quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
The question though - are the newer ones made like the old ones?

Ask the store for a Simmons Beautyrest cross sectional model. If they sell Simmons, then they should have it. The model is about 18” W by 18” L by whatever height the mattress is. It’s a cross sectional 3-D model with transparent plastic sides and shows what the inside of a Beautyrest mattress looks like.

My Simmons is about 25 years old. I don’t know what if anything has changed over the years but I would certainly take a look at the model before buying another one.

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

When we lived in Japan we sleep on a thin (maybe 4-inch) futon on top of tatami flooring...

I love a good futon, but I need it up off the floor. Getting up is a pain... literally. That's the same reason I bought my first camping trailer: I was having a hard time getting up off an air mattress on the ground.

The futons I have seen are filled with moats from cotton gins.
moats=trash from cleaning the cotton. It is mostly dusty cotton, leaves, etc.
Have been around cotton gins since childhood.
I cannot sleep on one without getting allergy trouble.

I am still on my old Tempurpeadic that’s over 15 years old that I still like better than all other hotel mattresses I’ve slept in so far. That said, I do not know the Tempurpedic today is built the same as one from 15+ years ago.

I’m wondering if Mr. Lisa, when he finds a mattress he likes in one of his hotel stays, can note the brand/model # and you can just order the same.

You could call Scott Pruitt's secretary.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
You could call Scott Pruitt's secretary.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
I made the mistake of googling mattresses out of curiosity about current prices. Now FB thinks I want to buy a mattress.

Off to google fine watches, just to get the damn mattress ads out of my feed...

Mary Anna and I got a new mattress (really, two mattresses, because they are separately adjustable) a few months ago.

They're latex, and they are made by a local company. They're made in layers ... a firm layer here, a soft layer there. We were able to try them out at the (very small) store and pick which firmness suited us. Because they are two side-by-side twins (so that they could be separately adjustable), the firmness of the two beds is slightly different, based on individual preferences.

What a difference! I wake up in the morning with no back pain at all. I was just remarking on it this morning to Mary Anna. And I like it much better than coil mattresses, because eventually I always feel the coils.

And I am not too hot. (And I am very prone to being too hot, so I have avoided memory foam.)

The whole set-up was expensive, but the largest part of that was the mechanical part of the two adjustable beds. I don't recall how much each of the mattresses were, but they were not that bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:

quote:

Originally posted by Qaanaaq-Liaaq:
I haven’t bought a mattress in a long time. I have a Simmons Beautyrest. I like it a lot and would buy one again. Beautyrests have individual pocketed coiled springs that are not connected to each other so there’s no sagging.

That's what we have. Old school but functional, and it has to be some 20 years old by now. I flip it every few years and it's still firm enough.

The question though - are the newer ones made like the old ones?

Beautyrest probably has different gradations since you last looked. Their top-of-the-line is called Beautyrest Black. I don't know if that's just marketing or not.

We have had beautyrest and liked it a lot, because of those individual coils and the fact that you don't get bounced around when the other person moves or gets into/out of bed. BUT we decided to pay the big buckazoids for a beautyrest black when we moved. Bad idea. It's about 8 years old now, but for the past few years there are dents where we sleep. In other words, if you were to look at our mattress from the side, it looks like a "W."

The mattress we bought was a hybrid, with a few inches of memory foam on top of the regular mattress. Super comfy at first, but the memory foam got Alzheimer's very quickly. Definitely not worth the money.

On the other hand, we have an off-the-shelf foam topper on several of our other beds (sitting on top of a regular mattress), and they have been great. So that's an option, if you like the memory foam but don't want to either pay for it or want a firm mattress underneath.

But, in my experience, do not buy the Black beautyrest. Total ripoff.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
the memory foam got Alzheimer's very quickly.

Thanks everyone. I can tell this is going to take a while - ugh. I found a few candidates at the chain mattress store we were at over the weekend, but they were pricey and the salesguy was smarmy and the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. One of frontrunners was a Sterns and Foster regular innerspring coil type and the other one was a Serta hybrid -- which was comfy but I could definitely see how the memory foam on top would break down quickly. This place had some kind of magic sensor bed where you laid down on it and it analyzed you and your preferred sleep positions and then recommended like 5 out of the 80 mattresses in the store for you to try. It was kind of neat and yet kind of felt like a scam too.

I'd like to hit a local mattress factory that used to custom make mattresses on site -- I'm not sure if they still do that, but I want to check them out. I bought a mattress from them years and years ago and I remember it being a good (much less smarmy) experience.

I am also considering this company https://www.sleepez.com which seems like what Quirt describes - 3 layers that you can rearrange as you wish. But there's nowhere for me to try that in person and it's a lot of money to spend without actually being able to lay on the thing first. They will refund your money minus $99 if you hate it so maybe if I can find a latex one to try in person first and I like it, I will go this route. I do like latex pillows - I've always had latex pillows since I was a kid -- so I would think I would like the mattress, but who knows.....

I dunno - my current mattress is a Bemco who still seem to make mattresses under their own name and a few other brands. They say on their website that they make flippable ones which I would prefer if I am going to go the innerspring/coil route, though the smarmy mattress salespeople tell me that no one makes flippable ones anymore and that flipping is bad for mattresses. I can't seem to find anyone who carries Bemco locally anymore though.

Ugh - I so do not want to mattress shop!

Oh forgot to add that our bed is like a 4 poster pencil post bed - there's no boxspring so I don't need to worry about that and would only be buying the mattress. Our bed has a plywood platform, but the platform is stupidly high. Our current mattress is like 12" and I have to hop up to get in bed. And the Serta hybrid we liked at smarmy-mattress-store was 15". I would seriously need a stepladder. So mattress height is also something I'm trying to minimize.

What is "flippable"?

Are they now saying you shouldn't flip your mattress?

Well, I think the only reason why Mr. Sphinx and I got decades out of our mattress is that we do in fact flip it.

quote:

Are they now saying you shouldn't flip your mattress?

Yes, there are some mattresses that have these distinct layers and as a result can't be flipped, although they can be rotated, where the top is still on the top but the right side gets moved around to the left etc. -- Unless you get what Quirt described, in which case I believe they can be neither flipped nor rotated.

And I agree, flipping contributes to the length of the mattress.

I don't know why this all has to be so complicated now.