Hello mattress underground folk! I’m brand new to the forum and I could seriously use your advice!
My boyfriend and I have very different sleeping styles: Me - Side & stomach; Him - Back and totally straight as a board.
We are trying to find a bed that meets both our needs. Initially we were interested in Sleep Number due to its customizability. My boyfriend is a fan of saving money, so he decided to find cheaper alternatives. He did some research and came back with high hopes about Select Foam (http://www.selectfoam.com/) and Select Air (http://www.selectairbeds.com/) which claim to have Tempurpedic and Sleep Number quality for a fraction of the price. I’m a fan of name brands so I’m skeptical of less-known brands.
So, I would like to get your feedback on a couple of things:
How do you feel about Select Foam and Select Air? Are they actually Tempurpedic and Sleep Number substitutes?
Have you purchased & returned one of these beds? If so, how is the return process?
Can foam mattresses meet both my boyfriend’s needs as well as mine or should we bite the bullet and get an air mattress?
If we get foam, do I need a foundation or could I put it on a wood slat frame?
The first place I would start your research is post #1 here which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that can help you find the best choices (and help you avoid the worst ones including major brands).
As you will see … a mattress is only as good as the quality of its construction and the materials and components that are inside it regardless of which manufacturers label is on the cover. When you know the specifics of each layer in the mattress (which most major manufacturers won’t provide because they don’t want to be compared to higher quality and better value mattresses), then you can make meaningful quality and value comparisons between mattresses. Without this there is no way for anyone to know the quality of a mattress or it’s relative durability and value. In most cases I would suggest avoiding major brands completely and “brand shopping” is among the worst ways to choose a mattress.
You can also read more of my thoughts about airbeds in this article. There are many manufacturers that can make a mattress that is customized for each person on the mattress when this is necessary. Select Air is one of the members of this site and uses higher quality materials in their mattresses (and are transparent about what they are) and has better value than major brands so I would certainly choose them over Select Comfort based on quality and value if you did decide to choose an airbed.
I haven’t no but you can see their return policy here. I would want to have a good idea of the two way shipping costs that are deducted from a return so you can evaluate the risk. The return policy for their airbeds is different from their memory foam beds which don’t deduct for shipping in either direction.
This depends on the design of the mattress (more than the materials themselves), on the customizing options that are available both before and after a purchase, and on the specifics of your body type and sleeping style when you either test or sleep on a mattress. You can read a little more about some of the ways that can be used to better match two people that have different needs and preferences in the first part of post #2 here.
You can read more about the different types of foundations that are suitable for different types of mattresses and some good links to sources in post #1 or the foundation thread here and the two posts it links to but in most (not all) cases, an all foam mattress (regardless of the type or combination of foams used) does best with a firm, rigid, and non flexing base underneath it and this can be a slatted or wire grid foundation, a slatted bedframe, or an adjustable bed.
We had a select comfort bed and were very unhappy with it. We had ours twelve years ago so things may be different now but at that time the only thing separating the two air chambers was a piece of foam. It made for a no mans land in the middle. Even the cat didn’t like it. We both felt like our usable sleep surface was very small. We also found the pumps to be noisy. If one of us tried adjusting the bed in the night it always woke the other.
I also have a Select Foam Cirrus Luxe and love it. The company delivered everything they promised, in a timely manner. I give a big thumbs up to Select Foam, and sales rep, Peter Guerrero.
