Mattress Forum

Centralpark, I'm going to try and be completely objective here with your latex question. I don't think it's possible to really get a comfortable Talalay mattress with a single core like the Englander Kim returned.  Overall you will have a much better shot at getting comfortable on Talalay with a mattress kit. You have to build it up from a firm support layer to a softer comfort layer. And as Lynn pointed out this can take work to get it right, It can also take time and money to pack up foam layers and ship them back for exchange.

Some people love Talalay and have never slept better. Other people can't sleep on it at all. This is something I feel strongly prospective buyers should be aware of. Talalay has properties that do not make it a good fit for many people with lower back issues.  The Talalay process whips a lot of air into the foam and creates an extremely resilient material. At firmer ILDs this resilency can exert so much pressure against the body that although it doesn't register as pressure points like you would get on an innerspring mattress, it can make you sore all over. This is why you need a softer comfort layer on top. However, softer Talalay doesn't provide enough back support and some people find their back muscles tensing after a few hours in reaction to this. Another characteristic of soft Talalay is that despite the marketing angle that claims Talalay supports the body evenly, it doesn't. Your hips will sink much more deeply into soft Talalay than the rest of your body, throwing your spine out of alignment. This is where the middle layer becomes critical striking the balance between the soft comfort layer and the firm support layer, and it can be tricky finding the correct combination of ILDs to provide proper support and comfort.

Talalay is very springy and has a jiggly feeling when you lay on it. Some people find this distracting. Unless your mattress is on the firm side overall, it won't provide a comfortable surface for sitting up and reading or watching TV either.

Like Mattressmom I prefer Dunlop latex. Unlike Talalay that blends more air into the foam the softer it gets, all Dunlop latex is the same density. Softness is determined by the size of the pinholes in the mold. It is possible to get a supportive mattress at a softer ILD in a single core with Dunlop. I know because I slept on one for 20 years and Talalay was a huge (and painful) disappointment by comparison. Dunlop has all of Talalay's durability and none of its negative characteristics. It is a passive foam that does not exert pressure against the body. Although it does have spring to it (unlike memory foam) it isn't jiggly. It supports the body evenly and comfortably and takes no getting used to. I recommend looking into it.

One other thing you might want to consider is a hybrid mattress. Some people just need the rigid support of an innerspring no matter how much they would like to sleep on an all foam mattress. Which is not to say you can't have the best of both worlds. A hybrid mattress has an innerspring support unit and has several thin layers of latex, HR foam or memory foam on top. The foam completely insulates the body from the pressure points associated with old fashioned innerspring mattresses, and the spring unit provides the back with the support structure it needs. Sometimes its not that you can't sleep on latex. It's just that you can't sleep on a mattress that's all latex. The best hybrids come with a zippered cover like a latex mattress kit so you can shift the layers around for customized comfort. BeddyBye has this kind of mattress and I'm jealous!

The choices are out there, Explore them.

Thanks for coming to my defense, Beddybye & Cloud9...I appreciate it. What sager66 wrote is rediculous, and his comments don't foster an environment where people can feel free to ask for advice and information on this forum. I don't know how sager came up with the question about me seeking someone to blame if latex doesn't work out for me.

Everyone, thank you so very much for providing in-depth answers to my questions. I have a much better understanding of the pros and cons of latex mattresses, and I know that your answers will help other people searching for answers about latex, too. I personally don't know anyone who sleeps on a latex mattress, so it's wonderful to have the knowledge and opinions of people like you who have slept on those types of mattresses.

Thanks again!

Talalay latex in medium to firm densities just "pushed back" too much on my back. It did not feel at all relaxing to me.

Although I have not SLEPT ON Dunlop latex, my impression from laying on it was that it does not push back this way - it's more of a "dead" foam, but with support, not like visco or memory foam which does not push back enough, and does not provide support - I don't care what Tempurpedic says. Also, visco or memory foam wears out fast and becomes softer, less supportive over a relativeily short period of time.

Back to latex: It provides excellent support. The question is: will you like the type of support it gives? And will you like the "push back" of Talalay vs the less pushy feel of Dunlop? There is no way to answer this. You have to just try it, and really you cannot tell a lot from just laying on it in a store, you have to sleep on it.

This is why a place like flo-beds is so good because for just the risk of shipping it back, you can try it out and see if you like it. And you have so many different combinations to be tried (for a little more investment in shipping - shipping the layers back to them and vice versa)... So unless you just hate latex, you should be able to find a combination that works for you. They are betting on this, and since they've been in business a long time, it's obvious that their bets on this are paying off.

We were one of their bets that did not win. I just did not like the way Talalay felt as a main core. Had it been over springs, or had it been Dunlop instead of Talalay, we might have been able to make it work. I'm not sure - does Flo-beds offer Dunlop as part of their layering? If they did, I don't think they offered it to us years ago as we did not try it. We did try various combinations of firmnesses or ILD's, and some with a memory foam topper, but we just did not like the feel.

What I have found recently, however, is that I can tolerate Talalay in a very soft, low ILD. In the very low ILD's it does not feel like it is pushing back so much, it feels more like sinking in, yet not like the sinking in of memory foam.

The bottom line is that you just have to try it and for trying it, Flobeds is a very good company to try it with.

Although it won't give you the true feeling of sleeping on a 100% latex mattress, you could try buying one of the 1" latex toppers from Brylane and see if you like how that feels. It will at least give you some idea. But of course a higher ILD that a core is made of feels much more bouncy and pushes back more than this topper will. (see the thread(s) on Brylane's topper deal.)

Oh, and the other thing is, that as someone else said, you may like the feeling of latex over springs or over some type of adjustable slat frame, but not like it by itself on the floor or on a platform. We are now building our own mattress over old Sealy springs because I do not like the feel of foam by itself that much. If I were to buy a whole new latex bed, I think I'd want one over springs. (By the way, who sells a component style latex mattress over springs??)