Sending back second bed after 45 days - better quality mattress with a S&F Lux Estate feel?

[phoenix]

Hi LLee,

Thank you so much for your response and the links as I believe I was too verbose in my search wording the past week while researching and several of those didn’t pop up. We are in the Houston area and I intend to phone Texas Mattress Makers although I noticed on their website they do not offer latex in their mattresses.

They would certainly be well worth a phone call or a visit. They don’t make all latex mattresses as far as I know but they do make some mattresses that use latex in the comfort layers (see the first part of the page here).

zoned construction possibly with more supportive construction under the hips since my husband’s shoulders are extremely broad and it sounded like athletic builds are well-suited to zoned construction

13.5 or heavier gauge spring for the support core or an innerspring with pocketed microcoils could be an added benefit. 100% memory foam beds will no longer be an option for us and we have yet to locate a latex bed to try out in the Houston area. We feel we could be comfortable with the right mix of spring/latex/foam with quality materials.

It sounds like we should be looking at HR foams in the mid ILD or 5lb memory foam underneath a blended or talalay (14-17) 2-3" latex as the comfort layer. maybe we have this wrong and the HR or HD foam should be on top - we just know that we don’t want memory foam (gel or otherwise) as the very top layer b/c of the heat factor but can see a purpose for it as a base in the comfort layer.

There are two main parts to choosing a mattress. The first is the suitability of a mattress in terms of PPP and for this I would use careful and objective testing and avoid using specs or having any preconceptions about what may work best for you because the specs won’t tell you how well a mattress will feel and perform for you. The second is durability and this is where you need to know the specs so that you can confirm that a mattress that works well in terms of PPP doesn’t have any weak links and uses durable materials. In other words … specs won’t tell you anything about PPP and your testing won’t tell you anything about the durability of the mattress. Both would be an important part of choosing a mattress but they are separate issues that need to be evaluated separately.

I have noticed there are not many manufacturers in the Houston area, but that you have also mentioned in some posts that Restonic can be a good product (it was being compared to Saatva, I believe) - so we thought we would locate a retailer that carries that brand to try it out.

Hopefully we are at least started in the right direction. If you know of other potential brands/manufacturers that you feel may be a good fit, we would certainly appreciate benefiting from your extensive knowledge. Many thanks.

Some of the other options or possibilities I’m aware of in the Houston area are listed in post #2 here. Restonic is a licensee group that includes many independently owned manufacturers across the country. I include retailers that carry them them in many lists for different cities around the country because the odds are higher that you will be able to find out what is inside the mattresses they make but this doesn’t mean that any specific mattress they make would be a good match for you in terms of PPP or durability or the other parts of your personal value equation that are important to you so you would need to make sure that any retailer you visit that carries them will be able to tell you the specifics of what is inside the models they carry (see this article).

The name of a manufacturer on a mattress is not nearly as important as whether a mattress is a good match for you in terms of PPP, that it uses high quality and durable materials relative to its price range, and that it compares well to your other finalists based on all the other parts of your personal value equation that are important to you. The steps are testing for PPP, checking for the quality/durability of the materials, and then comparing your finalist at each manufacturer or retailer for “value”.

Phoenix