Mattress Forum

Phoenix

Thanks for the information. We will seek out various mattress types of ILD combinations and try them. Unfortunately there is nothing in our immediate area that carries what we are looking for. So we will have to search out stores. Verlo has has latex bed that is 5 inch 35 ild and 3 inch 24 ild and that felt just a little too firm. Their other mattress was a 5" latex blend on the core with 35 ild and 2 -2" in layers of Talalay ild 19 which seemed to be too soft. So I'm thinking we need something inbetween.

                                                          sy

Assuming that you lay on the two mattresses enough (at least 15 minutes each without interruption in your "normal sleep positions" as if you were going to sleep) to tell how close they were in terms of both comfort and support, I'm guessing that 3" in the 22 range over a core in the 28-32 range would be getting even closer. You'd want to know whether the cores were Dunlop or Talalay as well.

Phoenix

Dunlop vs. talalay.  Are these ratings accurate??

Soft Dunlop:  22-30

Medium Dunlop: 31-39

Firm Dunlop: 40 and above

Soft Talalay: N2 Soft 20-24

Medium Talalay: N4 Medium 30-34

Firm Talalay: N5 Firm 35-40+

We are considering going with a dunlop core and the top talalay.

                                                    sy

Having said that, The Dunlop will probably feel a little firmer than the ratings indicate compared to Talalay. I personally would tend to move them up in the scale a little. Talalay has a little more "give" to it.

Dunlop under one layer of Talalay will also make the overall mattress feel a little firmer based on my real world testing but it was not a huge difference.

Phoenix

Just curious as well, while the goldbond is more expensive, I called the ecosleep people when I was doing my research and while they normally don't sell direct to the public, they did put me in touch with 2 dealers who would ship me a mattress at a "special price". Actually what would have happened is that ecosleep would have drop shipped an order I placed with their dealer. The best price of the 2 dealers I talked to was $1439 (including shipping). What did they quote you at Verlo?

Was it the triumph you tried?

Phoenix

Added: The price I quoted above was one of the dealers and in looking at my notes it wasn't the best price of the two. The other one quoted $1350 including shipping. The mattress was (from top to bottom) 2" 19, 2" 24, and 5" 36. All Talalay. This was for either the Cassidy or the Sundance (different covers).

Also corrected virtue and triumph which I had mixed up

The ones we tried at Verlo were the harmony virtue - 5" Talalay 35 ILD core and 2 - 2 inch talalay ILD 19   price $1668  queen

The other was the harmony - 5" Talalay 35 ILD core and 3" talalay ILD 24  price $1538  queen.

Also the talalay is a blend and I was looking at more organic type products. I realize they are more expensive and I'll have to set a budget but would like to have a sound product.

Appreciate your insight. Looks like fall brings on some pretty good sales. So the search will continue and we need to try out some of the different lines out there.

                                                                  sy

Your thoughts on Habitat Furnishings and OMI. I know OMI is very high price but their product looks excellent.

                                                  sy

About OMI and "organics" in general.

There is a lot of misinformation here and this misinformation was part of a long conversation I had today and has also been the topic of other long conversations with many others.

In general, people are misusing the term "organic" and confusing it with "natural". People are also putting organic covers on mattresses that have all natural materials like 100% natural Talalay or Dunlop and then calling the mattress organic. This is absolute misinformation.

At the moment (and this may soon change) there is only one type of latex that has been certified as organic latex and it comes from Latex Green. It is dunlop latex. They also make a 100% natural dunlop latex.

Up till now, I and many others believed that the only major difference between the two was that the organic version came from rubber trees that had been segregated for a few years and didn't use any pesticides in the early years of the rubber trees' growth. This (and some other things as well) was part of the process that was required to label it as "certified organic". The consensus was that other than that it was pretty much the same and it certainly felt the same as the 100% natural. Some information I found out today is that it may be a higher quality than their 100% natural latex. It apparently doesn't "flake" when you cut it into layers and this was surprising even to the person who told me (Ken from a previous post). This indicates that there is some difference in how it is made but of course that is an assumption and not yet proven. It may after all be worth the extra cost over the 100% natural version even if you are not an organic purist. I doubt I would use it but there at least seems to be some evidence that there is a qualitative difference in it

Having said that, all the dealers for OMI will tell you that they are the most "organic" company out there and that they for example don't ever mix any of their natural products production with their organic products production and don't even ship them in the same trucks as their organic products ...  that you can "eat off their floors" ... etc etc. This may or may not be true ... but I certainly am not as sure as I was a few days ago. One thing that is for sure is that they use Talalay in their mattresses and there is currently no Talalay in the world that is organic. This means that other mattresses that do use organic dunlop latex covered with organic wool and/or cotton or other certified organic materials in their mattresses are certainly more organic than OMI, no matter how clean their production is.

What I also know is that their beds are very comfortable and beautiful and you can read more about my feelings about them in another thread. I also know that they are not the only "mostly organic" option and that I believe that their beds are way overpriced compared to other "mostly organic" options. They are way way overpriced compared to mattresses that are a combination of 100% natural and organic ingredients (which is really what OMI is). If someone can show you the certification for the organic latex in their mattress and they also can show you the certification for the other materials, then they can reasonably call their mattress organic. Technically it is still not an organic mattress since even if every ingredient in it has been certified organic ... including the fire barrier ... it is not completely organic until the mattress itself has been certified as a complete unit. There is currently no mattress that I am aware of in the world that has done this. So an absolute correct description of the current most organic mattress out there (which is not OMI) would be that they are selling a mattress which only contains 100% organic materials. An Oeko-Tex certification (which many have for their latex) is not the same as an organic certification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeko-tex_standard

In my other thread (where I listed a bunch of links), there are links to sites that have every bit as "organic" a mattress as OMI and they are considerably less expensive. There are also many more that I didn't include that are well worth looking at. It was not meant to be a comprehensive list of every place that had great value. I would not buy an OMI no matter how important "organic" was to me as there are many other options where you will end up with at least as nice a mattress with the same or better level of "organicy" (in the true meaning of the made up word) for much much less.

My feeling about blended Talalay as I mentioned in the other thread is that especially in the lower ild's that it is a slightly superior product to the all natural Talalay. This is true whether the blended latex comes from Radium or from Latex International IMO. The all natural Talalay from LI is a "green driven" product which is very nice and more natural obviously than the blend (whether from Radium or LI) but in terms of it's quality or properties, it is very questionable that it is a "better" product and the testing indicates that it does not have the same ability to resist compression in the lower ild's. If more natural was important to someone, then the 100% natural Talalay latex may be worth the extra cost. Dunlopillo also make a 100% natural Talalay but I don't know of any mattresses in North America that use it in an all Talalay mattress. If someone does then let me know. I did talk to a manufacturer in Canada who was using Dunlopillo but they could only get it in one firmness and were using different poly layers to adjust the firmness of the mattress.

Regardless of the truth of all of this, it is clear to me that all of the reliable Talalay producers are making very good product regardless of the more "minute" differences. The reliable Dunlop producers are also making very good product regardless of the differences here as well. The only producers I would really question are the Chinese ... not because they are definitely bad but because most people just don't know and there is evidence that they could be inferior. There is apparently (at least) one Chinese producer of Talalay latex that used to only produce pillows but is now apparently producing cores. Don't have a lot of information about this. There are also Chinese factories that are now partly owned by American manufacturers (Sleep science and Classic brands are two) that are producing mattresses to American specifications for American manufacturers but I'm guessing that the cores themselves don't come from China. There are also other producers of latex ... including from India ... and this may be an interesting area to watch.

There very well may be more additions to this story over the coming weeks and months.

Phoenix

Phoenix