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Choosing a Memory Foam MattressIn the spirit of full disclosure, I first must say that this is an article by my husband David who has the website Healthy Foundations which has been specializing in memory foam mattresses and memory foam mattress topper pads since 1998. And his site does offer some great information - a good place to start is with his Guide to Memory Foam. But while I do have a certain bias here, I love memory foam and have slept on it for years. The memory foam topper pad I used when I was pregnant was really a lifesaver. I had developed severe hip pain sleeping on my side while traveling while I was pregnant. My husband got a memory foam topper pad for me to use and it made all the difference. After a few days on the memory foam pad all my hip pain disappeared and I could sleep comfortably again. Now that Healthy Foundations has begun to carry a mattress again, I invited David to write an article about how to pick a memory foam mattress. Its just that there has been an explosion in memory foam mattresses over the last couple of years, and every manufacturer seems to have their new memory foam model out at the mattress showrooms. But as I've learned from David over the years, memory foam can vary dramatically in quality and comfort, so I asked him to write something helping people sort through the vast memory foam mattress options. That said, here's my husband's article - a guide to picking a memory foam mattress. ___________________________________________ ( Rosenberg of Healthy Foundations, The Memory Foam Specialists.) I remember the first time I came across memory foam. It was in a mall in 1994, and I happened to look into a store window and saw a pillow that said "Touch Me - I Feel Good". I usually don't respond to these kind of things, but for some reason I went into the store and squeezed my first Tempur-Pedic pillow, and I was immediately hooked. Never had I felt something quite like this - it was firm yet yielding, and was actually softening to my touch. But the real revelation was when I laid down on the Tempur-Pedic mattress topper pad that the store also had on their floor. I honestly had never felt anything quite like this, and that was it for me - I had to have one. Well, it took awhile for the rest of the country to get as hooked on memory foam as I became that day in 1994, but here in 2006 memory foam has become the latest rage in mattresses and Tempur-Pedic has become the 4th largest mattress manufacturer in the US. Why this explosive growth? It is simply that memory foam works - it reduces pressure points and conforms to your body in a way unlike any other bedding material. Memory foam, unlike a lot of hyped products, really works - it is being incorporated into so many mattresses since it really does improve people's quality of sleep. But the growth of memory foam has had a bad side - every foam manufacturer around the world wants in on this explosive growth, and there are so many memory foams now flooding the market that it is very hard for consumers to sort through which ones are good and which ones just don't measure up. My simple rule of thumb is stick with memory foam products, whether a mattress topper or in a mattress, that are at least 4 lb density memory foam. Anything of a lower density just won't have the comfort and feel of the higher density memory foam products. And I tend to stick with 5 lb memory foam as a minimum for the memory foam layers used in a memory foam mattress. Why not 4 lb memory foam in a mattress? Well, I do like 4 lb memory foam - in fact, that is all we use in the memory foam topper pads we sell. I like the 4 lb best for a topper pad since it has the softest initial feel of the higher density memory foams and really is comfortable and does a great job of reducing pressure points. But the one downside of 4 lb memory foam is that it does soften over time, and I tell people to expect 3 - 5 years of use on a 4 lb topper pad before they would probably want to replace it. And while this works fine for a topper pad, this just doesn't work well in a mattress where you can't switch out the internal foam layers after a few years. So for a mattress, you want to look for a higher density of memory foam that will last the lifetime of a mattress - so that is why we recommend sticking with 5 lb memory foam or higher when looking for a mattress. We also recommend going with a mattress that has at least 3" of memory foam. A memory foam mattress is made up of layers of different material. On the bottom is some sort of base layer. This can be anything from innnerspring to latex foam. Usually memory foam mattresses have a 5 - 6" base of a fairly dense polyurethane foam as the base layer. On top of the bed you find the memory foam layer. And we recommend 3" of memory foam on the top since this gives you a real luxurious feel on top of the bed. These basic recommendations should help you narrow the field of memory foam mattresses a bit, but there are plenty out there that still fit these general criteria. So how do you choose? Well, unfortunately one of the problems with memory foam mattresses is that they are temperature sensitive - which means the memory foam layer softens up over time with your body's heat. And different memory foams react differently to body heat; that is, they take different amounts of time to soften and they soften to different degrees. So unlike standard mattresses, you may not get a very good idea of the comfort of a particular memory foam mattress by trying it out in a store. You just don't have the time in a store test to see what the mattress will feel like over a whole night's sleep of having the foam interact with your body's particular body temperature (some people sleep warm, others don't, etc.). So what can you do to try to find out which memory foam mattress might work for you? Well, the web can really help here. Before buying a particular brand of memory foam mattress it is worth doing some research to see what other people are saying about the mattress. We did this before deciding to sell our new 10" Memory Foam Mattress - we talked with the manufacturer about the number of returns they had seen for comfort (almost none) and read a number of customer testimonials from people that had used the mattress for some time. This intrigued us enough to test it out ourselves, and this is the other key - go with a memory foam mattress that gives you a solid money back trial, and one long enough to really give the mattress a fair try. A 30 day trial just isn't enough - mattress industry research has shown a fair proportion of people take about 30 days to adjust to a new mattress. So you really need something 60 days or longer. We decided to give people a 365 day trial on our 10" Memory Foam Mattress - we wanted to show how much we believed in this product by offering an money back trial that is unmatched in the industry. And this is something you should look for from the dealer you choose to buy your memory foam mattress - they should really believe in the mattress they are selling and one good gauge of how much they believe in it is what kind of money back trial they offer (and how much money you would lose if you did return the mattress - we only charge a $75 return fee, and this is something to ask your dealer up front before buying any memory foam mattress). I hope that this guide to buying a memory foam mattress has been helpful. If you would like to more information on memory foam, you can find all sorts of other in-depth buying guides to memory foam on our site.
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