The Best Foundations or Base for a Latex or All Foam Mattress

[phoenix]

Hi hipzilla,

I’ve got an Ethan Allen Lotus frame. I love the look and “lowness” of the bed, but there are a whopping four support beams w/ legs under my current mattress and box spring. They run W → E, and there is 17.5" between beams 1 and 2, 20" between 2 and 3, and 17.5" again between 3 and 4. Everything I’ve read has told me this simply won’t do for a latex mattress.

Your bed is clearly designed for use with a bunkie board or a foundation on top of the cross beams and not meant for use directly under a mattress (you can see from the pictures as well that the mattress has a foundation underneath it). I’m not sure if you purchased the total latex mattress (in which case a foundation with gaps that are no more than 3" apart and preferably less would be best) or if your mattress is one of their hybrids with polyfoam in the base layers (in which case slightly larger gaps or a wire grid foundation would be fine) but you would need a foundation or bunkie board either way.

I’m interested in an economical, low-profile solution. I’ve seen the Crate&Barrel bunky board but along with less than stellar reviews it doesn’t seem to be highly regarded here.

Unfortunately they don’t provide any details about the details of the support surface or construction so it’s hard to tell if this would be suitable for your mattress. There are a couple of slatted bunkie board options in post #2 here (one is a higher cost and quality organic version and with the other I would want to confirm the distance between the slats).

I’ve seen the slatted bases and foundations mentioned in the OP but they all seem to be 8-10" tall. I think I can put a low-profile 5-5.5" box spring/foundation in my frame without it throwing off the look too much but there are so many options to choose from and very little detail to help differentiate between products. For instance, Walmart has four low-profile foundations from Simmons and they all run $127 in queen size. They each list different warranty periods (10 years, 20 years, 25 years) but other than that appear to be exactly the same. What’s the difference between the $127 queen-sized low-profile Simmons foundation from Walmart and the $450 equivalent from Crate&Barrel?

I don’t know the difference between the foundations outside of the appearance and externals and some of the extra features mentioned here in the more costly Triton foundations but the basic Triton foundation would be fine if your mattress has a polyfoam base layer. The Serta Stabl Base and the Sealy Shock Abbzorber base would also work fine and can be found in many stores. There is also a 5.5" KD foundation with gaps less than 3" apart and an organic cotton cover here.

Phoenix