Adjustable bed for side/stomach sleeping

February 12, 2013 9:32 PM

I need to sleep on a bed with an elevated head-end, while my wife needs to sleep on a bed with her feet elevated. I'd like to find an adjustable bed that lets us do this. Difficulty: I must sleep on my side or stomach, but all adjustable mattresses seem to fold in the middle (for example, like this), making sleeping on anything but your back uncomfortable or impossible. Surely there's a power-adjustable bed that keeps the mattress planar but tilted, allowing you to adjust the degree of tilt with the press of a button? If there is, I can't find it.

I know I could butt two twin beds up next to each other and jack up the legs, but I'd really like to be able to level the beds out horizontally when they're not in use by pressing a button. The necessary elevation is 8 inches. Here is a terrible drawing of what I want.

posted by jewzilla to home & garden (6 answers total)

At the risk of suggesting the obvious, could one of you sleep with your legs facing the headboard?
posted by charmcityblues at 10:07 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

No buttons, but there's this inclined mattress topper and this insert, and this is remote controlled but is just a wedge.
posted by acidic at 10:09 PM on February 12

Sounds like you're looking for a Sleep Number FlexFit bed with adjustable bases! I think that you'd be able to get it to do what you're looking for. Worth investigating anyway. :)
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:46 PM on February 12

I had one in the hospital, so perhaps a hospital bed?
posted by fifilaru at 11:35 PM on February 12

I believe I've seen something like what you describe in a Tempur-Pedic commercial. It looked like two twin beds that each had their own adjustable base, so one side could be foot elevated, while the other could be head tilted (with the rest of that side being flat).
posted by youngergirl44 at 8:15 AM on February 13

Surely there's a power-adjustable bed that keeps the mattress planar but tilted

I say this as (a) a nurse who works with people in hospital beds all day, (b) a side sleeper who absolutely cannot fall asleep on her back, and (c) a backpacker who has slept on ground that I would swear was flat but turned out to be slightly angled one direction or another.

The reason beds like you're describing are hard to find (if not nonexistent) is that you will slide down down down the bed, even if the slope is minimal. With each tiny movement of your body, each slight adjustment of your leg, each breath you take, gravity will inexorably shift you towards the foot of the bed. Your pajamas will ride up painfully. The skin on the side you're sleeping on will pull, putting you at risk for skin injuries from internal shearing. You'll find yourself having to climb back up the bed every hour or two throughout the night. And I guarantee your fitted sheet will pop off the top corners constantly, so you'll be sleeping on bunched, wrinkly sheets or even bare mattress. (And looking at your drawing, your wife's head will be constantly running into the headboard.)

For what it's worth, these problems are also present even when the bed folds in the middle, but not quite as badly as if the entire bed is tilted.

Like I said, I'm a side sleeper and I definitely commiserate. Unfortunately engineering hasn't figured out a great way to accommodate us yet. If you do manage to find a bed that works like what you've drawn, please spend several minutes or longer lying in the floor model in your expected usage configuration and fidgeting a bit to see whether you can actually maintain a comfortable position.
posted by vytae at 9:27 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]