How do you buy a mattress?

I was mattress shopping before Christmas last year. Here’s what I learned.

1) the cheap come-ons (mattress and sprint for $199) are total crap. Cheaply made and they fall apart. Anything to get you into the store, and then they try and upsell you.

2) Once you get up to the $400+ (per piece) you get into pretty high quality. That means – thicker, more springs, more padding, the works. But there’s not a huge difference between a $400 per piece and an $800 per piece. So don’t buy the expensive one just because.

3) More springs usually means a better mattress which will last longer. But the other factors are how springy they are (personal taste) an how they are attached to the frame. I do not remember all the details, but one way has a tendency to come out more quickly.

4) There is an actual technique to carrying a mattress. Have them deliver it – they know how to not stress the frame of the box spring (which makes it weaker)

5) Even though they say “30 days or money back” practically no one does this because of the hassle and inconvenience.

6) (Personal taste): Pillow tops are great. But it really depends on YOU and how high you want the mattress to be, and how hard it should be,

I second the pillow tops as my personal preference. I recently got a new mattress (well…I guess it was for a guest room now) and we went to this discount store and i started lying on them. I didn’t think 5 minutes would do any good, either, so I figured it’d be random. But when I fell onto this pillow top mattress, I loved it! It felt so good and I decided to get it. The few nights I slept on it were amazing. I felt so refreshed in the morning.

I need something adjustable so I bought a Sleep Number bed about 5 years ago and I have been very happy with it. I like that I can adjust the firmness, depending on ache and pain levels, and I have found it is generally cooler to sleep on in the summer.
Instead of a pillow top, I use a foam topper I got at Target for $25.
I didn’t buy the bottom piece, I have an Ikea platform frame that works as well.
They charge a lot for the bells and whistles, I just avoided those.

Some people really can’t sleep well on what is essentially an air mattress, if you are one, don’t even try, otherwise I recommend it.

Good luck!

I heard that pillow tops poop out long before the main part of a mattress. We got a plain mattress at Costco, then added a memory foam top. That way, when the memory foam poops out, we need to replace just the top.

I have a memory foam that I really like. I’ve only had it about a year, but I still like it. I laid on a few, but couldn’t really tell either. I mostly went by the price. I didn’t want cheap, but I wasn’t spending 2,000 either. I think I settled at around 800.00.
The way they explained the return in 30 days if you don’t like it is you have to keep the heavy plastic on it or they won’t take it back. I didn’t see how I could tell by sleeping on heavy plastic that would make noise every time I moved.

If you get memory foam, be sure to get a dust mite barrier for your mattress. Otherwise the mites and their poop will fill up the pores of the memory foam and it will get hard. Actually, you would do well to get a dust mite cover regardless of the construction. It will add many years onto the life of your mattress.

I love my pillow top. It is like sleeping on a cloud. I’ve had it for 10 years now, and it has not pooped out, as @RocketGuy mentioned. I would never pay the money for those fancy sleep-number beds or memory foam. Like the waterbed, it seems to me to be a gimmick to sell crap for an exorbitant price. I did not pick the most expensive pillowtop on the showroom floor. Like @elbanditoroso said, there isn’t much difference between the $400 one and the $800 one.

However, someone with a bad back might need something else – I don’t know. I am the type that could sleep on a box of rocks.

There is nothing to match sleeping a whole night on a mattress to determine if it is the right one for you. Perhaps you have some friends with mattresses they think are really good, maybe you could stay at their place for the night and sleep in their bed. Ideally the mattress would be in a spare bedroom but I wouldn’t mind giving up my bed for a night in such circumstances, if I thought I had a mattress suitable for a friend, it’s all for a good cause.

i things, want to buy a good mattress or something else, too, like the right to buy, not to choose too many stores. how difficult choice.