hard to distinguish between the different beds, and I had a hard time wanting to commit to any of them. I was afraid of choosing poorly since we have slept on A LOT of mediocre mattresses over the years due to our somewhat nomadic lifestyle. I was inclined to purchase a really good mattress in the hopes that it would be a “one and done” sort of affair and I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. We had spent the last year in China apartment sitting for a family who let us use their Sleep Number bed, but neither my husband nor I liked it as much as the cheap coil bed we purchased from IKEA some years before. We felt like our years living in Asia helped us gravitate towards firm beds because whenever we returned to the U.S. in the summertime and stayed at friends’ houses, we encountered soft, saggy, unsupportive mattresses. Anyway, I started to become convinced that maybe a Tempurpedic mattress would be the sort of big investment that would be worthwhile. The ones we tried in the store certainly felt interesting, but I wasn’t sure that I would like to experience that feeling of sinking into the bed each night, plus the price tag scared me. Because we had just moved back to the country and needed to pick SOMETHING, we decided to buy a queen-sized Tuft & Needle mattress. My husband and I decided that we would see how it held up, knowing that we could relegate it to the guest bedroom down the line once we had done some more research on mattresses.
Since we bought our first house this summer and finally have a guest bedroom, we’ve decided that we do want to upgrade our own mattress. The T&N is okay and I have no qualms about letting guests use it since it still outshines a lot of the other ones we’ve slept on, but it isn’t offering us the kind of support that we feel we need night after night. I’m starting to feel like a swayback donkey when I get out of bed, and my husband has some back issues stemming from minor scoliosis that seem to be aggravated by the mattress.
Here are our stats:
I am a stomach and side sleeper. I’m 5’7" and 140 lbs. (BMI 21.9)
My husband is a side and back sleeper. He’s 5’9" and 185 lbs. (BMI 27.3)
I’ve read the Mattress Shopping Tutorial and a lot of forum posts. I also went through and looked at each of the trusted members’ sites, trying to get a baseline for what a similar queen latex mattress would cost from each place. I made a spreadsheet with this data, hoping it would help me narrow my choice.
We live in Iowa, so our options for trying out latex mattresses are limited. We visited a Lebeda Mattress Factory in Cedar Rapids. They had some latex hybrids and one that they call the Talalay Plush 2, but I couldn’t get details from the sales representative about what was inside each mattress. Denver Mattress Factory has some latex hybrids as well, but none were in stock to try.
All of that to say, after learning about latex mattresses from this website and having limited experience trying them out, I feel pretty comfortable going ahead and buying one sight unseen from one of the trusted members on this site. I really like the idea of being able to change out mattress components as they age without having to throw away the whole thing. As a result, I’m leaning towards doing a DIY mattress from Arizona Premium Mattress. In fact, I talked with Ken several months ago about what he thought would work well for us. His suggestions (medium Dunlop core, blended talalay topper #28 IDL, cotton cover) were different enough from my initial shopping cart (firm Dunlop core, all natural talalay topper, wool cover) that I decided to mull it over since I was busy preparing to move. Now that we’re more settled in our house, I’d like go ahead and purchase a mattress. I guess I’m still hesitating a bit because I can’t feel the mattress and because I still have it in my mind that we want a firm mattress, so it seems a little risky to go with medium support. I thought I’d go ahead and post here and see what feedback and suggestions I get!