Smartsilk Mattress Pad

Discussions General Mattresses Questions
1

Hi All,

I have been reading about the different types of mattress pads that are available. Recently stumbled on the Smartsilk products. They use a silk filler material with a cotton outer material. The Smartsilk website provides the following information regarding their mattress cover:

"The SmartSilk™ 5 Sided Mattress Pad combines a cozy all-natural silk fill liner along with the all-natural soft cotton finish. Enjoy a cleaner night’s sleep with The SmartSilk™ Shield Advantage that provides you with a proven barrier against allergens, dust mites and pet dander that has been certified asthma & allergy friendly™.

Enjoy the convenience of the Mattress Pads’ fitted materials enabling you to quickly place and remove onto any mattress depth from 7"-17". The exclusive and easy to use adjuster ensures that once secured, the pad won’t shift while on your mattress.

You will also benefit from our Smart Temperature Advantage that further ensures a high level of comfort. The breathable material naturally, smoothly and continuously adjusts with your body temperature while also wicking away moisture.

Quick Fact: A memory foam mattress produces a lot of heat. The SmartSilk™ Mattress Pad will allow air to smoothly circulate beneath you when placed onto the memory foam mattress."

I am really curious as to additional comfort level/additional softness and the effect if any, it has on temperature.

What got me thinking about this is that I have to admit that the most comfortable beds that I tried were latex that had a quilted top that was filled with a very thin low density foam. This gave you the cloud feel. However, as we all know from studying the material here, this is the store feel, not the this is what it will feel like in the future when it starts to sag feel.

Could it be that this silk mattress pad could be a fairly inexpensive alternative for people who have toaster oven memory foam/tempur mattresses and don’t want to get a new mattress?

Could it add an additional quilted like feel to my new Pure latex Bliss mattress and give me the best of everything?

Could it be a better alternative to a cotton/wool quilted cover?

Any feedback from anyone with any experience with these would be much appreciated

Thanks,

Dahl.

2

Hi Dahl,

I don’t have personal experience with silk mattress pads (although I have used other silk products) but I have talked with others that are very knowledgeable about bedding that have and they are certainly very nice and they are on my “want to buy” list of products.

This is the reason that many manufacturers use either a thin soft polyfoam layer in the quilting or top layer of their latex mattresses because it is a lower resiliency material and modifies the surface feel of the latex so it is less “springy” or resilient on top. Wool is similar and is also less resilient than latex and has other benefits as well (humidity control, ventilation, and temperature regulation) but is firmer than a soft polyfoam quilting. If the polyfoam layer is thin (in the range of an inch or so) then softening will have little effect on the overall feel of the mattress. Thicker layers of wool will compress over time and become firmer although they will remain resilient even when compressed because of the curly nature of wool. The amount of wool used in the quilting as a fire barrier in most mattresses is less so it will compress less. Mattress pads tend to do better with courser varieties of wool as they will compress less and stay more resilient over time.

Silk is a very strong fiber and will provide similar functions to wool. It is very breathable, ventilating, and temperature regulating and very resilient and compresses and will shift less than wool (and may be firmer depending on the construction). If anything a silk fleece would be even cooler than wool (and they use silk fleece from tussah silk). Silk fibers are weaker when they are wet so careful hand washing (or following the manufacturers instructions which in this case is gentle cycle) and then making sure they are completely dry before use can be very important to prevent damage. It is also not as water resistant as densified wool but water will not damage it. It will also not compress as much over time as wool and careful washing can actually keep it “fluffed”.

Overall I think it could make a great choice for the “feel” you are looking for.

If a natural fiber mattress pad or topper is used over memory foam it could slightly firm up the memory foam because there wouldn’t be quite as much heat reaching it or at least the memory foam would take longer to soften under the fiber layer but both wool and silk would certainly improve temperature regulation for those who sleep hot on their memory foam mattress and would add their own softness to the mattress (silk probably a little firmer than wool at least initially).

With thicker layers of natural fiber … either wool or silk etc … I think it’s a good idea to have them as a separate layer so that they can be replaced or changed as necessary without having to replace the whole cover or mattress.

Most of the wool quilted covers only use just enough quilted wool (or needlepunched and densified on the sides) that they can be used as a fire barrier. Without the wool then another type of fire barrier would need to be used. So if I was looking at either a wool or silk mattress pad or topper it wouldn’t be performing quite the same function as the “typical” wool quilting on the mattress so they could be used instead of thinner wool quilting (with a different fire barrier) or in addition to a thinner wool quilted fire barrier depending on the tradeoffs in design that were most important.

Either wool or silk could provide the “best of both worlds” if the “worlds” that were most important was the performance, feel, and temperaturer regulation of a thicker layer of natural fiber on top of your mattress that was used to modify the more resilient feel and pressure relieving benefits of sleeping directly on the latex.

I should also mention that if you talk with them they are very knowledgeable and will provide good information about their products which is always great to see.

Phoenix

3

Hi Phoenix,

The Smartsilk products caught my eye because they are available at Costco for a very good price. In addition, it they are not all they one desires, they can be returned to Costco for a full refund, no questions asked.

4

Hi Dahl,

One of the best parts about Costco is their refund policy which allows you to experiment a bit. They have a mix of good and not so good quality products and IMO this is one of their better ones and would be well worth trying,

If you do decide to go in this direction … I’d love to hear what you think of it.

When I talked with them they also mentioned that their pillow protector can really help to cool down a memory foam pillow (or any pillow that sleeps too warm) and it’s included in the set which is nice as well.

So I would consider this your “official” encouragement to become the “smart silk” tester for the forum :slight_smile:

Phoenix

5

It’s the least I can do. After all, if it were not for you guidance, I would not have ended up leaving the dark side, Nasa foam* and discovering latex.

By the way, have you had a chance to see/feel the new Nasa foam Breeze versions? I saw the Cloud Supreme Breeze last week. The top did have a bit cooler feel to it. But, it also felt strange, plastic like. Also, I am not great with math but why is it that the less expensive mattress, the Cloud Supreme costs $800 more for the Breeze version than the more expensive Rhapsody which only cost $500 more for the Breeze Version?

6

Hi Dahl,

That’s great :slight_smile:

I’m looking forward to your review!

I haven’t had the chance to test it personally (I’m behind on some of the “in person” mattress testing I want to do) but it has been the exact topic of conversation I’ve had with some very knowledgeable people who have and even “deconstructed” it to see what was inside it.

What they have done is applied a thin layer of a gel material on top of their memory foam and other than that there isn’t any obvious difference in the memory foam. This gel layer must cost a fortune (cough) because as you mentioned it certainly seems to have added a significant amount to the mattress.

While I don’t have an answer about the relative differences between the two Breeze versions … the consensus (unanimous) opinion among the people I have talked with about it is that consumers are paying for a very expensive “bedtime story” … and of course that Tempurpedic needs a way to pay for their purchase of Sealy and turn around it’s recent decline in profit margin and falling share prices. Of course it’s always possible that because the TEMPUR-Cloud Supreme Breeze uses lower density foam where you sink in more that they needed to put two layers of the gel coating on it to get the cooling effects they wanted and that at $500 per layer that it’s really a hidden “gel bargain” :slight_smile:

Phoenix

7

Hi Phoenix,

Hope you feel better. It is cold and flu season.

In order to continue this discussion, we must agree to follow certain rules. Rule #1- acknowledgement that beds don’t sleep hot , people do. Rule #2- Beds don’t have anything to do with people sleeping hot Rule #3- Tempur foam doesn’t hold heat, recent studies prove it.

The above was provided to me by Tempurpedic 6 months ago when I contacted them regarding heat issues with my Rhapsody.

I believe that they are using some sort of phase change material in the top cover material. I can tell you that it has a very different/stiff feel when compared to the Cloud Supreme non Breeze version. If you spend $800 more on the upgrade to the Cloud Supreme Breeze version over the conventional Cloud Supreme model, you get what you pay for, I think. If you pay $500 more for the Rhapsody Breeze version over the standard Rhapsody model you get a what you pay for but just a bit less of it, I think.

My uneducated guess is that initial marketing of the Breeze option for just the Cloud Supreme and the Rhapsody only is because these are the best selling models. If it can’t sell with these two, it ain’t going to sell.

At this point in time, I really don’t know what to make of the gel movement. When I decided to go with the PLB mattress, the factory told me that non-gel talalay used in the previous versions of their beds was a bit softer than the new active fusion comfort layer. I would have opted for the older version fort that reason alone.

Business is business. If enough advertising dollars are pumped into gel, then unfortunately, others have to follow or, they are left behind. Thus, active fusion, tatlalay GL, etc…

Gel will be done in a few years.

8

Hi Dahl,

Thanks … I’ve been planning to buy some chicken soup and it seems to have worked just fine :slight_smile:

That’s only reasonable of course … and since their studies “prove” it
ADMIN NOTE:Removed 404 page link | Archived Footprint: tempurpedic.com/our-company/sleepscool.asp
and their marketing becomes the truth … anyone who thinks otherwise clearly needs help of a different kind.

I would agree with this and I think that part of the marketing and test program is to find out what the market will bear and the “stories” they will buy … including of course their “brand” story.

I’m not so sure of this and while “you get what you pay for” may be roughly true (at least within a range) with inter-brand model comparisons … it doesn’t necessarily hold true with brand to brand comparisons. Profit margins can also vary with different models again based on “what the market will bear” and consumer “perception” at different price points. Lower price points tend to have lower margins in many cases but if lower priced products (which tend to have higher sales) are perceived relatively more favorably then they may have more “room” to add to the retail cost and if this is successful it would have a larger effect on overall profit margins.

I think that gel is an emerging category and is likely here to stay but as its real benefits become more apparent and the hype and “me too” marketing is reduced once it is available almost everywhere … it will start to differentiate into various types as more accurate information becomes available about the benefits of different types of gel applications. In the same way that many people seem to believe that “memory foam is memory foam” when in reality there are hundreds of different types with different qualities and properties … so too the “gel” category which is currently treated as being one material with “equivalent” benefits in all applications will differentiate into many different versions with different benefits.

Just like memory foam can be differentiated into higher and lower quality for those who know what to look for and there is a range of properties and quality available … so too gel will be more recognized as a legitimate material and not just the “cooling panacea” that is currently being promoted. I think that different versions will be seen and promoted for some of its other benefits even though the main marketing thrust for now is “cooling”.

The gel is a response (among other responses and technologies both new and old) to two of several “issues” with memory foam IMO including responsiveness (ease of movement), temperature, the less supportive nature of memory foam (which is why it can’t be used effectively as a support layer), durability, and toxicity (there are food grade gels which are widely used including in the medical field). Since gel is more thermally conductive than other foam materials it feels cooler to the touch (which is great for marketing) and can also improve heat conduction away from the body to a degree (until the temperature equalizes). It can also improve the compression modulus and time dependent softening of memory foam which means that it can help prevent the tendency of memory foam to allow heavier areas of the body to sink down too deeply over the course of time. Compression modulus is the rate at which a material becomes firmer which is improved with gel. Viscoelastic materials get softer with temperature and humidity (which is more commonly known) but also have a property called “creep” which means that with constant pressure they also relax and get softer over time which is a less well known property of memory foam and gel can reduce this. Gel is also a less toxic material (uses “safer” chemicals and ingredients) and is very durable.

As you mentioned time will tell but I think that while the “buzz” will be less which will reduce competitive pressures to add it to everything … with questionable benefits vs other technologies in some cases … it is also a legitimate material in certain applications and is probably here to stay.

Phoenix

9

Any update on this mattress pad? I had checked into it was curious as well if anyone got it.

10

My most comfortable bed, Stern’s and Foster Tropical Oasis Collection, which was silk in the cover. Did you get this cover, and how is your mattress now? I slept on my SF for 7 years (then my ex got to keep it, due to size :slight_smile: ). He is usually 265-285# at 6’1" and I am 155, 5’9". No depressions, minimal turning, really, the best mattress. Now I’m trying to duplicate it. All I remembered is it was latex. I bought it online. I’m thinking Sleep on Latex, interestingly enough, did not give them a thought until reading “gimmethegoodstuff” mattress reviews. I was impressed with the company’s responses. I am now 54, and waking up with numbness and tingling in my fingers. I have a traditional bed with a pillowtop, which of course created a hole as deep as the pillowtop. For me, I’m considering Nest Latex Hybrid, Sleep on Latex and my initial choice, Plush Botanical Bliss. Tomorrow I am ordering, right now it looks like Sleep on Latex.

11

Hi Godzilla Girl,

Welcome to the Mattress Forum! :slight_smile:

The old Tropical Oasis line had around five beds in it, and back about a decade ago all of them used 8"-9" of latex in the core – I believe mostly a synthetic Dunlop. There was also a considerable amount of lower-density polyfoam used in the quilt of these mattresses. There was a 1.0 oz. fiber layers of FlameGuard (their FR fiber) blended with wool and silk beneath the covering – that’s where the small amount of silk was located.

All three of those mattresses use good quality and durable materials (the Nest Bedding product would use springs instead of a latex core, which would be different form your old mattress). Nest Bedding and Sleep on Latex are site members here, which means that I think very highly of them and that I believe that they compete well with the best in the industry in terms of their quality, value, service, knowledge, and transparency. They are extremely knowledgeable about latex and different configurations. There are also other members here of the site who are extremely experienced with different latex configurations and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them for your consideration.

When picking out a new mattress you can’t test in person, I would start with a more detailed phone conversation with one of these manufactures, as they’ll have your best interests at heart and can help “talk you through” the specifics of their mattresses and the properties and “feel” of the materials they are using and the options they have available that may be the best “match” for you based on the information you provide them. While I wouldn’t necessarily try to exactly duplicate your old mattress (it does use quite a bit of lower-density polyfoam, which isn’t very durable, and also I believe most of the latex they were using back then was a more basic synthetic Dunlop), I would tell any manufacturer about your body type, sleeping style and what you liked about the feel of your old Tropical Oasis mattress, and then the manufacturer can make suggestions based upon their familiarity with your old mattress, their years of experience, and the “averages” of other customers that are similar to you. They will know more about “matching” their specific mattress designs, options, and firmness levels to different body types, sleeping positions, and preferences (or to other mattresses that they are familiar with) than anyone else.

Phoenix