Mind Your Mattress Matters

Turn sleepless nights into luxurious mornings with our guide to choosing the best bed for your buck.

By Chuck Ross
CTW Features

Sleepy shopper: spend 15 minutes lying on a mattress to make sure initial comfort translates to long-term relaxation. Image courtesy Simmons

So you say mattress problems are causing you sleepless nights? Which is your bigger concern: your current mattress’s sagging springs or the thought of having to shop for a replacement?

Mattress options today are broader than ever, ranging from traditional innerspring designs to space age foam and latex models, to hybrid designs that combine multiple materials. Add this sometimes overwhelming selection to prices and salespeople that can seem more appropriate to a used car lot, and your local mattress showroom makes an unlikely place to find your next good-night’s sleep.

However, experts say finding the right mattress really isn’t as difficult as it may seem, if you’re willing to spend some time testing out your options on the showroom floor. And, though you may end up spending more than you have in the past, since prices for just about everything have likely risen since your last mattress purchase, you don’t have to worry that only the most expensive model will give you the rest you seek.

Above a certain threshold, added features may provoke an extra sigh of comfort, but they probably aren’t essential components for sending those sheep you’ve been counting out to pasture.

Even better, say both doctors and sleep-industry insiders, you don’t have to sacrifice that sink-in-it comfort you may secretly crave. The generations-old wisdom that only board-hard firmness will keep your back healthy and strong has more recently gone the way of those wait-an-hour-before-swimming rules some of us grew up with. Instead, because backs are as individual as bed shoppers, personal comfort is now considered to be your best guide to a successful mattress purchase.

“There’s probably not one best mattress for all people,” says Scott D. Boden, M.D., a professor of orthopedic surgery and director of the Emory Spine Center in Atlanta. “All back problems and shapes are different, so it really depends on the individual.”

Boden points out that very little research has been done to connect specific mattress firmnesses or constructions to resulting back conditions. A study conducted in Spain, with results published in November 2003 in the British medical journal “The Lancet,” indicated that medium-firm mattresses offer the best relief to those with lower-back pain, although results were somewhat mixed.

All the new technologies, then, really just represent new ways of creating individual comfort. So, while you can investigate all the mechanical and chemical differences separating innersprings from air mattresses and visco-elastic foam from talalay latex, you’ll probably be just as happy in the end ignoring mattress components and focusing on how you feel when you lie on them.

“People can put whatever they want in a brochure,” says Boden. “But if your back doesn’t hurt the next day, that’s the bottom line.”

But, you ask, what about the coils those mattress salespeople keep harping on? Well the number and strength, expressed as “gauge,” with lower gauge numbers meaning greater strength, are important contributors. However, according to many, including the authors of a recent “Consumer Reports” investigation, most medium-price and better mattresses (which “Consumer Reports” defined as queen-size models with a list price of $800 or higher) have more than adequate coil capacity.

And what about the fancy fills? Salespeople say that natural fibers, like wool, silk and even cashmere, make a more resilient fill than synthetic fibers for a mattress’s top upholstery layer.

You also may hear varying claims regarding the many combinations of foam, latex and other materials manufacturers are incorporating closer to each product’s core. Experts say testing the mattress yourself is the only way to judge if these various constructions work for you.

“People are using all different kinds of components,” Shark says. “That’s why it gets down to what feels good for you. What you should be interested in is the overall feel of the product and how it fits into your budget.”

You may find yourself frustrated in attempts to compare offerings across multiple stores. Not only do terms like “ultraplush” differ in meaning across manufacturers, you may not be able to find the same manufacturer’s model outside of a single retail chain. The latter is because manufacturers often vary features like ticking color and upholstery material to create nominally different models for each retailer.

This lack of comparability makes those showroom-floor comfort tests even more important, say both industry participants and consumer advocates. Though your local mattress outlet won’t let you spend the night, you should feel comfortable spending 15 minutes or so lying on each potential purchase to make sure the initial relaxation you’re sure to feel continues to please once you’ve settled in. And your sleeping partner, if you have one, should join you on the floor model, to see if the firmness fits his or her taste, and if the mattress holds up as well with two sleepers as it does with one.

You can expect your new mattress to last 8 to 10 years. One definite indicator that it’s time to return to your local mattress showroom will be if those morning aches and pains return. In other cases, though, it may take the experience of waking unusually refreshed when sleeping on a different bed.

“Mattresses over the years will gradually lose comfort and support,” Shark says. “If you wake up in the morning with some new aches and pains, that may be a sign. And if you get a better night’s sleep in another place, then that might be something you need to pay attention to.”

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