Hi, my name is Bruce and I have worked in the mattress industry for 12 years now. Many years on the retail side of the bedding business taught be that a mattress can be the most difficult piece of furniture to pick out for your home. There are several major contributing factors to this:
Allow me elaborate as it is not my intention to put down the intention of this forum. I am very much in favor of the idea of customers connecting and sharing their experiences with particular beds. If a retailer is selling quality goods, they should have nothing to fear from people giving honest testimonials using their products. Reading reviews & buying a bed is a lot different than reading reviews & buying a tv (for example). A great quality set looks good not matter who is buying it...big or small, tall or short, average consumer or tech guru. That's NOT the case with a mattress. It's a touchy subject but BODY WEIGHT is one of the most important variables when buying a mattress....people come in all shapes & sizes. Many 'larger than average' folks have gotten burned in the past buying a bed built for the 'average person'. Slick salesmen in action. I think this is where LATEX seems to have established an almost cult-like following (especially in this forum). In general, latex foam beds have greater durability than the average bed....nothing magic about it. They also cost more than the average bed. They also tend to carry some of the best warranties. It's a simple matter of getting what you pay for. As for the great debates.... Natural vs Synthetic Talalay vs Dunlop 34 ILD vs 36 ILD etc etc etc If you find yourself LIVING on a forum such as this, you're probably over thinking it. I could show a customer hundreds of good quality beds on paper....but none of them would be a good value if they're not comfortable to the person who is going to be sleeping on it. If you're shopping for a latex foam mattress, have done some basic homework on price & quality, then shop your local stores. Find what you like (that you can physically try out) & what you don't....and then certainly see if you can find a better deal on that bed online or from a competitor. A word of caution though: If you find one that absolutely works for YOU, don't try skimp out buying a 'knock off' online just to save a couple bucks. If I gave 5 different bed companies the same 'recipe' for a bed, I am going to have 5 different feeling beds at the end of the day. You may be suprised when the UPS guy arrives with your bargain. I shake my head and grin reading about how folks seem to be trying to find the foam density that best defines them as a person. Use common sense, define your budget, and find the best quality mattress for the money you have to spend. The people who AGONIZE over the decision for months (sometimes literally years) are the ones who will never find the 'perfect bed'....but have an 'expert' opinion on everything. It's like having an tech guy who knows everything about the latest cutting edge technology......but he's still running the same Windows 98 machine he's had for over a decade. Most folks who will post to an internet forum like this (provided they're not reviewing a purchase they've made...which would actually be VERY HELPFUL to those seeking guidance) have never stepped foot into a bedding factory nor do they have any first hand experience with the raw materials. They're simply reiterating stats & figures they've read online from random web sites. The Costcos, Sam's Clubs, and Big Lots of the world are NOT sleep shops and often carry mid-range bedding offerings IMO.......don't get me wrong, you can find some very decent values there, but have realistic expectations. A gas station can sell you milk & bread, but you don't go there to do your weekly grocery shopping. Just sharing a grounded perspective of the situation....best of luck to all of you on your mattress searches. There ARE good beds out there that won't cripple your pocket book. Visiting a local retailer is a good place to start. If you buy from a retailer that treats you right, REVIEW their STORE online (via Google, Yahoo, etc etc); this will help other weed out the good stores from the places just out to make a buck. Bottom line: Shop around......find good quality....don't over pay. It's not rocket science; it's bed shopping :-) -B |
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Haha...well, not my intent to sound like a "slick salesman"....hence I'm not trying plug any certain brand, style, or store. I absolutely advocate doing reasonable homework and not buying the first thing you see. I stumbled across this forum and my impression is that there are a lot of people 'over thinking it'. Each person should do as much or as little research as they need to for them to be comfortable purchasing a big ticket item like a bed.
I just found a high degree of irony in a site labled "what is the best mattress"....when in realitiy, there is no best mattress for everyone. Best is a completely relative term depending on an individuals needs. In my opinion the most helpful tools to a prospective bed buyer would be reviews of exact models & SKUs and/or reviews of peoples customer service experience with at Store X, Y, or Z. Getting into the cellular structure of each 1/2" of layer of foam seems like overkill (in my humble opinion) and I can see how it would muddy the waters rather than provide insight for even the most educated of consumer. Again, just my opinion having some experience in several different corners of the bedding industry. My best to you all. This message was modified Mar 20, 2011 by Bruce_G
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Bruce you are so right. I haven't been on this site in awhile and checked back. In my case I was searching for info for budget. If you start looking into all the details about every layer of your mattress, I believe you are killing yourself with information. I have found from reading these threads, their is no right mattress for everyone. I got extrememly lucky that the two products I purchased worked for me. I went to a retail location, found good product and gambled a bit on a topper online.
Look around and shop and find what works for you. This message was modified Mar 28, 2011 by a moderator
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laketrout wrote: Bruce you are so right. I haven't been on this site in awhile and checked back. In my case I was searching for info for budget. If you start looking into all the details about every layer of your mattress, I believe you are killing yourself with information. I have found from reading these threads, their is no right mattress for everyone. I got extrememly lucky that the two products I purchased worked for me. I went to a retail location, found good product and gambled a bit on a topper online.
Look around and shop and find what works for you. |
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laketrout wrote: Bruce you are so right. I haven't been on this site in awhile and checked back. In my case I was searching for info for budget. If you start looking into all the details about every layer of your mattress, I believe you are killing yourself with information. I have found from reading these threads, their is no right mattress for everyone. I got extrememly lucky that the two products I purchased worked for me. I went to a retail location, found good product and gambled a bit on a topper online.
Look around and shop and find what works for you. I am a believer they people and mattress construction varies too much to be able to form a matrix and come up with the magic formula for finding the perfect mattress for you. We're still happy with our purchase about 10 months ago and only used a modest amount of info I found on the net to find a mattress that seems to be working for us and we're not loosing sleep fretting over the construction and materials. More than one cause for lose of sleep. YMMV |
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Sall wrote:
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perchancetodream wrote:
Case in point: You want to know how HARD or resilient a specific innerspring is to try and determine how supportive it is. You might know the coil count and gauge of wire, you might even know the # of turns in each coil, the carbon content of the wire used, how its tempered, etc. What none of these individual #'s tell you is the actual strength of the wire....its a guessing game even with all the specs you can think of. If manufacturers wanted to make it easy they could just calculate the specific spring rate per square inch of the mattress, and how much the rate increases or decreases with compression to take into effect the progressive rate of the spring system, it would also give you an idea of how flexible the coil system is. Some technical data can quantify performance to a degree, most technical data on mattresses are simply parts of the formula that most people could simply not use to determine said performance. What I am trying to say is that even the hardest of specs do not describe to you how something will conform to your body shape. Sometimes just knowing the basics is enough. |
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budgy wrote:
Case in point: You want to know how HARD or resilient a specific innerspring is to try and determine how supportive it is. You might know the coil count and gauge of wire, you might even know the # of turns in each coil, the carbon content of the wire used, how its tempered, etc. What none of these individual #'s tell you is the actual strength of the wire....its a guessing game even with all the specs you can think of. If manufacturers wanted to make it easy they could just calculate the specific spring rate per square inch of the mattress, and how much the rate increases or decreases with compression to take into effect the progressive rate of the spring system, it would also give you an idea of how flexible the coil system is. Some technical data can quantify performance to a degree, most technical data on mattresses are simply parts of the formula that most people could simply not use to determine said performance. What I am trying to say is that even the hardest of specs do not describe to you how something will conform to your body shape. Sometimes just knowing the basics is enough. See we're talking the same language so to speak. A lot of times the so called "tech" info given doesn't help much. In the example you give much of the info is of no real use. What I'd want to know is spring rate (spring rate doesn't change with deflection unless we talking of varible pitch springs) and how high up on the stress strain curve you are with and inetnded load. Get too high up on the curve and springs could yield, sag, and or even break with use. Tis posible to design 2 spring with same spring rate that behave in totally different ways. So just knowing wire ga. # of turns, carbon content of the wire, etc. doesn't really tell you much but might be impressive to those that are not techically savy in this area.
Same can be said for foam. See the word "poly" used fairly often here but that doesn't mean much as defination of poly is many. Are we talking polyethylene, polycarbonate, polyurethane, etc. With plastics, polymers are a joining of many monomers. Doesn't really mean anything useful as far as mattress selection is concerned. IMO unless you bleed green, I'd not wory about natural Vs synthetic materials. Big thing now in the area of Polyurethane is soy based PU. While soy may be a natural material I wouldn't call the PU derived from soy exactly natural and to top it off, the soy component isn't very high. About the highted you see being promoted is 30% but as PU needs a catalast the real amount of soy derived PU is a lot closer to 15% max.
As I said before, there is more than one reason to loose sleep and info overload can be one, expecially if it contains information you fully don't understand. |
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You have of course given us a perfect example of redundant information, Bruce! But in my observation this isn't usually the sort of information that people in this forum are wanting to know. As for natural materials being no better than synthetic ones, it stands to reason that man-made fabrics are cheaper to manufacture, resulting in bigger profit margins for the mattress makers/sellers. As long as this cost-saving is genuinely passed on to the consumer, I am happy for people to be offered the choice. However, one would have to take into account other considerations, such as the environmental cost, health risks, etc. |
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While I appreciate Bruce's view, I pretty much totally disagree with it. Only because I've sunk over $5000 into three mattresses in the last five years, while a $300 mattress got me through the 7 years before that with far less pain and suffering - literally. I regret letting that one go just because I got married. It would've saved me countless hours of sleep. I will never take as an answer that I should stop thinking about it. I will never shut down and trust my sales agent again because EVERY one of the last three mattresses was wonderful for the first 6 months, but then each one invariably formed a "normal body impression" that made my back ache and my wife and I each fall into our respective chasms, with a mountain ridge between us. So Bruce, I will not shop only on comfort experienced in the store. I will continue to spend sleepless nights looking for a cure to my sleepless nights, because if I actually sleep on my bed for 8 hours I will be so pained in the morning I won't be able to get up anyway. All I want is a new copy of my old mattress, but I can't find it. So I spend my hours trying to find sleep. It was a Sealy Posturepedic Firm "Prime Ltd". |
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Bruce, with all due respect, I think you misunderstand the nature of this forum. As I see it this forum is largely about latex and other foam type mattresses, not so much about S brands and other "regular" type mattresses. Also this forum tends to attract those who have mattress "issues": those who have trouble getting a good night's rest and those who have bought 1, 2 or 3 S brand or similar conventional mattresses and still cannot get a good night's sleep for one reason or another. They come here and read about things like latex mattresses, DIY mattresses, and thus the discussion of the right foams for their bodies and conditions. If you're going to build your own mattress you certainly may find a forum like this one very useful. Someone mentioned Tempurpedic. It is the most popular mattress in the USA. It is also the most RETURNED mattress in the USA. It is also the most advertised mattress in the USA. Just sayin'. Frankly I think Tempurpedics are more for those who have no sleep issues, as opposed to those who do have bad backs, sore neckes, fibromyalgia, etc.. But that's just my opinion, others may differ. The point is that Tempurpedic is just foam, no springs, and while their particular brand of visco foam is unique, there are other foams one can buy that are similar, for a helluva lot less money. Which is one reason why people come here to learn about ILD's and densities and etc of various foams. I have slept on Tempurpedic, hated it, and I would guess that most people with any difficulties with finding the right mattress would be better off with latex, latex+visco or latex+springs(+visco). Latex. You can buy one that Sterns and Foster makes or you can buy one from one of the companies that specialize in latex mattresses. Either way, before sinking a couple grand or more into a latex mattress you may want to learn something about ILD's and Talalay vs. Dunlop, natural vs. synthetic, etc.. Some people can sleep on anything that is about the right feel for them. Those people can walk into any store, bargain a little and get a decent matress for well under a grand; heck, maybe they can sleep on a $300 mattress with no problems. Other people have to find just the right kind of support and feel for themselves and those are the kinds of people who tend to gravitate to this forum, to learn the ins and outs of mattresses (no pun intended ;-D ). |