Mattress Forum

(I've been experimenting for a couple of months, so this is gonna get long and might be a little disjointed.)

I have tried every possible permutation of the layering materials I have, and tried some zoning, and have yet to find anything that works as a comfort layer on top of my innerspring mattress.


Here are the latex layers I had (not necessarily all used at the same time) before I tried the zoning:

• 2" 14-17 ILD natural Talalay latex, bought from a local mattress manufacturer (I'll refer to this piece as 14 ILD; it is ridiculously soft, & quite fragile)
• 1" 14 ILD, from the same vendor
• 1" 24 ILD Talatech, bought from SleepLikeaBear in 2009 (still holding up well)
• 1" N3 (25-29 ILD) natural Talalay from SleepLikeaBear (flawless)

I also have an old thing that I've been calling a fiberbed but which was sold as an extra-thick (1") mattress pad, bought on sale at Kohl's 5-6 years ago. It held up for quite a few years but is getting too compressed to be much use now, and the softer latex was meant to replace it.

No combination of these materials worked -- and I tried them all -- so, on to the zoning.

First attempt at zoning:
I tried to do it artificially, without cutting up expensive latex or buying more of it. It almost worked -- and was certainly worth a try. I used a 5mm thick 24" wide yoga mat under my hips. The yoga mat cost all of $13, and I tried it in various locations in the layer stack (and in various permutations of the layer stack).

The difficulty here was that if I had the yoga mat in the right place to prevent my hips from sinking in too far, then it interfered with pressure relief, but if I placed it farther down in the stack to help with pressure relief, then my hips sank that much farther down, throwing my spine out of alignment and causing back pain.

Second attempt at zoning:
I ordered a 1" 32ILD scrap of Talatech from SleepLikeaBear. The scrap was about 30" x 78" (I cut it down to 54" to fit my full-size bed), and flawless. I cut up the 1" piece of 14 ILD latex, and put pieces together to create a layer that was 14 ILD for the first 30" (head & most of torso); 32 ILD for the next 30" (lower lumbar region, hips, thighs) and 14 ILD for the last 15".

I tried using that zoned layer in various places within various permutations of the layering stack (still using it for now, actually), but I didn’t get it quite right.

I think that (a) the difference between 14ILD and 32ILD is too extreme; (b) I don't have the right ILDs for either zone; and (c) I'd need more than an inch of zoned topper to get the required effect. That last point is probably obvious, but I was hoping I could get away with one layer of zoned stuff while keeping the rest of the (more expensive) layers intact.

It's possible that I am one of those people who cannot get the proper support from latex. Or maybe I could with different pieces – maybe the 20-22 ILD topper from SleepEZ, or, say, a few inches of 19-20 ILD for the shoulders, and 28 ILD for the hips -- but not with what I have now. Or, I should say, not with what I have that I am willing to cut up. Cutting a whole sheet of expensive, no-seam latex would just make me feel like I'm cutting up dollar bills.

(If I cut the 24 ILD or N3 toppers and still didn't get the zoning right, I'd be pretty mad at myself. Neither of these pieces has any seams; and buying new latex would be very expensive. The 1" 24 ILD piece that cost me $132 in 2009 now costs $216. So I'm not cutting them. If they wind up coming off the bed, they can be used elsewhere, maybe on a guest bed.)  (And yes, FBM stuff is much cheaper, but you never know what you're going to get with their latex. Their covers, on the other hand, are fine.)


Anyway…

I've become convinced that the 14 ILD stuff is just too soft, period. Feels like I'm crashing right through it -- my bony little shoulders go through that stuff like a knife. (I recruited a girlfriend to help me with this, check my alignment, and so on, and she confirmed that my shoulders go right down to the bottom of 3" of the 14ILD latex.)

Now, I know that the point of the softer stuff is that so my shoulders *can* sink in -- but I think there's such a thing as sinking too much or too fast... or too... something. And the 14ILD is clearly too soft for use under my hips, with or without zoning. I finally had to take the top 2" of soft latex off the bed because the sinking-in was killing my back and exacerbating my hip pain. (I don't typically have back pain, unless it's caused by my bed or by doing too much yard work.)

I've also concluded that even really soft latex, when it's solid, does not conform quite enough for someone like me -- i.e., side-sleeper with a pronounced hourglass shape. Having roughly a 10" difference between my waist measurement and my shoulder & hip measurements complicates things.

I've been told that this soft latex should be conforming to me, but I still wind up feeling like I'm in some sort of crater, and that just bothers me. Latex certainly doesn't conform the way memory foam would (nor did I expect it to), but I don't like the feel of memory foam, or the heat or the off-gassing from it. My polyfill fiberbed, before it wore out, seemed to conform more than the latex does.

I think the ideal comfort layer would be shredded latex enclosed in a cover with lots of small baffled squares to prevent the latex from shifting. Maybe even a zoned version of this, with softer shredded latex in the shoulder area and medium shredded latex in the hip area. Unfortunately, something like this would be labor-intensive and therefore very expensive to make.

Flobeds sells a shredded-latex topper, but its baffles are long rows, rather than lots of small squares. I could see getting my hips stuck in an area between rows. So that's out.

-------

Throughout this endeavor, every purchase I've made seemed logical at the time, based on what I knew at the time. But I've made some expensive mistakes and still can't figure out how to get both support (proper alignment) and pressure relief from latex. And this stuff is too expensive -- and too tricky -- to keep messing around with. And I don't think I should need physics and engineering degrees just to create a decent comfort layer for my bed.

Along those lines: The advice that is often given on this forum -- buy a firm mattress and then "just" add toppers -- also made sense to me at the time (when I bought my extra-firm mattress in 2009). However...

...there is turning out to be a big huge gap between theory and experience.

Next time, I think I'd still buy an innerspring, but get a comfier one -- not a pillowtop, but a somewhat plush mattress -- and be prepared to do mattress surgery whenever the foam gave out.

(Please note that I'm not blaming the forum; it's generally very helpful and I made my own decisions. The problem is that adding a comfort layer turns out to be anything but simple, at least for a side-sleeper.)

In the meantime, my current innerspring mattress is only 2+ years old and has plenty of life in it, so I still need toppers.

So I've ordered a new fiberbed -- two, actually, both returnable. Obviously, I'm really hoping that one of these things will work, with or without my zoned layer underneath. I'll let y'all know.

------------

There is one piece of good news here: I'm really liking the St. Dormeir wool mattress protector. It is surprisingly stretchy, so it doesn't interfere with the toppers, and it seems to help with temperature regulation, at least so far (in fall & winter). So I highly recommend it.


------------------------------------------------

One last bit, in case anyone's interested: I did a bunch of floor testing with the various layers, trying to isolate variables. In the list of results below, when I say "bottom out," I mean that I'm lying on my side, and my hips & shoulders compress the latex all the way and go right down to the floor.

The results, in case anyone wants to compare their own builds & experiences:

• 2" 14 ILD latex (solid piece) -- bottom out
• 3" 14 ILD latex (the 2" piece + the 1" inch piece) -- bottom out
• 2" 24 ILD (the 1" piece folded over) -- bottom out
• 3" 14 ILD over 1" 24 ILD -- bottom out
• 1" 14 ILD over 2" 24 ILD -- bottom out
• 2" 14 ILD over 2" 24 ILD -- bottom out
• 2" N3/27 ILD (the 1" piece, folded over) -- bottom out
• 3" N3/27 ILD (1" piece folded in thirds) -- bottom out, or very close to it (that was a surprise)
• 2" 24 ILD over 2" N3/27 ILD (each 1" piece folded over) -- hips were kinda OK with this, but shoulders were still seriously crunched; I'd probably need more 20-24 ILD and less 27 ILD for them
• 1" 32 ILD (the large scrap piece I got from SLAB) -- bottom out
• 2" 32 ILD (the 2" solid topper that I tried out and then returned to SLAB) -- no bottoming out. Not good for pressure relief, but no bottoming out.

In all of these bottoming-out scenarios, it's my shoulders that hurt the most. They seem to need a more gradual transition to firmer layers below, or... something. Damned if I know....

 

I didn't want to order latex without trying it and go through the possible headache of having to return it, so I got a 2" thick fiberbed with small baffles (to keep the filling from shifting) to put on my new, way-too-firm bed, then under it I put a cheap egg crate foam slab from Walmart. This combination turned my bed into comfort heaven for me  - so soft and comfy but still supportive for my midsection. I suffered a back injury last year and have gotten up stiff and painful every morning, but since I put this bed together this summer, I have no pain whatsoever!

Hope you hit on the magic combination as well.

...trying to isolate variables."

You're not going to want to hear this idea, since you know the mattress itself, as-is, could not be among the confounding variables, but I went through exactly what you describe & then some, assuming there'd be some ultimate combination of foam I could add that would make it right.  It wasn't until I extracted my inersprings, leaving nothing between them & my latex, did all the layer swapping & buying/returning foams end.

 That junction between spring & foam is a huge potential weak spot.  Just like how having too much of anything between yourself & your top layer can rob latex of its conforming properties, inersprings can be hamstrung by their own foam & casing.  You still want the springs' action to transmit through & work with that of the foam's to some degree, and that never happened buried inside a mattress I was merely piling on top of.  If you were just down to the springs, assuming they're of sufficient coil type & count, I'd bet any of your layers would work.  Then it wouldn't feel so much like bottoming out, but flexing into & working with your springs.  It's just hard to abandon all the nice mattress pads & encasements, & even harder to cut into a mattress, but I've done it twice now, & am convinced a mattress' comfort layers must be entirely replaced, not just added to.

One of the fiberbeds I ordered should arrive on Wed.; not sure about the other one. I was hoping to get away from the synthetic stuff (even though my mattress has some), and fiberbeds need to be washed in a big commercial washing machine (or dry-cleaned, depending on the item), so that's a nuisance, but if one of 'em lets me sleep without pain, I'll be happy.

JasonRatky wrote:

Sure I do!

I might not follow through and do mattress surgery just yet (you're right about that; I don't want to cut into my mattress at this point), but I appreciate hearing about what has worked for other people.

The springs in my innerspring are still quite springy, but I have to say that getting the extra-firm was a mistake. One I could fix with mattress surgery, but... I'm not quite there yet.

Edited to add: Thanks for the reminder about mattress surgery as an option. Assuming that the springs hold out longer than the padding in my mattress (which they probably will), I'll probably want to use my full sheets of 24 ILD and N3/27 ILD latex as part of the replacement foam, when that day comes.*

* Which might be sooner than I anticipated. I have noticed some loss of cushioning in the mattress, and I think this has been contributing to my back pain. I believe that the "extra firm" designation of my mattress comes from its having 3 layers of fiber mat over the springs, not from having higher-density foam. So even though there's not a lot of foam (it's a flippable mattress, not a pillowtop), it's probably getting pretty well compressed after 2.5 years... especially since I've been lax about flipping & rotating the mattress on a regular basis.

For now, I have a thin (1/4" at most) piece of plywood over the foundation, in the hip area, and an old mattress pad folded in half over that. (Of course I tweaked my back while heaving the mattress off the foundation and back on again. Argh.) I'm studying the mattress-surgery threads just in case.

"..and fiberbeds need to be washed in a big commercial washing machine (or dry-cleaned, depending on the item), so that's a nuisance"

I know. I weighed the "nuisance" factor in when choosing a topper and this seemed less of a nuisance than ordering a latex topper for way more than twice the price then struggling to pack up a huge, heavy slab of rubber to return (AND pay a large shipping fee) it I didn't like it. I chose what for me was the lesser of two evils.

I wound up with 14 ILD because I bought it from a local bedding manufacturer, and (as far as I know) they don't have 19 or higher. Their latex beds use 14 ILD Talalay over 16-19 ILD Dunlop and/or 24-27 ILD Dunlop. (The softer Dunlop might have been fine for me; not sure I was aware of it when I bought the soft Talalay.) And at the time I was looking at the foam scraps available from SleepLikeaBear, the 32ILD piece looked like the best bet (no 28 ILD); the scraps available vary.

The profile tool at CSD recommended 19 ILD for the shoulders and 28 ILD for the hips on down, for the 2nd (3") layer of the mattress (the layer that would go over the 6" core). For the very top layer (2"), the tool recommended 14 ILD (shoulders) and 19 ILD (hips), but I still think that would wind up being too soft. Dunno. The CSD tool also recommended a 32 ILD core, but I can't imagine that being firm enough.

The CSD profile tool is useful for anyone just starting out with their mattress & topper choices. A little discouraging to use after one has already made a bunch of mistakes.

Oh well. Maybe other people here can learn from my failures. 

Actually, I'm now fairly sure that the mattress is one of the confounding variables.

If I take all the soft latex and the fiber bed off the mattress -- which I did -- and leave only the medium-ILD latex on there -- which I did -- and I still wake up in a sinkhole -- which I do -- then the mattress has to be the problem, right?

(I suppose it could be the latex, but I've got an inch of N3/27 ILD, bought a couple months ago, an inch of 32 ILD Talatech, bought recently, and an inch of 24 ILD Talatech, bought 2 years ago but still in good shape as far as I can tell. None of that should be cratering. I could try taking everything off and sleeping on just the mattress, to be sure, but that would be pretty uncomfortable. We'll see.)

Even after I put a thin piece of plywood between the box spring and the mattress -- across the hip zone -- and put a folded-up old mattress pad on top of that -- to boost that zone some more -- I am waking up in a sinkhole, and with a very sore lower back.

It's not a big enough sinkhole to activate the warranty, and during the day, I think the compressed foam (in the mattress) expands a bit, so the mattress looks relatively flat. There's not a giant body-impression in it. But I am clearly waking up in a sinkhole... which would certainly explain why none of my zoning attempts have been working. (D'oh!)

Methinks I shall be cutting a slit in the mattress top very soon, so I can peek at the innards and see what's going on in there.... At this point, I've got nothing to lose.

Do you know what foam is inside the mattress?  9" flippable does not sound like a lot.   What brand?

I believe the foam is low density, and it is in the top layer.

I couldn't stand it anymore and just cut open a slit in the top panel, near the edge but above the piping, 'cause I wanted to see what's inside. There's about an inch of PU foam quilted into the top, and then about an inch of convoluted foam beneath that. Then there's just about a half-inch (maybe less) of dacron, directly over the insulator-pad thingie, which I think is directly over the springs.

Here's a link to the current specs for the model of mattress I have: Elegant, from Jamestown Mattress, a local independent bedding manufacturer. Possible that the specs have changed slightly since I bought the mattress in 2009 -- I think my coil count is higher -- but the foam parts of the specs probably haven't changed much. (I'm guessing here.)

At this point, I'd still recommend Jamestown Mattress -- everyone I've encountered there has been knowledgeable & friendly & straightforward; the price was good; they're *not* one of those chain stores that have "lowest prices of the season" sales every other weekend; and the low-density PU foam is probably the only weak spot in the mattress construction. (Unfortunately, it seems that just about every innerspring-mattress-maker uses some low-density PU foam.) Jamestown also makes some latex mattresses, memory foam mattresses, and mattresses with various combinations of materials. Next time, I'd probably just ask them to custom-make a mattress for me, either with coils & latex or just latex, and have them leave out the PU foam in the top layers.

At any rate... now that I've gone this far, I might as well do a foamectomy. Probably not today, though -- I want to go a fabric or crafts store and get some No-Fray stuff first. (I was just in Joann's Fabrics yesterday, but didn't buy the No-Fray stuff 'cause I didn't think I was doing mattress surgery right away. Guess I'm goin' back there soon....)  I also need to do some other things around the house today, though.

----

Follow-up on the fiber-beds I ordered a week or so ago:
I returned both of them. One was too thin to do any good; the other had flat spots & lumpy spots even when brand new. At least it didn't cost me anything to try them. One return was local; the other was paid for by the vendor (Overstock.com) because of the condition it arrived in. And I'd gotten free shipping on both items when I bought them. So, they were worth a shot, but no-go.
 

It's just as well you decided to the mattress surgery, since no topper I know of is helpful for a bed with sinkholes, but are mainly used to soften a  too-firm mattress. Putting a topper on a sagging mattress just means you just end up in a cushier sinkhole!

Hope you will update on your progress.