How much should I spend on a mattress?

October 6, 2019 9:32 AM

Looking round the shops this weekend prices seem to go from £400 (500 USD, 450 EUR) to £2000+. How much is it actually worth spending? Is a £1000 mattress twice as good as a £500 one? What is the "cut-off" point at which diminishing returns kick in? It was repeatedly pointed out to me that "you spend ⅓ of you life in bed", but does that really mean I need to spend £1200 on a mattress?

(All of the shops we visited are offering interest free credit and we can afford to splash out, but I don't want to waste money.)

posted by alby to Home & Garden (15 answers total)

If you know you want a memory foam mattress - you can buy the same as Caspar, Eve etc from Amazon in the UK - except they're unbranded. The trick is to look at the shipping weights and to compare to the branded versions. Heavier = better.
posted by teststrip at 10:28 AM on October 6, 2019

If you're going to by one from a chain (e.g. Dreams, Bensons for Beds, etc.) go to a few different branches and lie down on the same mattress in each branch so you'll be able to tell if the one you want is of consistent quality.
posted by essexjan at 10:49 AM on October 6, 2019

I've had expensive and inexpensive mattresses and don't really notice much difference in terms of sleep quality.

That said, I trust organizations like Which? that do independent testing, so I'd start here and evaluate some of their top picks by lying on them (if possible).
posted by yellowcandy at 11:11 AM on October 6, 2019

Sometime in my life I spent the money on a Stearns and Foster. Didn't last very long, got saggy in the middle after a few years, but because it was a pillow-top I couldn't document that in a way that anyone would actually give me any warranty coverage with.

So I'm not sure what the premium is for, but it wasn't longevity.
posted by straw at 11:26 AM on October 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I know how you feel and I don't think that price necessarily means a better sleep at all. I spent a traumatic few months mattress-searching and had to return one and sell another! Spent more money cos I thought I "should". And in the end, I am sleeping quite happily on the cheapest mattress I found (from Ikea, incidentally! And it cost €150 euro). In the past years I've had a consistently terrible sleep on my landlord's very expensive latex mattress, and the ones at prices in between weren't much better. I think pay attention more to hard and soft styles - in the middle is probably better unless you love a soft mattress (I do!) and don't accept this idea that "a hard mattress is the best for your back". After getting off several of the above mattresses to lie on the floor as they were so awful - this is simply not true!

Another thing to note is how warm or cold you sleep. Anything foam based is out for me as I get really warm so I have to go with a spring mattress, which is still fine!

I'd recommend maybe lying down on a friend's bed if you can, trying that out. Because 15 mins in a shop doesn't really tell you enough. I stayed overnight in a friend's bed and when I didn't want to get up the next day I knew I had a winner! Good luck!
posted by cornflakegirl at 11:46 AM on October 6, 2019

I overheat when I sleep and I spent money for a 100 percent wool mattress. It probably cost a few hundred more, but yes, for me it was 100 percent worth it!
posted by catspajammies at 12:38 PM on October 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I have an Ikea mattress which cost £200. It's perfect and I can highly reccomend their range. I tried so many others at the main stores but Ikea had the best range at various prices. Up until then I slept on two of the cheapest (under £100) mattresses which were fairly poor quality to start with but became unbearably lumpy after only a couple of months with wires poking through and generally sagging and going hard.

It didn't seem that there was much of an improvement in comfort above about £250 but it was more a case of finding the one that felt comfortable in the price range I was happy with. Definitely don't go for the bottom range stuff.

I would try as many as you can, have a really good go at different positions and see if you can feel too much sag on the hips and lower back. I'd go for pocket sprung and wouldn't touch open sprung with a barge pole. Oh and a mattress protector will expand the life of your mattress considerably by absorbing sweat and oils that would otherwise degrade the foam.
posted by RandomInconsistencies at 1:27 PM on October 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd had crappy mattresses and futons for 20 years before I decided to get a better mattress than I'd ever had, decided on an amount that felt like "assuming I'm not getting terribly ripped-off, I'll be happy with $X," $1000 in my case 10 years ago.

Comparison shopping was pointless, most stores seemed to sell the same general varieties and options under different names, so just knowing I didn't want a pillowtop and that I wanted a few steps firmer than I'd ever had narrowed it down to 2 or 3 mattresses wherever I went. Then I just pulled the trigger. Mattresses seem like an impossible subject to analyze for "best," so practicality of the shopping experience took precedence. I've had mine for over 10 years and it's been great.

Prices aren't linear at all. I didn't see it as paying extra because I spend a third of my life there, I saw it as not worrying about the price difference between "what feels good" and "cheaper," because I spend a third of my life there.
posted by rhizome at 1:57 PM on October 6, 2019

Check out Wirecutter’s buying guide for general “here’s what you get for X more” guidance. No idea whether the prices translate directly, or whether the same brands are available, but since very few of the brands are made domestically there should be analogues.
posted by supercres at 2:14 PM on October 6, 2019

I bought one of the HYLLESTAD Ikea mattresses for about £300 (just looked, now at £250) I think. It's really durable, comfortable and generally fantastic and well worth the cost. Lasted me two years already. Cost twice as much as my actual bed :)
posted by 0bvious at 3:24 PM on October 6, 2019

Hm, it also depends on your circumstances. If you are still quite young, and don't have any back problems or issues with insomnia, it's probably not going to make much difference what kind of mattress you buy. Go with the cheap one. But if your sleep is an issue, then spend the money for the mattress that feels the best when you test it out.

Mr.EllaEm and I have a combination of insomnia issues and various back problems, and once we hit our late 30s I made the decision to finally get a new, expensive memory foam mattress. (Neither of us had ever owned a new mattress before that.) I spent about $1000 on it, which felt like an enormous among of money. But it has been life changing. We are both sleeping so much better and having fewer sciatica pains.

If you are going to spend a lot of money, I would definitely recommend going to a specialist store and taking your time to ask questions and test them out, rather than trying to do research online. We spent about an hour 'testing' all the different mattresses in a specialist mattresses store until we found one that felt really good. If you ignore the weirdness of lying down a lot in a shop, it does make a difference to test them. You'll be able to feel if it is actually worth while.
posted by EllaEm at 4:38 PM on October 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I recent bought mattresses. The first one cost me over $2k. Had to be returned bc it did not work for me, and I allowed myself two months to try it out. Hated it.
I bought another one for less than $1.5k and I’m much happier.
They claim you should give mattresses a good 4-6 weeks to figure out if you like it. And that there is an adjustment period. Often times, brands will not accept a return unless you’ve had it for a month. My point: get one with a return period. AND that more expensive does not equal better.

Check out YouTube. Lots of videos reviewing mattresses. They helped much more than I thought they would.
posted by Neekee at 7:38 PM on October 6, 2019

Just in case you haven’t seen this kind of thing, a couple of years ago there was this article about what a racket mattress review sites are. Quite amazing.

Sleep Like The Dead claims to be an unbiased collection of (US-based) reviews although, of course, nothing beats trying them out yourself.

I would previously have said “Just go to a Warren Evans and choose whatever feels best within your budget, forget everything else”. But since they went bust and reopened as an online-only store, that’s not possible unfortunately. Every mattress I’ve bought has been from their stores, so I’m not looking forward to replacing any of them in this new world.
posted by fabius at 3:31 AM on October 7, 2019

It's worth not getting a budget one.

If you were looking for lower cost but still generically good, I'd suggest any of the mattress in a box offerings (Caspar, Eve,...) that you buy online. We have one. They do what they say on the tin and and are very good value.

If you want better quality than that or you want to be sure that you'll be comfortable in the mattress you pick, then go to any store that sells lots of mattresses, try all the ones you'd be willing to pay for to pick the style you find most comfortable. Then maybe read online reviews for that kind of mattress to see if there's a pattern. People have wildly different preferences and reviews are only helpful if you want the same kind of mattress as the person writing the review.
posted by plonkee at 5:23 AM on October 7, 2019

I'm also very happy with my Ikea mattress. It replaced a much more expensive hand me down, but is so much better.
posted by Salamandrous at 10:15 AM on October 12, 2019