Hi cprice,
If you can’t remember I’ll give Michael a call and find out. It’s been a while since I talked with him so it’s probably a good time to catch up anyway.
Phoenix
Hi cprice,
I confirmed that they still don’t have a store in Austin (there is a cigar store at the old location) but they deliver there every two weeks … and sometimes weekly depending on volume.
Phoenix
Good to know!
So that pretty much leaves Austin Natural Mattress as our main retailer for natural options.
While I liked some of the beds at Urban Mattress, not too many were natural.
My husband visited Austin Mattress/Beds 'n Brass and tried the Royal Touch and he did like one of them, but still not as much as the ANM Evolve.
So, we are actually thinking about getting the Evolve. Today I went back and hung out at ANM for about an hour and I found that my favorite was the more plush Evolve.
However, it is Dunlop and I guess from reading here I got turned off about Dunlop b/c a lot of what is said here comes across as kind of negative - or at least not as sweepingly positive as the opinions on Talalay.
So I’m finding myself needing to be convinced, especially because this is BLENDED Dunlop. Also the cover is not all natural, but it’s very thin, and we are realizing we like that better so we can feel the latex more and really sink into it.
Are there any retailers online that you know of with either blended talalay or all natural talalay and a very thin cover?
When I say thin, it’s really thin, kind of like the Tempurpedic covers.
Thanks!
Oh, also, we are realizing we must like super soft latex b/c when they switched around all the pads on the OMI (Organicpedic) for me to try today, the combination I liked best was MED-XSOFT-XSOFT and that still wasn’t as soft as the Evolve that I liked the best.
Is that weird?
Hi cprice88,
These are all preference choices and not so much “better/worse” choices and I certainly wouldn’t want to “convince” you one way or the other. There is more about the differences between Talalay and Dunlop in the previous post I linked (post #7 here) but the most reliable way to know which one you prefer is based on your own personal experience. All latex is a very durable material compared to other types of foam. FWIW … my daughter prefers the feel and performance of Dunlop which is what she purchased even though her father prefers Talalay because I told her to test both of them and choose the mattress and type of latex that she preferred regardless of what anyone else (including me) may prefer … and she did.
Different types of covers are also a preference choice and some people will prefer a quilted cover to lessen the resilience of the latex and others will prefer a thinner and more stretch cover because they prefer the feel of sleeping more directly on the latex. There is more about the difference between different types of quilted covers and thinner more stretchy covers in post #12 here and the posts it links to.
Off the top of my head I know that SleepEZ and Arizona Premium and Flobeds and Plushbeds and possibly Sleeping Organic (their cover may have cotton batting quilting so I would ask them) have options available that use Talalay comfort layers with thinner unquilted stretch knit cotton covers.
Nothing is “weird” to me when it comes to mattresses that are the best “match” for the needs and preferences of different people. Everyone is different 
Phoenix
So, I’ve read that article 2 or 3 times now about dunlop vs. talalay and it confuses me b/c my experience in the store here is that the one dunlop mattress feels noticeably softer and I sink into it more than any of the talalay mattresses in the same showroom. Since I went in there having read that dunlop should feel more dense/firm, I kept going back and forth between the mattresses over and over to make sure I wasn’t imagining it b/c what I was experiencing did not line up with what I had read. The plusher Evolve is a full 12" (I think it’s a 6-3-3 configuration) but that doesn’t seem like it would make a difference as big as what we felt.
Which leads me to wonder/worry that the dunlop in the Evolve might be made of a higher % of synthetics in the blend. That is the one question the salesperson could not answer when I asked about it. He did not know what % of synthetic (or didn’t want to tell me). That worries me a little in terms of long-term durability as well as how “healthy” the bed is.
The other factor that is hard to ignore is that this 12" dunlop Evolve bed, at $2,600, is nearly $1,000 more than 10" talalay online options we were considering. That’s a big difference. I know you’re going to say this is part of our personal value equation. But it’s helping to “talk it out” here now that I feel like we have a better baseline idea of what mattresses we liked in person.
So, comparing with the Plushbeds looks very similar to the locally made Evolve - even the description of the cover with the plant-based flame barrier sounds the same, except the Plushbeds has talalay for the top 2 layers whereas the Evolve has all dunlop and I think the stretch cotton may be blended with something synthetic in it.
However, the price difference between Plushbeds and Evolve is small (only about $200) so wouldn’t justify the risk of ordering something online that we hadn’t tried in person.
I talked with SleepEZ and he said their cover does have some quilting in it, but that it is stretch. We didn’t really find any “choose your layer” mattresses in the showrooms here that were quilted stretch. The two quilted ones (OMI and Savvy Rest) both have woven covers, and I did feel that those covers restricted the latex in a way I didn’t love. It felt tight and firmer and it did seem like the cover was a big difference. The PureLatexBliss cover was somewhere in between with how the cover felt; it had some give and seemed a little stretchy, but also had some quilting. We like it better for sure than the wovens, but still prefer the super-thin Evolve cover. My husband said the Royal Touch also has a thin cover that feels like a microfiber.
All of the ones here in town with thinner covers are enclosed mattresses, not the zippered build your own kind.
Who knew the cover would matter so much - I never would’ve guessed that when we started b/c I really don’t think of us as being super fussy and this seems like such detail nit-picking! 
Price wise Flobeds is also about the same or more expensive than the Evolve so again, probably doesn’t justify the online ordering risk.
However, SleepEZ and Arizona Premium would be considerably less expensive (somewhere in the $800-1,000 range less) depending on the details of the online choices) less than the Evolve.
So that point is also getting us stuck.
Hi cprice88,
Both Dunlop and Talalay come in a wide range of firmness levels so Dunlop will only feel firmer if you had a single layer that was the same thickness and ILD as a Talalay layer but it can feel softer if the ILD was lower. There are also other factors that can affect how soft or firm a layer or a mattress feels as well besides just the ILD of the material (see post #4 here) and all the layers of a mattress will also affect all the other layers of a mattress to differing degrees and the mattress as whole … not just a single layer. There is also more about the effect of thickness in post #14 here.
Careful testing will be the most reliable way to know whether a particular mattress is suitable for you in terms of PPP and I would avoid using more complex combinations of “comfort specs” to try and decide whether any particular mattress would be a good choice for you.
All latex is a durable material relative to other types of foam materials. The “safety” of latex is also not something I would be concerned about and all the latex you are likely to encounter (Dunlop or Talalay made with either natural or synthetic rubber or a blend of both) will all have been certified by either Oeko-Tex or Eco-Institut for harmful substances and VOC’s (see post #2 here).
Once you have narrowed down your choices to to a list of finalists that are all choices between “good and good” and you are confident that they would all be a good match for you in terms of PPP and there are no “weak links” in any of them and if at that point there are no clear winners between them then you are in the fortunate position that any of them would likely be a suitable choice and post #2 here can help you make a final choice based on your local testing and experiences or online conversations with each of them, your confidence about the suitability of each one, the options you have before and after a purchase, and on “informed best judgement” based on all the other objective, subjective, and intangible parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you.
Phoenix