Mattress Forum

About us - me, I'm 6'0" 170-175lbs, 38 y.o., mainly a stomach sleeper but usually flip to my back at some point during the night.  My wife is 5'0" 110-115lbs, 36 y.o., mainly a stomach sleeper, but also flips to her back some.  We both occasionally deal with low back pain usually brought on by our workouts.  We are sleeping on a 14 year old el-cheapo king inner spring mattress we bought early on in our marriage.  We have a very thick feather bed on top of our mattress.  My wife has been having pretty bad back pain lately, so I started our mattress replacement search.  One thing that helped us both last night is that I flipped our mattress for the first time in years and fluffed up the feather bed.  We both woke up this morning with our backs feeling better than usual. 

A friend of mine recently purchased the Skybed from habitatfurnishings.com, and he and his wife both love it.  We plan to go over and try their bed out just to get the feel of a latex bed before we make any final decisions, but he has convinced me to go the latex route.  Not loving the $2,600 price tag on that bed, I started searching which led me here.  I've now read enough posts, that I'm pretty sure I want to try to do a DIY setup with latex from thefoamfactory.com aka foambymail.com.  I'm all about saving dough, and I love doing things myself.

The Skybed from Habitat is 6" of Dunlop (26 ILD) with a 3" Talalay 19 ILD over it.  I read with great interest about Freedom1955's setup here:  http://www.whatsthebest-mattress.com/forum/love-our-new-talalay-latex-mattress-foam-factory/18970-0-1.html  F1955 went with The Foam Factory setup as 6" 36 ILD, 2" 32 ILD, with 3" 20 ILD on top (all Talalay).  I'm considering setups similar to and in between these.  We are in Mississippi, so actually trying different configurations out will be impossible. 

With us used to the very plush feel of a thick feather bed, I do want to have some softness to our mattress.  However, since we both have back issues and are stomach/back sleepers, I also realize we shouldn't have something too soft.  I want to try to sleep on our new latex setup without any kind of toppers just to get the full benefits of the latex.   I've read alot about doing a split setup using Twin XL pieces so my wife and I can dial in our comfort.  However, my wife is not very picky, and she said she didn't want to hassle with a lot of combinations.  She asked me to pick out something that should work well for us both.

One question I have is on the base 6" being Talalay instead of Dunlop.  I know a lot of systems use the denser, firmer Dunlop for the base.  Do y'all see any problems with it being Talalay, especially if we go with the 36 ILD? 

I could set this bed up very similar to Habitat - 6" Talalay 36 ILD and 3" Talalay 20 ILD.  Do y'all think this would be a good setup for my wife and me given our profiles?  Here, I'm wondering if a 3" soft layer is too much for the stomach sleepers that we are?  Would we be better served with a 2" soft layer?  If so, should we consider changing the base down to the softer 29 ILD so the bed is not too firm?

What are the advantages of going with the 3 pieces as Freedom1955 did and is it worth the added cost?  If we went the 3 piece route, should we maybe go 6" 36 ILD, 2" 32 ILD, and 2" 20 ILD?  Again, thinking of moving down to 2" of the soft layer since we are stomach/back sleepers?  But moving from a thick featherbed, should we go with the 3" for the plush feel? 

Finally, should we replace our existing foundation that came with our cheap mattress that is 14 years old?  It is a platform type foundation (no actual box springs) but it does seem to have a little bit of padding on the top of it.  It appears to be level and in fine shape, but I'm not sure if this little bit of padding would be good under a latex mattress and if it is strong enough for the weight of 9" - 11" of latex.

Many thanks for any advice you all can share!

-Cliff