Mattress Forum

 But it is almost impossible to find retail stores that sell latex beds so all most about everyone has to go by are the forums and buying the latex beds online.

There are reasons tempurpedics are most popular beds in America. One is they are available almost in every city and town in mattress stores.

I don't think people really want to buy a new mattress every year and if coming here and learning something about mattresses helps, I think they should spend as much time as necessary to educate themselves.  Spending several days reading about what others experience here is probably a good investment.  It doesn't take years to learn that.

I'm not an "expert" but I've had many different mattresses in my life and I know what works for me and what hasn't.  We've certainly had some very knowledgable folks visit this forum from time to time and you can usually tell when they are giving good advice or just trying to sell a position.

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. 

Look around and shop and find what works for you.

Oh, yeah, 10 minutes in the store and a friendly, bias salesman should get you what you want.   It worked before didn't it ?......when you were 12 anyway.  Information is a waste of time.....ha, ha....   The message here is to be careful what you read on the internet.  Does it make sense or sound like BS....?

Have to agree and have no bones to pick with Bruce.  Speaking as an ole/old Eng it's not all that hard to get anual about trying to do your homework.  When it comes to foams, unless you're a polymer chemist, much of what you read won't mean much and depending upon the source the info could be nothing more than marketing hype.  Same for inner spring designs, unless your are a mech. eng. or metalurgist, can you really know how good the springs are in the mattress?

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

I'm with you Sall. Personally, I wouldn't buy from a seller who thinks information about mattress construction and technical data is redundant. Always ask: who doesn't want you to know and why?

I agree with Bruce on some of these points.   Technical data is useful, however most technical information on mattresses that is available is somewhat redundant because it is not technical enough. 

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.

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.

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".

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 ).

Excellent point

I agree with a lot of what Bruce says.  Most people go down to their local Mattresses R Us, lay on a few mattresses in their price range and have it delievered the next day.  The people on this forum, though, generally don't fall under that category.  I see a lot of people that have sleep issues, not all from injuries.  My office mates tell me to just go buy a Tempur; they like theirs.  Another officemate looked at us like we were crazy; he want to Macy's found a mattress on sale, went to another store, found the same mattress and that store beat Macys by some $$$.  $1k later, he had an innerspring mattress.  I liked the Tempur, but I'm worried about heat issues, tossing and turning from within a canoe and buying an eco-unfriendly mattress.  And in the $2k range, "organicy" latex is available and I'm willing to spend a but more for organicy.  Unfortunately, most of the quality latex bed deals are only available via online merchants, hence people agonize over the unknown.  And some of us just like being anal :-)  And Bruce is generally correct in his assessment of you get what you pay for or TANSTAAFL.  I'm trying to find the sweet spot where you get what you pay for without paying for a designer name.  I think Tempurs are overpriced because they spend a huge amount on marketing.

Fortunately, I have a Savvy Rest dealer near me and I liked the mattress. Going to Berkeley to visit a couple of foo foo organic latex bed stores just to be able to compare and visit the Cactus Nursery :-)

I did, however, purchase a reclaimed wood bed sight unseen  :-)

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That sounds about right...  I never really thought about it like that