A little over a year ago, we purchased a Novosbed Aria and were generally pleased with it for some time… (You can see my comments on it in the Novosbed review thread). In the end, however, the memory foam just wasn’t for us – realizing that the properties of the memory foam mattress were highly dependent on room temperature… Over the winter months when our room temperature was about 66 degrees at night, the Novosbed felt great… But once summertime came, and room temperature was more like 78 degrees F, the mattress became too soft, and we would wake up with lower back pain. Since we needed a new mattress for our guest room, we moved the Aria into there to replace an old innerspring mattress.
About 6 weeks ago, we decided to opt for a Personal Comfort A8 sleep-number-like air mattress. On top of the air bladders, it came with 2" of convoluted foam of questionable quality and unknown specifications… On top of that, it had 2" of gel memory foam – again, no specifications. Needless to say, the trial period has not gone well with it. I have removed the two 2" foam layers, and have replaced them with 2 dunlop latex toppers. The layer next to the bladders is 2" dunlop, 30 ILD. On top of that, I have 2" dunlop 20 ILD. We’re happier with those comfort layers as opposed to the foam that came with it – but theres a problem… For reasons that I believe Phoenix has gone into regarding shortcomings of air as a support layer, we’re having problems. With the air mattresses set on the lower side, the comfort layers feel fantastic – but we’re waking up in the middle of the night with back pain. I more or less feel like I’m being folded up like a cheap suit and end up with lumbar pain, to the point where I just end up getting out of bed. If we set the bladders a little firmer, we end up with pressure point problems - hip and rib pain. I sleep primarily on my side, sometimes on my stomach. I’m 5’7", 175 lbs. She falls asleep on her back, but quickly changes to stomach or side. She’s 4’10" 145 lbs.
So… We’ll be initiating a return of the air bed… This morning, I ordered a queen medium BME from Brooklyn Bedding. Of course comfort is highly subjective – but from an objective point of view, do you think the BME will be a better choice to take care of the support issues we are having, while at the same time providing a comfort layer that is compatible to our sleep habits? While the latex toppers we are using have an ILD of 20 on the top layer, it is dunlop - and I expect the BME to be a little more bouncy due to the use of talalay…From the information I’ve seen, the medium BME has an top ILD of 28 for the talalay, and 30-32 for the dunlop.
I do suspect in some ways, this is like comparing apples to oranges due to the current use of the air bladders in our current mattress.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Rick