Mattress Forum

Michelle, I've been through so many years of pain, simply trying to get a decent night's rest, I could easily write a book on the subject.  Please pardon the length of this post, but here are a few of the conclusions I've reached:

Rule #1: Don't rely on -- or even listen to -- ANYONE'S advice.  Asking which mattress or topper is right for you is like asking what pair of shoes will be most comfortable for your feet.  So many variables are involved (your body proportions, sleep positions, the pillows you use, your mattress foundation etc etc etc), all you're going to get from other people are endless anecdotes, one subjective opinion after another.  Each opinion will make you more and more confused, and each opinion is relevant only to the person who's giving it.

The bottom line is, in today's mattress market, which is built around inferior materials and a throwaway mentality, you must invest the time it takes to find the right mattress.  That means spending at least an hour on each mattress model you're interested in.  Be sure to bring/use your own pillow(s) from home.  But even that is no guarantee of long-term comfort, as explained below.

For nearly a century, buying a bed was easy.  You'd walk into a store and have a grand total of *three* mattresses to choose from: firm, medium and soft.  And it really didn't matter which model you chose, because all three mattresses were made from quality materials that were built to last.  However, in the 1980's bed manufacturers discovered consumers could be forced to buy a new bed every few years, instead of every 10, 20 or even 30 years.  They began using cheap foams instead of wool and cotton batting, untempered springs instead of tempered, etc.  And millions of people have been struggling and suffering ever since.

Rule #2: Stick with traditional technology.  That means the less memory foam and polyurethane foam, the better.  Look at any high-end bed manufacturer (Hästens, Hypnos, VI-Spring etc) and you'll find none of them use petrochemical foams in their mattresses.  Even so-called "100% natural" latex is mostly (60%) petrochemical foam.  If you do find a mattress that still uses all natural padding and comfort layers, and no foam, you'll have to spend several thousand dollars for one.  But over time, these mattresses aren't really more expensive, because they last 20 or more years, while foams begin to compress and collapse immediately after you start sleeping on them.

Rule #3: Buy a real box spring (preferably one that's 8-way hand tied), *not* a solid foundation.  This is especially important if you're a side sleeper: no mattress by itself is able to provide adequate, long-term hip support while providing enough give for your shoulders.  Quality box springs are the primary reason why traditional "firm" mattresses sets are so comfortable, while today's "firm" mattress sets are like sleeping on concrete slabs.

If you're like most people, you don't have 7 or 8 grand (or more) to spend on a bed.  If you must use foam, fortunately a few manufacturers are beginning to sell a workable alternative: mattresses with zippered covers that allow access to (and adjustment/periodic replacement of) both the spring coil unit and foam padding.  An example is www.baybed.com, however I have no first-hand experience with this particular company or their products.

Leo, as I tried to explain, it's impossible to give a useful recommendation without knowing your body proportions, what positions you sleep in, etc.

If your mattress is sagging, or has permanent indentations and compressed areas in its comfort layers, a topper isn't going to help.  In fact most toppers will make the problem worse.  Do you sleep any better when you lay in the exact center of the mattress (directly over the center support(s) of your box spring)?  If so, your problem is likely a sagging mattress, not an overly hard one.  I should also note that Spring Air box springs are junk.  Just for a test, try putting the mattress directly on your bedroom floor and see if your sleep quality improves.

If a mattress is even, but just too firm, some people have had luck with a 3" topper (featherbed, convoluted memory or PU foam).  But these toppers may cause back or hip pain if you're a side-sleeper, or if you weigh more than average.

Currently I'm sleeping on a McRoskey mattress, "gentle" model.  It's comfortable, but at this point I can't recommend it.  After just three months some of the mattress tufts have begun to tear through the ticking, even though I'm far from overweight (5' 10", 150#) and have flipped and rotated it right on schedule.  McRoskey said they would cover it under their warranty, but frankly I see no reason why I'm not going to have the same problem with the replacement mattress.

Leo, here's our mattress history as promised.

This nightmare started about five years ago, when my partner talked me into replacing our 25 year-old, basic, inexpensive but supremely comfortable JC Penney bed.  There was nothing wrong with it that a set of sheets couldn't hide, just the normal stains that accumulate over time, even when using a mattress pad.  But still it was pretty gross, and attempts to clean the mattress failed miserably, so I agreed to dump it.

I've always understood that a comfortable bed is not an expense, it's an investment, so we didn't scrimp when we budgeted for a new bed.  Our first replacement was an $1800 Spring Air pillowtop set from Mancini's.  I explained our sleep patterns (we're side-sleepers, exclusively) to the salesman, and he insisted a pillowtop mattress was best for us.  This was the first time we let a mattress salesman talk us into something that I knew wasn't true.  Enough of our friends and family had already been through hell with pillowtops, we should have known better than to listen to this guy.  But he was simply doing what all salesmen do: trying to get rid of whichever brands and models he had the most excess stock of.

The Spring Air set was a disaster from the beginning.  Our hips were sinking way too low into the mattress, and within a week both of us started waking up with lower back pain.  We called Mancini's and -- I still don't believe we did this -- we let the clown manager talk us into "waiting until we adjust" to it, which was their way of saying, "Please go away for 30 days, until our comfort guarantee expires."  Well, we fell for that scam, and after six weeks we were in excruciating pain, and the store refused an exchange or refund.

We couldn't afford another bed at that point, so we resorted to slicing the pillowtop off the mattress with a razor blade.  We were amazed to discover we had the same hip problems and back pain, even with no top on the bed.  So we figured the problem had to be bad springs in the mattress.  We got a replacement (firm top) mattress from a family member.  Same problem!

As it turns out, our hip problems were being caused by Spring Air's crappy box spring.  We had sliced up a brand new mattress for nothing!  The same replacement mattress, on another box spring, was very comfortable -- at least for a few months, until its foam comfort layers started to compress.  It quickly became a concrete slab.  Instead of hip pain we started having neck and shoulder pain every morning, our arms were falling asleep etc.  By then our finances had recovered and we could afford to start this whole process over again.

We had been hearing a lot about the divine miracles of latex and memory foams, and we spent about three years experimenting with foam mattresses and toppers of every sort.  Not only foams but wool, featherbeds, air beds etc.  And after three years we still were waking up in pain, and couldn't sleep for longer than a few hours at a time.  I don't know how many thousands of dollars we flushed down the toilet over the course of three years, but we finally realized that FOAM = CRAP, and we needed to go back to a traditional coil mattress and box spring -- regardless of the snake oil, outrageous claims and outright lies that petrochemical companies perpetrate on consumers every year.  By then we had also sworn off products from any of the "S" companies, even Stearns & Foster (which many years ago was bought out and gutted by Sealy).

Our next purchase was a medium-range Aireloom set ($2500), which was very comfortable -- again until the comfort layers began to collapse.  Only this time it became too soft instead of too hard, and we were back to square one: hip and lower back pain every morning.  However we did get nearly a year of comfortable sleep out of it.  We replaced it with the McRoskey "gentle" mattress that we're currently sleeping on.  We couldn't afford a matching box spring for it (each piece was $2000+), so we put it on a solid foundation.  It's firmer than we'd like, but I have to say it's comfortable and an extremely even/consistent sleeping surface, no doubt because it doesn't use any foam.  We're now in the process of finding a higher-end coil box spring we can afford, to hopefully soften it up a little.  In addition, some of the mattress tufts have started to tear through the ticking, even though neither me nor my partner are overweight, and even though we've flipped and turned the mattress according to McRoskey's schedule.  They said they will cover this problem under their warranty, and we have no complaints about their customer service.  They've been extremely helpful and courteous.