Your mattress forum makes me @|@ but in a good way!! I’m a natural (and professional) analyst so the more data the better, although it can get crippling at times…I’m still more comfortable making a choice with more info than less.
Anyway, I’m headed over to Quality Sleep Shop in La Grange this afternoon to try and buy a mattress with absolutely no voice. (not sure what the deal is, but I lost it in the last 24 hours and sleeping on an air mattress isn’t about to help me get that elusive rest I need to get better…) I was looking at the Madelyn, which is “a six-inch base of all natural Talalay latex topped with two inches of latex blended with soy-based memory foam.” The tech specs aren’t there as far as density and softness, but I figure I’ll ask when I’m there - and try it out for myself…
But I haven’t seen any details in your posts (or via search) regarding soy-based memory foam.
As you mention … “information overload” can become more harmful than helpful in many cases and can lead to “paralysis by analysis” but this is always relative to each person. I tend to go too far sometimes but at least I rarely get accused of not providing enough information
Latex is latex and there is no soy in the material. On the other hand … there is soy based polyfoam (or memory foam which is a polyfoam derivative) which means that some percentage of the petrochemical polyols in the polyfoam or memory foam have been replaced with polyols that are sourced from plant oils (such as soy in this case). There’s a great deal of fanfare about this even though the percentage is small because of the green movement and environmental concerns. It’s still just polyfoam or memory foam with a different source of a percentage of one of the chemicals that is used to make it. This also means that density information is still important and is the main factor in foam durability. Soy based foam densities can be directly compared to their equivalent in “regular” polyfoam or memory foam.
If you do a forum search on “polyol” (you can click this) it will bring up most of the posts about this.
The “quality specs” are the most important to know (density etc) because the comfort specs (such as ILD or softnes firmness levels) can be tested in person and what your body tells you … especially with the help of an “expert” like Tim or his staff … are more accurate than theory in this area.
While each person has their own needs and preferences of course … This particular mattress has a latex core (very durable and adaptive to different weights and sleeping positions) and a blend of latex and polyfoam in the comfort layers. I personally like a thinner latex layer combined with a thinner memory foam layer because it has a combination of the feel of both and for many people this can be a very attractive feel.
My personal preference (and this is preference only) is having the latex layer over the memory foam layer but there are also others that may prefer it the other way around. Like all the mattresses they sell, this would be a high quality and great value mattress subject of course to making sure that it “fits” what you are looking for.
