See you’ve had some questions for TMU trusted member Sleep On Latex, hope you found their answers helpful for researching your latex layer project. Thanks too @SleepOnLatex /Karl for your quick response and consumer support.
This is a good takeaway, silverbull. While the ILD (Indentation Load Deflection) number sounds complicated, it is meant to give consumers a common measurement across different mattress manufacturers indicating categories of a “soft”, “medium”, “firm” or “very firm” feel, not meant to define what that feel may be for your individual PPP/ Pressure relief, Posture and alignment, and Personal preferences.
Looking forward to hearing how your follow up goes with SOL’s suggested contact, hope that goes well.
So I got a SOL medium firmness this week and I was somewhat surprised with its feel I was was wondering if anyone around here who has gotten one, or is familiar with general latex compressibility can testify if what I am feeling is expected or I somehow got one that was way out of spec or wrong layers were used by mistake.
A few points:
The mattress after being fully unpacked for 48 hours less than 8" tall, which seems strange considering it is supposed to have 8" of latex, plus however much the quilted top adds. Is this tolerance common in the industry? Or is it possible that the latex in my mattress was compressed for too long at some point in its construction and is damaged? Here’s a picture of what I’m seeing: Imgur: The magic of the Internet The bottom of the tape measure is aligned to the solid plywood base of my bed.
Edge support is not something that matters to me whatsoever, except only as to communicate the general squishyness of the mattress. But, what I have is exceedingly compressible, with little-to-no edge support. To give an idea of this, when I sit on the edge, with the inside of my knees aligned with the edge of the mattress, and the mattress aligned with the side of my bed, the bottom of my legs touch the rails of my bed. I weigh 125 lbs, and the edge of my bed is 4" above the base. This means that the bed is compressing by ~3.75 inches (based on previous measurement of it not actually being 9" thick), and I’m not even really applying much weight, and could apply more if my legs weren’t stopped by the rails! If I go into the position that this woman is at 2:48 on YouTube (https://youtu.be/fpXzRsQC-pk?t=170), lying with her leg a few inches off the side, my legs press down on the mattress just almost enough for my leg to touch the sides of my bed (about 3" compression). She claims to be testing a medium but it definitely does not seem to be compressing nearly as much as mine. I am pretty trivially able to squeeze the mattress to about 3" thick (total!) with my hand as a pincer (i.e. no body weight used)
I feel close to bottoming out on the mattress if I sit on my knees, and am definitely bottomed out if I go on one knee. It’s not painful or anything, just obvious that I am hitting the limit to compressibility and “feeling” the plywood. My girlfriend qualitatively describes it as too firm, but I think she is describing that feeling of bottoming out.
All of this is on solid plywood base, no slats here.
My qualitative thoughts on the mattress mirror this negative Amazon reviewer, who I thought must be a total outlier, but now I am wondering if I got a mattress similar to him or her: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
All that said, I liked sleeping on it more than my old mattress (which I returned because I felt it was too soft). But I was expecting, and generally sleep more comfortably on, mattresses which are firmer. I am going to give it its fair shake, since initial feeling has so little correlation with opinion on mattress after sleeping on it for a few weeks but what I would like to know from the experts around here is if what I am describing sounds like what it should feel like, or if there is something wrong with my mattress, because it definitely does not feel like how I expected it to.
Thank you for ordering with us and for this review. If you can send us an email at [email protected], we’ll be happy to take a look at this with you. We take height and firmness measurements of every single mattress before it is sent out, so if you can just tell us your order number, we can check our records on this mattress. We want you to be satisfied with your purchase and will do everything we can to ensure that you are happy with your purchase.
It can be deceptively tricky to take an accurate height measurement of our mattress (or most mattresses). From the part of the picture I can see, it looks like you did a pretty good job with measuring it, but I think the first step here would be to check our height record before packaging. If everything looks normal here, we can look at reasons that you may be getting a different reading.
With regards to the firmness, I also think the first step would also be helpful to check our records and see if anything is abnormal or even on the lower bound of our acceptable range. Due to initial feedback that our medium mattress was too firm, we did soften it up a bit in 2018. It’s possible that the mattress in the video is our older version. We don’t have any affiliation with the company that made this video, so I don’t really know.
Quite honestly, reviews like the referenced Amazon review are somewhat frustrating for us because I think they could easily be resolved through a phone call or email but we have no way to identify who the customer is. ILD ratings are not a good way to compare different mattresses (I completely realize they should be and wish they were but they are not). ILD sounds like a precise scientific measurement but it is not. Readings can vary greatly due to a number of different variables. This is compounded by the fact that there is always some variability with latex foam. We provide these numbers to our customers because we get so many requests for them but we try our best to caution against using them in comparing to other products. As I mentioned in your situation, it is extremely easy to get a inaccurate measurement on the mattress height. We are always happy to review this with our customers. I appreciate you taking a picture and reaching out to us, but it is really hard for us to properly address reviews like this on Amazon when we don’t have any pictures and the customer does not contact us. Our boxes are labeled with the firmness. The law label tag contains the weight which identifies the firmness. Also, there is a bar code on the back of the mattress which contains all of that product’s information in our database, so we can look it up if there is any question. We did our best during the shelter in place orders to work with customers to find solutions that worked for them. I don’t recall having any period where we were unable to provide pickups for anyone as our pickup providers where exempted. We offered refunds upfront to anyone who wanted to wait until the shelter in place orders were lifted.
If you can reach out to us directly or send us your Order number, we’ll be happy to work through this but I think ultimately, the best solution for you may be to try exchanging this mattress for the firm mattress. Keep in mind that people have vastly different perceptions of mattress firmnesses. We get people who say our medium is too firm while others say it is too soft. We have tried to find a place that best matches our customer’s expectations but there are still always cases in which this is not achieved. While we can’t promise anyone that a specific product will fit their specific needs, I can promise that we will work with you to ensure that you are satisfied with your purchase, and if your not, we will get the mattress picked up as quickly as painlessly as possible.
I hope we can get this resolved for you and look forward to discussing this further.
Thanks Karl! I actually did email last night, and someone on your team got back to me today. He checked in the database and it turns out my mattress actually is out of the normal range for a medium, and my case may actually have been a true mistake (rather than a total . He offered a replacement, and I will probably take you guys up on that offer. It’s nice to deal with a company that readily admits mistakes and goes out of their way to fix them. That’s one of the reasons I chose to get a mattress from you guys at all. I will probably continue with this soft-er medium for a few days and hopefully update this thread with what the replacement is like.
Whoops, I didn’t quite finish my previous post and I don’t see an edit button. I meant to say " …a true mistake, rather than a total misunderstanding on my part of what a medium firmness should feel like"
Thank you for the follow up! I’m sorry about the mistake and appreciate your understanding on this. We are by no means infallible and are trying to get better all the time. We are hoping that we can use the data we are collecting on firmnesses to tighten our ranges and prevent mistakes like this in the future.
I really appreciate your kind words about our company and your patience with us in getting this resolved.
Thank you again for your order with us. If there is anything else that I can do to help, please feel free to ask for me directly via email or phone, or just send me another message here.
