buying guide from consumer reports
You should think about buying a new mattress if you wake up tired or achy, you tend to sleep better at hotels than at home, your mattress looks saggy or lumpy, you're over 40, or your mattress is five to seven years old. Use this mattress guide to help with your purchase.
Choose a size
Most sleepers shift positions during the night, and cramped quarters can keep them from moving freely. Standard mattress dimensions are king, 76x80 inches; California king, 72x84 inches; queen, 60x80 inches; full, or double, 53x75 inches, and twin, 38x75 inches.
Consider an innerspring first
A conventional innerspring mattress is the most common choice and often the least expensive. Memory foam, which was developed to protect astronauts against g-forces, is heat-sensitive and conforms to your body. Tempur-Pedic is the big name, but there are other brands. Not all memory foam feels the same, and it can take time to get used to. Another option is an inflatable mattress; with this kind you can choose a different firmness for each half of the bed. Select Comfort is the major brand.
Understand the name game
Manufacturers usually modify innerspring mattresses for different sellers, changing the color, padding, quilting pattern, and so forth. Then each seller can call the mattress by a different name. Consumers are the losers. Because such mattresses are at least somewhat different, and the names vary, you can't comparison-shop. (A big chain such as Sears or Bloomingdale's has the same model names for the same beds at all of its stores, usually at the same price.)
Some mattress makers provide helpful information on their websites. Go to
www.simmons.com, for example, and you'll find basic information about the company's flagship Beautyrest lines, including TruEnergy, ComforPedic, Natural Care, and BeautySleep. You'll see those names wherever you find Beautyrest, and all beds in each line share attributes.
Choose the right firmness
Don't rely on names. One company's ultraplush might be another's supersoft. Orthopedists once recommended sleeping on an extremely firm mattress, but there's little evidence to support that view. The best surface is purely subjective, says a spokesman for the Stanford University Center for Human Sleep Research.
A study published in 2003 in the British medical journal Lancet suggested that people who suffer from lower back pain would benefit from a medium-firm mattress. That made sense to several experts we interviewed. If a mattress is too firm, it won't support the body evenly and may cause discomfort at the heaviest points (hips and shoulders). If it's too soft, a sleeper could sink into the surface and have a hard time moving, which could cause tingling, numbness, or aches.
Alan Hedge, Ph.D., professor of ergonomics at Cornell University, noted that the best mattress supports the spine at all points while allowing it to maintain its natural curve. By age 40, Hedge said, skin loses elasticity and becomes more sensitive to pressure points, so a softer, more cushiony surface is more comfortable. "Slightly softer works better because there's less compression on the skin," he said.
Do the 15-minute, in-store test
Don't be embarrassed to lie down on lots of mattresses in the store. Salespeople expect it. Wear loose clothes and shoes that you can slip off. Spend at least five minutes on each side and on your back (your stomach, too, if that's a preferred sleeping position). Panelists who took beds home for a month-long trial rarely changed the opinion they formed after the first night. On the whole, their opinions were the same as those of our in-store testers, about 75 percent of whom told us, in a recent subscriber survey, that trying out the mattress beforehand helped them sleep better.