Thank you so much!

Discussions General Mattresses Questions
1

I want to thank you for the information you have on this website. We were ready to spend a lot of money on the Beautyrest Legend (Sleepy’s), aka the Beautyrest Black (Mattress Firm). I came home to do some research and stumbled upon your site. After many hours readying your basic information and some of the forum questions and answers, I began the search again. You recommended looking at the Restonic brand and I found it at 3 Raleigh NC stores. However, each store had mattresses with different names and price points. I knew that I wanted Latex, at least in the comfort layer, because I am so sick of trying to sleep in the body impressions of our current mattress (actually, our last 3 mattresses!).

Today I took my husband with me to see the mattresses I had found. We went to Heavner’s Furniture Mart (a discounter) in Raleigh NC (they also have a store in Smithfield). I told the salesman that I wanted to know what was in the layers, top to bottom. He called the sales rep, Travis, who answered every question I had and actually sounded like he worked for you! Here is the information he told me about Restonic’s Danby Euro Top:

The Quilt (over 2" thick). It is covered in a performance knit that includes some silk and wool, but not so much that it isn’t breathable or too hot. Under that is a fire retardant fabric (required by law). Theirs is a natural material, and not a chemical spray (which some companies use.) Under that is a quilting poly that is ½" thick and is made of a collection of fibers. That is quilted together with 2 layers of HD foam that are 1 ¼" thick, and are a pressure relieving material.

The Comfort layer: The top layer is 1 ½" Talalay latex (ISD #30…I’m not sure I have those letters right, it was hard to hear in the store). Their latex is from Europe (the US manufacturer is going out of business?) Under that is 1 ½" of medical grade foam (like they use in hospitals, for durability and pressure relief). Under that is 1 ½" of 5 lb. Memory foam. He said memory foam sleeps hot so they put it at the bottom, and that it has a “sinking feeling” He talked about the sink in and sink down stuff, just like on your site! Their foams are all made in the USA (He said I asked a good question when I asked where their foam was made!)

The Core: Restonic apparently invented the marvelous middle but their patent ran out in the 90’s, so now other companies also put more support in the center third of their mattresses. The center coils have a 12 ½ gauge and the top and bottom thirds are 13 ½ gauge. (I don’t remember how many coils are in the King, but the queen size has 884, wrapped)

In addition, he said the mattresses are all handcrafted, the company does no advertising. Their return ratio is .002%. This mattress is $1395 at Heavners.

2

Hi donna,

You are missing just a little bit of information that I would need to make some meaningful comments about the mattress (see this article).

From what you are describing the layers you have identified are …

Quilt:
Fabric: Performance knit that includes “some” silk and wool but they don’t list the amount. Both silk and wool are temperature regulating materials and more would probably be “better” in terms of temperature. I would guess that the silk and wool would likely be a low percentage compared to the synthetic fibers that are in the fabric because they are more costly materials.

Fire retardant fabric (required by law): They say that this is a natural material but this is unlikely because the only “natural” fire retardant would be wool. It’s probably an inherent viscose/silica fire retardant of some type (see post # here) which would certainly be “safe” if it is but it’s also not “natural”.

Quilting poly that is ½" thick and is made of a collection of fibers: If this is made of a collection of fibers then it wouldn’t be polyfoam and would most likely be polyester fibers. Polyfoam is a foam … not fibers. Fibers will compress and develop some impressions over time but since this is only 1/2" thick this by itself isn’t likely to be a significant issue.

2 layers of HD foam that are 1 ¼" thick, and are a pressure relieving material: I’m not clear if each layer is 1 1/4" thick or whether both are 1 1/4" thick together and this would make a difference in terms of it being a weak link in the mattress.

Comfort layers:

[quote]The top layer is 1 ½" Talalay latex (ISD #30):[/quote] This is a high quality material and is probably blended Talalay. The ILD (also called IFD) number is a firmness rating which is not necessary to know when you are testing a mattress locally because you can feel how firm or soft a mattress feels “as a whole” to you based on your testing.

[quote]1 ½" of medical grade foam:[/quote] I would want to know the type of foam (polyfoam, latex foam, memory foam) and the density because “medical grade” isn’t particularly meaningful and doesn’t tell you the type of foam they are using.

1 ½" of 5 lb. Memory foam. He said memory foam sleeps hot so they put it at the bottom, and that it has a “sinking feeling”: This is a high quality material and as they say using materials that are less breathable deeper in the mattress can help with temperature regulation because the upper layers have the most effect on regulating the sleeping temperature of a mattress. Having a faster response material over a slower response material is also a “feel” that many people like (see post #4 here). It’s possible that this is only a “belly band” that covers the middle third of the mattress as well so I would check to see if this is the case.

Support Core:
Foam encased pocket coil with 12 ½ gauge in the center and the top and bottom thirds are 13 ½ gauge: This would be a good quality pocket coil with a firmer gauge wire but the innerspring in a mattress wouldn’t generally be the weak link of a mattress anyway so your testing on the mattress in terms of PPP would be more important than the type of innerspring that it used. I would want to know the density of the polyfoam that is used in the foam encasement though … especially if you tend to sit on the sides of your mattress.

Overall … you are “almost there” but as you can see in this article … if there are 2" or more of unknown quality/density materials I would want to know the density of all the “missing” layers before making a purchase and without this there really isn’t any way to identify any potential weak links in the mattress or make more meaningful comparisons to other mattresses. With only 1.5" of latex this also wouldn’t really be what most people would call a latex hybrid since the latex is only a minority of the comfort layers in terms of thickness.

If you can provide the missing information I’d be happy to make a few more comments about the mattress or help you identify any potential weak links.

I would also make sure that any mattress you purchase there has a factory warranty and is new because they also appear to sell “scratch and dent” or other “liquidated” mattresses which generally don’t have a factory warranty.

Phoenix