Thank you for this fine site - it is a wealth of information.
I have been sleeping on an Ikea innerspring mattress that is no longer providing any support - through this site I learned that my spine is “hammocking” substantially.
I visited a local showroom in Los Gatos, CA (Urban Sleep Store) and found that I enjoyed the Queen size OMI Lago mattress. On the OMI web site it is listed as 6" Firm latex foam core topped with 3" Soft. I believe this model is natural Talalay. I also enjoyed a 3" Firm, 3" medium, 3" soft mattress there but found I may need slightly more support than this when side sleeping (did not obtain model). I believe OMI mattresses are high quality but I cannot justify >$5K for a queen sized bed right now.
I am a stomach sleeper by default, but I conciously try to sleep mostly on my Back and Side due to neck pain from stomach sleeping over the years. I am 6’2" and weigh ~185-190lbs.
I have two questions:
Are there recommended places to shop in the SF Bay Area preferably South Bay, where I might be able to get a quality latex foam mattress (Queen) comparable to the OMI Lago, in the $2-$2.3K range? It doesn’t need to be Organic…
My other option is to order from a online dealer / The Mattress Underground member such as Sleep EZ. Would a 3" Soft top, 3" middle firm + 3" firm bottom core, in blended Talalay be reasonably similar to the Natural Talalay OMI Lago mattress I liked in-store?
OMI (Organicpedic) makes some very nice mattresses that use high quality materials but they are certainly not in the best value group compared to many other mattresses that use similar materials.
Some of the better options in the San Francisco Bay area are listed in post #2 here. Some of these sell all latex mattresses that use the same or similar materials but the designs may be quite different and you would need to test them in person to see how they compare to any of the OMI mattresse you tested in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences).
To know this you would need to find out the specific information about the OMI Lago you tested (layer thickness, type of latex, and ILD of each layer, and the specifics of the cover) and then compare it to the options you have available with SleepEz. If the materials and design and the mattress covers are identical between the two (which is unlikely) then they would be very similar but each difference between them in terms of their design would result in some differences in the mattress that some people may notice more than others.
There may be many mattress designs that use different pathways to a similar outcome in terms of PPP and they may both be equally suitable in terms of Posture and alignment and Pressure relief even though they may be different in terms of “feel” or other preferences that may be important to you.
Once you have the specific details of the materials in the Lago (or Lago Nouveau depending on which one you tested) … then you are ina much better position to talk to other manufacturers to get their thoughts about which of their mattresses may be the closest approximation.
So with local choices, your own personal testing and experience along with having the specifics of the materials inside the mattress will tell you how the mattresses compare. With an online choice that you can’t test in person, then more detailed discussions with the manufacturer (who know more about their mattresses than anyone else) would be the best way to decide on which mattress they offer may be the closest approximation and this may involve some guesswork and intuitive “translations” between designs depending on the amount and degree of any differences between them. Translating from one design to another is more of an art than a science and individual perceptions about how closely two mattresses with different designs match may vary widely between different people.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I will contact OMI to learn more about their Lago product, and spend some time with other recommended manufacturers from the post you linked me to.
Thank you very much for the additional recommendations and clarification!