Trying to make sense of it all......

Today I went to a store called Fly By Night in Northampton, Ma., to see their Latex Bliss Mattresses. I tried the 8", the 10", and when I laid on the 12" (called “Beautiful”) I thought I died and went to heaven. But when I asked about the ILD of the various layers, I was told “We don’t know, and we can’t find out. We tried, but Latex Bliss said that’s proprietary information that they don’t give out”. Huh?? So I felt like I accomplished zip.
I can see this isn’t going to get any easier.

Hi Fran,

ILD is a “comfort spec” not a “quality spec” and when you’re testing a mattress in person it’s not something that’s important to know because your body and personal testing will tell you whether a mattress is soft and/or firm enough in the comfort and support layers to provide you with the PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) that are ideal for your body type and sleeping positions.

Having said that … the specs of the PLB mattresses (with the “blue” cover) that I believe are fairly accurate are listed in post #2 here but they may not be particularly useful to you unless you are using them as a guideline for an online purchase but that may have it’s own set of challenges because the manufacturer or retailer you are working with may not have the exact same type of latex, layer thicknesses, and ILD’s or the same type of cover available so it may involve using “educated intuition” or guesswork to “translate” one design into another because every difference in design can result in a mattress that feels and performs differently.

It does point to liking soft latex in the upper layers though because the Beautiful has 6" of fairly “soft” latex in the top layers.

Phoenix