Shopping for a new mattress in the DC area

First of all, thank you for creating this site. My wife and I have been frustrated with our mattress and the nonsensical shopping process. We’ve tried to make ourselves well-informed consumers, but the marketing of mattresses is opaque and reading reviews is useless since so many beds feel great for a few weeks only to reveal problems several months later. Fortunately, we’ve resorted to purchasing mattresses from Costco so that we can keep them for 6 months to 2 years before they become unsupportive and we return them. That said, we are tired of this endless cycle of mattress returns. It’s such a hassle and needlessly wasteful. We’d like a bed that is built to last, and don’t mind paying a bit more as long as it will last 10+ years while retaining its supportive qualities.

I am primarily a side and stomach sleeper. My wife is a back and side sleeper. We weigh 150 and 180 lbs. I sleep hot and am not interested in memory foam due to the heat retention properties. In a past stint with a “latex” mattress, we didn’t love the feel but wouldn’t rule it out entirely. We loved the feel of the “W Hotels” plush mattress which was a Beautyrest innerspring. We both prefer non-pillow top mattresses that have some softness but firm support. Something along the lines of what the mattress industry is calling “luxury firm”.

Do you have any recommendations on mattress manufacturers or dealers in this area? I’ve already perused the list of Mattress Underground’s membership, and have started researching products on the sites that sell nationwide. It seems that most deal in latex. However, Soaring Heart offers an organic inner spring made by McRoskey that (on paper) seems very appealing. But we are concerned about spending $5,000 on a mattress, as we previously have had the mindset of spending $1,500-$3,500. Here is the link: http://soaringheart.com/collections/organic-innerspring-mattresses/products/organic-innerspring-mattress

Appreciate any thoughts, recommendations, or wisdom you can share.

Hi ok11,

The first place I would start your research is the mattress shopping tutorial here which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that you will need to make the best possible choices … and know how and why to avoid the worst ones.

Once you reach step 3 and are ready to start testing mattresses … then the better options and possibilities I’m aware of in the Washington DC area (subject to following all the steps in the tutorial post of course) are listed in post #2 here.

While this mattress uses high quality materials … I would be very cautious about spending $5000 on a mattress as well … especially if you are ordering it online and can’t test it in person. These are more specialty mattresses that I would generally suggest testing extensively in person to make sure they are a good match for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, Personal preferences) and if for some reason I did order it online as a blind purchase then I would make sure that there was a great return policy so that you an use your sleeping experience to test the mattress without risk. If I was spending this much on a mattress I would make some very careful comparisons because I would need to have a compelling reason to justify the higher cost. It would need to be clear to me that there was nothing in a lower budget range that would be a suitable choice and I would need to be confident that the higher cost was “worth it” based on specific criteria that were important to me and that weren’t available in lower budget ranges.

Phoenix