Sharing my experience, including DIY

Mattress Talk
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I’d like to share my DIY experience in hopes that it helps or inspires someone.

I’m sleeping on a split level latex mattress. There’s 9" of firm to medium latex, then a middle layer of 3" medium-firmness with 20" cut off at the head, topped off by a 2" soft latex layer.
So the top 20" of my mattress is now 3" lower. Or rather, my body is 3" higher than my shoulder and head and arm. This takes pressure off my shoulder when I sleep on my side. Much better on the shoulder, and much less pain. Surprisingly, I thought I’d need a much taller pillow with this setup, but it’s not so.

The craziest thing about side sleeping is how the slightest movement of a leg can change the spine alignment and reflect through the neck and head, not to mention how much weight shift can occur in the hips. If I bend or straighten my knee a little, my hips can sink or float on the mattress a great deal, or at least it seems that way. If I bend more fully towards a fetal position the drooping reverses. It makes sense mechanically, at least at the hips, but it’s awfully difficult to understand the mechanics of the spine. The spine can twist and bend, even if only a little, but it adds up over its length. Which brings me to my head. I bend a little at the knees, the spine adapts, maybe it twists as if I rolled my top shoulder back, and all of a sudden I find my neck wants to pull my head down low, and my pillow’s now too tall.

So about those pillows, all my pillows are adjustable, mostly shredded material: buckwheat, wool, and memory foam. These pillow let me adapt the height and angle of my head as I change position. When I move my legs, that wonderful, cool, totally conformant buckwheat pillow acts like my head’s in a vice grip. All that pressure goes through my neck, and it hurts. Much as I love that buckwheat pillow, it’s much healthier to use the shredded memory foam. These can flex sideways, so instead of building pressure on my neck, my head moves, so there’s no pressure and no neck pain. While I can usually put up with the heat, I’m thinking of splitting a pillow so it’s shredded foam or latex on the bottom and buckwhat on the top. The thing that worries me is I notice it takes at least 3" of foam after it’s compressed to get enough sideways flexibility, so this hybrid pillow might end up too tall, about 6" or more.

One last thing about the split-level. When I sleep on my back, I feel like my head’s too high. That is, my body sinks more than my head. That’s been true with the firmest mattress (the one I bought after back surgery) and more so with less firm ones. So I was using a 3" buckwheat filled roll pillow under my neck and nothing under my head. I let out some of the filling to make it the perfect fit for me, and it’s now flexible enough to conform to and support my neck. Well, that was with the flat bed. With the split level, I can go back to a variety of pillows, all of which will be adjustable of course.

There’s one big downside to this split level thing. My lower arm has to be up high, with my elbow at least at shoulder level. I’ll continue to work on that.

I don’t expect any of this to fit anyone here, but hopefully it gives someone an idea, or maybe helps think a bit differently about their situation.

1 Like
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Hello Nosferatu and Newly Appointed MUGster!
Welcome to the MattressUnderGround!

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Necessity is the mother of invention. You seemed to have made some adjustments and it worked out nice for you. This is a perfect example how sometimes, there is just not a perfect mattress that fits all. A little nip and tuck here and there and presto change O, comfort.

I love the fact you experimented with the pillows. If you read my post about my pillow journey, I am a pillow experimentaur too. See here my collection Pillow Collection. I am in the process of getting some different filling for one chamber of my two chamber horsehair pillow. I like to experiment with different fill materials to create two chamber pillows.

Good luck with your set up and keep us up to date if you make any changes or discover something new for your pillow creations.

Norm (aka Maverick)

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I’ve switched this up a little.

Previously, the head of the mattress was missing a 3" layer. I put some in a pillow which made it level for back sleeping. For side sleeping, my shoulder would be lower because of the missing layer at the head. But it’s tricky to sleep at the right spot. There’s a quick drop where the piece is missing. If that split was too close to the arm (under arm?) it can impinge the nerves a bit. If I move up so the split is further down along my chest, then the top of my chest sinks down putting extra weight on the shoulder. It got me thinking it might be better to make two split layers at different spots and fill them with softer latex. Maybe a bottom layer 24" long and a top layer 20" long, and a top soft layer over that.

Not there yet but I went with a 15" height, which gives me more options future experiments. The base is extra firm, then firm through the middle 9" and a 3" soft top. Except, about 20" of length at the head is soft and 6" thick (plus the 3" top layer). This would be easier with a picture–maybe I’ll do that next. It’s all dunlop, though from what I read here, it seems like talay would be better at the head. That’s for the future.

The next experiment is to cut back the second layer a few more inches, so there’s soft latex 20" and then 24". This should straighten my back along the chest. I might then remove 2" of the soft to also get the benefit of a lower level of the shoulder.

But first I want to cover it all to see how it feels when zippered close. Then I want to try out a better top layer for cooling, like maybe wool or I don’t know what. That’s why I went for 15" deep. It keeps a steady extra firm bottom, and gives me more options for missing layers, multiple soft layers, or tops.

If I knew what I needed, I’m sure it should end up 12". It seems to me that more than 6" of soft is a waste.

Onwards…

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Correct me if im wrong but from what i understand thats something like an extended vzone in more than 1 layer? Maybe explaining it vertically would be better just for the sake of imagination. The first vertical layer of the bed that starts from the top and ends above your waist(?) has what layers exactly? Extra firm/firm/soft?

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The top and two bottom layers are complete queen size pieces. The second and third layers (from top to bottom) are split. I’ll put the split parts in brackets.
From top to bottom:
main part: 3" soft, [3" firm cut, 3" firm cut,] 3" firm, 3" extra-firm
head part: 3" soft, [2" soft cut, 2" soft cut, 2" soft cut,] 3" firm, 3" extra-firm – about 20" in height
Those 2" layers are because I cut up a 2" topper (from a separate topper cover) and now have a new 3" soft layer inside the mattress cover.

I think, at least in my case, it might be better to have the transition at the chest level be at different lengths at each layer to make for a smoother transition between the firm and soft layers. So the split layers near the head might be 20" and 24" of soft and the rest firm.

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BTW, so you can compare to yourself… I’m 5’ 10" and have a queen size mattress 6’ 6" long. That give me space to move my body up or down, so the measurements don’t need to be too exact for my situation.

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Ok makes sense, you are basically creating a slightly uneven field by stacking some extra layers on the body part?

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And making a slope out of the softer part (with the two uneven layers) so my upper chest sinks in more, which should help to keep my spine straight. Only issue there is, that lowers the shoulder and puts more pressure on the shoulder which I have a problem with. It’s all for a slow experiment in the future. For now, the zoned softer layer under the shoulder/head is a big improvement.

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You latex and you learn…

To recap, as a side sleeper, I wanted to ease the pressure off my shoulder and let my shoulder sink in deeper so I could keep good posture with my shoulders square. With my shoulder straight, my neck would be straight, too, and I had issues there too. This led me to an all latex mattress which could be cut up and customized to my needs.

At first, I cut off the head of the top 3" support layer from the shoulder to the head. This way, there’s more weight on my rib cage and the shoulder has a few inches of space before reaching and compressing the mattress. There’s at least two problems with this. First, the transition between the two heights creates pressure just near the underarm. There’s a lot of nerves and what-not there. This pressure can be dangerous long-term if it compresses nerves. So you want to move up so the transition is a little lower, away from the shoulder, and a bit further down on the rib cage. Which brings up the second issue. If the top of the rib cage is sitting in the well, the whole rib cage tilts. This raises the lower rib cage, around the mid section. So with my belly higher, the hips are lower relative to the mid section. So this wouldn’t work.

The obvious next step was to replace the medium-firm support layers with softer latex. (I had a 2" soft topper which I cut up, and I got a 3" soft layer to go inside the mattress cover as a comfort layer.) While that softer area around the shoulder helped, it didn’t really solve the problem. My shoulder sunk in a little deeper, but the main effect was to spread out the pressure. So it was more comfortable, but my shoulder was still too high. I removed one of the 2" support layers near the head, but it had the same problems as before.

Which brings me to today. I cut out a space in the support layers around the shoulders and replaced it with a pillow stuffed with shredded memory foam. If I did this from scratch, I’d leave the entire edge of the latex layers and just cut out a space for one of those 18" x 53" pillows. This is for a queen size mattress, which is 60" wide. The cut would probably be about 2" smaller because the pillows usually have thin edges which need to be squeezed in. Better would be to make a custom rectangle to fit exactly, but I’m still experimenting.

I just did this today. My immediate impression is positive. Plus, the pillow has a zipper so I can add or remove stuffing to my liking, or replace the shredded memory foam with latex or other materials. But it takes a few weeks or months to really understand and adapt to the changes. So I’ll try this out for a few months and update this … I guess it’s becoming a DIY journal.

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Shredded latex only works if it’s on top. Once it’s inside the mattress cover–or under anything substantial–it’s no longer easily compressed. That includes a topper. So for this to work, it needs to be part of a topper about 6" thick at the head, with only a sheet and maybe a protector above it. It’s possible, and desirable if you sometimes sleep on your back. But I’ll go a different route first.

So I removed 6" of support layers at the head. To deal with the transition, I put in two 2" thick layers of soft latex, with the bottom piece longer than the top piece. This is getting somewhere. There’s some wiggle room, where I no longer need to position myself in an exact position, and it’s more comfortable. It also stops my chest dropping down so much, which keeps my midsection straighter. From here it seems to be more a matter of comfort more than utility. I did find that it’s a mistake to add edge support at the head because it raises my head too much. But edge support isn’t really needed at the head and headboard, only at the sides and maybe the feet, so I can do without it. If this works out long term, it’s just a matter of tweaking for comfort. As always, it takes time to really know how things work out. Time will tell.

The remaining problem is neck support. I have to scrunch up my pillow to support my neck without raising the top of my head too much. It may be worthwhile to look at a neck support pillow.