Summary of Decision to Purchase a Bed

Discussions General Mattresses Questions
1

After a month of research, I thought I’d summarize what I’ve learned from this site, as well as from other sites, old bed guy, sleep sherpa, and sleep like the dead to name a few, that assist folks to make an informed decision regarding a mattress and foundation purchase. Some small market manufacturers and retailers offer good education on how to purchase a cost effective, durable, comfortable bed as well, notably the sleep essentials retailer.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to rely on any one resource or website for assistance because the first lesson made clear by many of these websites, deliberate or not, is to Trust No One. As such, much of my time researching was spent cross-checking and verifying information gleamed from one source or another. For better or for worse, here is what I have learned:

  1. The major bed manufacturers are controlled by two different companies that have a virtual duopoly on the industry. They offer substandard beds that include a high percentage and variety of cheap petro-chemical foams to save costs in manufacturing, and to get you back into the mattress store as quickly as possible because preto-chemical foams are not durable. These entities are adept marketers. They have propagated many deceptions designed to reduce manufacturing costs and increase profit at purchase, such as two-sided mattresses are bad, foam encased mattresses offer more support, pillow tops are good, etc. However, despite everything I know now, the lure of the fancy mattress store or the mattress department in back of the trusted family furniture store is still compelling.

  2. Perto-chemical foams, otherwise known as polyurethane foam, is bad news. Memory foam is polyurethane foam. This stuff is essentially a plastic. It is cheap to manufacture and manipulate into various foams offering very different varieties and feels, levels of softness, etc. For instance, a standard polyurethane foam feels and reacts to pressure much differently than a memory foam. However, their ability to support weight and their durability are similar.

  3. Latex foam is natural and vastly more durable than petro-chemical foam. It comes from the rubber tree. As such, it is much more expensive. Nevertheless, all of these websites -in one way or another- strongly urge folks to take a hard look at latex, instead of pretro-chemical. Many small market manufacturers offer latex mattresses that turn out to be less expensive than the traditional high dollar mattresses from the big manufactures.

  4. An alternative to an all latex foam mattress is a hybrid mattress. This is an inner spring mattress with a nice layer of latex on top, and on the bottom if it is a two-sided mattress. An all foam mattress is inert, where as a hybrid mattress offers some liveliness and bounciness, like a traditional mattress most folks have used at one time or another.

  5. Adjustable foundations, as opposed to a classic inner spring, are considered by the websites to be a worthwhile addition to a good mattress. Adjustable foundations are akin to hospital beds, meaning the occupant of the bed can raise their head and back, as well as their legs, in combination or independently. Adjustable foundations have been around a long time and are durable, maintenance free, and will last approx. 15 years. Although significantly more expensive than a simple box spring, they are not much more expensive than fancy nonadjustable foundations offered by some retailers and mattress manufacturers. Good feature-rich adjustable foundations can be had a reasonable price.

  6. Try to find a local mattress manufacturer or assembler that offers natural latex mattresses or some derivative at reasonable prices. There are many good ones out there.

As a result of this research, I have chosen to purchase a hybrid latex mattress from a mattress assembler that happens to be endorsed on this website. While it is not a local business for me, I chose them because they have been in business a long time, the embody much of what I’ve learned here and other places, they are transparent about what is in the mattress, and their products are priced appropriately.

2

Sounds like you put a lot of time and research into looking for your new mattress. The market is heavily saturated here in the United States with memory foam mattress manufacturers. Seems like polyurethane and latex is the current fad now in beds. I remember back in the 1970s and early 80s that waterbeds were the craze.

Good luck with your new mattress!

TD Bauer

3

Hi sammie,

Thanks for adding your thoughts on your mattress buying process. I agree with much of what you stated, and there’s a few things I’d like to add.

You certainly should verify information of what is contained within a mattress, but this is where I actually recommend to reply upon the guidance of a reliable mattress vendor or manufacturer. As far as believing everything you read online, unfortunately it is the case that you’d want to educate yourself first so that you can personally validate information that you come across.

There are roughly 500 mattress brands available domestically, but according to Furniture Today approximately 92% of sales are from the Top 15 brands. Online-only companies are eating a bit into this percentage. Serta and Simmons are “partners” (owner by AOT Bedding Super Holdings, Ares Management and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan), and Tempurpedic and Sealy combined to form Tempur/Sealy. Select Comfort comes in at #5, followed by Corsicana, Therapedic, Comfort Solutions, Englander and Restonic. These are all separate companies from Serta, Simmons and Tempur/Sealy.

Unfortunately many of these manufacturers are using lower density foams that do result in a shorter comfort life, but there are many polyfoams that are durable. True high-density and high-resiliency polyfoam, and even some of the newer generation of high performance ultra-high density polyfoams, can be quite durable. But these are not what you’d generally find being used by the largest mattress companies.

While I respect that this may be your personal opinion, I wouldn’t agree that all polyfoam is “bad news”, and personally wouldn’t have a concern as long as any polyfoam being considered had at least a CertiPUR-US certification and met the minimum durability guidelines here.

Memory foam is technically a slower recovery type of polyurethane foam, that is correct. Although the starting materials in each case belong to similar broad classes (polyisocyanate and polyols in each case, together with water), those starting materials differ in their specifics, in very important ways. The HR and conventional flexible polyurethane foams are made primarily from polyether polyols that have hydroxyl equivalent weights of 1000 to 2000, whereas VE foams are made primarily from polyols that have equivalent weights that are typically 230 to 350, combined with higher equivalent weight polyols to produce a polymer with a glass transition temperature (Tg) above - 20°C and up to 50°C. While polyurethane is probably the largest member of the polymer (or plastic) group, polyurethane foam takes on many different properties from the layperson term of “plastic”.

Lower density polyfoam is less expensive to produce than higher-density poly foam, and both will generally be less expensive to produce than latex foam.

There are large differences in the ability of visco-elastic memory foam and standard polyfoam to support weight, and there are also large variances in their durability. Memory foam will generally have a very low resilience and a higher hysteresis (not be very supportive), where polyfoam can be made in lower ILDs that won’t be very supportive, or higher ILDs that can be quite supportive. The durability of both memory foam and polyfoam is strongly correlated to the density.

The rubber component of latex foam can be made from an all-natural source (referred to commonly as 100% NR latex), an all-synthetic source (100% SBR), or a blend of the two. The sourcing of the raw materials and the involved production process are major reasons for the higher cost of latex foam.

Excellent point.

There are many all-latex mattresses that are quite buoyant in their feel, some even more “lively” than their innerspring counterparts. A foam mattress using memory foam to some extent can be very “dead” feeling and have a low resilience.

Whether or not a power foundation would make a good addition to someone’s sleep set would depend upon their own personal preferences and personal value equation. I would suggest that anyone looking at a mattress take the time to determine if they will actually use the features of a power foundation to justify the added cost, as many retailers, especially the “big box” stores, are showing their mattresses almost exclusively upon power foundations to capitalize upon the current popularity of these items (and the larger sale amount :wink: ).

A foundation is the non-flexing bottom part of a sleep set (what some people mistakenly refer to with most beds as a box-spring). Perhaps you were referring to platform beds and bed sets? You are correct that many of these can be quite expensive.

That is excellent advice, as if someone is considering latex and has never slept upon it nothing can replace their own careful and personal testing in a showroom.

I’m happy that you’ve found something that you like – congratulations! :cheer: Many people I know in the industry who can sleep on anything they want choose a pocketed spring system with latex on top, although that should have no bearing on what anyone else decides to purchase. What did you end up ordering? I’d be interested in learning about your feedback on the item once you’ve had a chance to sleep upon it for a while.

Thanks for letting me add to your commentary.

Phoenix

4

Thanks for adding the additional info and clarifications to my posting.

I ordered 2 twin xl hybrid mattresses from Arizona Premium Mattresses. And, I plan to purchase a split king Leggett & Platt adjustable base from Amazon.com, which seems to offer best prices thru their marketplace. I am looking at Prodigy or Scape. Haven’t decided just yet. Thanks again.

5

Hi sammie,

Thanks for the update! You certainly did make a good quality/value purchase for your mattress. I hope that you’ll be able to take some time and comment upon these mattresses once you’ve had a chance to use them for a while on whatever adjustable bed base you choose.

Regarding the Leggett bases, make sure that what you’re looking at online are not “gray market” items (returns/refurbished items), and also make sure that you’re comparing the exact same models, as Leggett is constantly changing their adjustable bed landscape, and they introduced some new models at the Winter Market, and they are offering different models to some brick and mortar retailers versus some of their online e-tailers, although the names will be similar. You may have already determined that, but I just wanted to give you a heads up.

Phoenix

6

I want to provide a review for folks here on my experiences with Arizona Premium Mattresses, mattresses.net, as well as with the Leggett & Platt Prodigy 2.0 adjustable bases we recently purchased. We purchased a split king hybrid mattress from APM over the phone since we do not live in the Phoenix area. This consists of 2 separate twin XL hybrid mattresses: L&P pocket coils with a 3" latex topper zipped into a mattress cover/encasement. We ordered a split king size to accommodate adjustable bed bases for my wife and I.

After emailing some information on our preferences, Ken at APM recommended a medium firm talalay latex topper. A buyer can specify soft, medium, or firm for the 3" latex topper.

The mattresses for split king (two twin XL) arrived in 3 medium sized boxes. Two of the boxes contained the compressed inner coils, the remaining box contained the mattress covers and latex.

Although it took some work, putting each mattress together was easy. APM has a video on their website to assist. It is obvious everything is very high quality, particularly the wool/bamboo cover. Each mattress is heavy and unwieldy, so I would suggest putting it together in or nearby the bedroom.

The mattresses are soft to touch, but firm, and extremely supportive, which is what we were expecting, and we are pleased. Given the obvious quality, we expect they will be nice to sleep on and supportive for years to come. I would like to try the softer latex topper to compare, but that entails returning our medium firmness topper and waiting for the softer topper, along with the associated shipping charges as I understand it. Nevertheless, we are very pleased with the mattresses!

In the future, should we need to replace something, each mattress component including the cover can be ordered separately, and easily installed. I suspect this will save costs down the road even though the initial price of the mattresses is very reasonable.

We’ve been sleeping on the mattresses for about three weeks. Previously, we had been sleeping on a 6 year old Beautyrest Black, which had huge craters and no longer offered support. Given the quality of the APM mattresses, the purchasing experience, and all of the transparency involved, I will never buy a beautyrest or similar mattress again.

We purchased the Leggett & Platt Prodigy 2.0 split king adjustable bases from an amazon seller, Sleep Geekz, located in FL. We decided on the Prodigy bases in order to get the additional “pillow” adjustment not offered on the less expensive bases. Even though we received a good price in comparison to offers from other retailers, I am not sure the adjustable bases are worth the expense. We will find out once the novelty wears off.

The bases were delivered on a pallet, and each base had to be carried up to the bedroom, which was difficult. Once un-boxed, setup is easy. They are ready to go. There is no assembly. The bases are clearly very nice and well made. L&P recommends testing all of the functions before final positioning, which we did. The remote control is also very nice. Each remote is set for its particular base, as is the bed Bluetooth address. T bluetooth app on each of our apple iPads works well. Connecting was a cinch. The app offers more functionality than the remote, such as timer and alarm. However after 3 weeks, we prefer using the remote, which is more convenient for us.

The adjust-ability of the bases is fun. We don’t have a health problems that necessitate adjustable bases, but we do read in bed and watch tv from time to time. The adjustable bases have been helpful in that regard, but certainly not to overwhelmingly amazing or remotely a necessity. I actually like the massage feature of the bed best. It offers a lot of different massage settings: head, feet, both, wave, etc. I have been falling asleep to the wave massages, which has been fun.

I wholeheartedly recommend the hybrid mattress from APM! With respect to adjustable bases, I recommend thinking twice before purchase.

7

Hi sammie,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such a detailed response to your mattress and adjustable bed assembly process. While it’s all still relatively new, I’m glad that you are sleeping well and like the new mattresses and bases.

I’m looking forward to your future updates on the mattresses and your conclusion on your adjustable bed bases.

Phoenix