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When it comes to enjoying a great night’s sleep, choosing the right mattress is as important as choosing the right pillow or quilt.
Most people find it frustrating shopping for mattresses, and the risks of choosing the wrong mattress, especially if you’ve bought an expensive inner spring mattress, are very high and could result in years of uncomfortable and restless sleep.
Fortunately, Tontine has been helping Australian families achieve good quality sleep for more than 60 years, and can now help you choose and buy the perfect mattress for you and your family.
MATTRESS CHOICE CONSIDERATIONS
Most people find buying a mattress really confusing and expensive. In fact, Choice magazine, in an article published online in January 2017, accused mattress manufacturers and retailers of making “buying a mattress the stuff of nightmares” and that “unfair sales tactics are being used to make customers pay thousands of dollars more than they need to for a mattress”.
As a result of finding the traditional way of shopping for a mattress confusing, frustrating and expensive, many people are starting to buy their mattresses online, and products collectively known as mattress in a box, or bed in a box are becoming particularly popular. One of the reasons for this is that you get to try the mattresses in your own home for a couple of months or more, which is something you don’t get if you buy your bed from a traditional mattress retailer, but more on that later…
When it comes to finding the perfect mattress for you and your loved ones, it’s really not a case of one size fits all. Like it is with pillows, choosing the right mattress is a matter of personal preference, because a mattress that you find really comfy, I may find too hard or soft, and vice-versa.
OK, so what should you base your mattress purchasing decision on?
Well, finding the perfect mattress usually comes down to finding the right balance for you between these key considerations:
Let’s have a look at each one of these in turn.
MATTRESS COMFORT
For most people, finding a comfortable mattress is the most important consideration of all.
How comfortable a mattress is, is of course a subjective thing.
Generally speaking, how comfortable a mattress is usually refers to how soft it is. But be careful. Buying the most comfortable mattress isn’t just about finding the softest mattress.
The best mattresses are usually mattresses that have the balance right between comfort, support and durability.
When it comes to finding a soft mattress, that is also supportive and durable, the materials used in construction become important.
For example, most people consider the softest mattresses available to be 100% pure latex mattresses, while the softest inner spring mattresses are often those that feature a pillow top made with a comfort layer sewn into the top of the mattress and filled with materials like regular foam, memory foam, latex, manmade fibre fillings, or natural materials like cotton and wool.
To help you choose the right comfort level for you, most pillows are classified as either firm, medium or soft (plush) to help guide you, including Tontine mattresses.
MATTRESS SUPPORT
Mattress support is very important. In fact, it’s as important as the comfort level of a mattress.
As you would expect, firm mattresses generally offer the most support, while medium mattresses offer support with more comfort, and soft mattresses the least support but most comfort.
Modern mattresses now feature multiple layers, including inner spring mattresses, memory foam mattresses and latex mattresses.
We mentioned pillow top mattresses earlier, which are typically inner spring mattresses with a special comfort layer on top. In the same way, many of the latest memory foam and latex mattresses have multiple layers, some designed for maximum support and other for maximum comfort. When combined, these multi-layered mattresses offer the perfect balance between comfort, support and durability.
MATTRESS DURABILITY
Finding the perfect mattress isn’t just about finding the right comfort and support levels, it’s about finding the right comfort and support levels that last for the life of the mattress.
The best mattresses retain their comfort, support levels and shape for years and years.
There’s nothing worse than spending thousands of dollars on new mattress which is great at first but quickly loses its shape and support, and therefore comfort.
Cheap mattresses, featuring low quality materials, including springs, foams and fillings don’t tend to stay comfortable and supportive for long, even if they feel that way when they’re new.
MATTRESS BUDGET
Good quality mattresses are usually made with good quality materials, but good quality mattresses aren’t necessarily expensive.
You can easily find mattresses in traditional bedding retailers that cost $3,000 or more, but you can also find great quality mattresses delivered to your doorfor around $1,000 or less. What’s also great about many of these ‘mattress in a box’ or ‘bed in a box’ options is that you can trial them for a few months and if you’re not completely happy with them return them for a full refund.
Either way, buy the best quality mattress you can afford, and buy your mattress from a brand that you know and trust, like Tontine.
MATTRESS SLEEP TEMPERATURE
Some people are cold sleepers while others are hot sleepers.
For cold sleepers, there are many great options for staying warm in bed, like electric blankets, thick warm woollen quilts, and you can even buy feather and down blanketsto use as extra layers on top of your Tontine Doona.
But it’s not quite as easy for hot sleepers, which is why many new mattresses are made with breathable covers, gel infused memory foams, gel infused latex and other modernmaterials designed to provide the ultimate in cool sleep.
If all of that doesn’t bring your sleeping temperature down enough, there are dual temperature quilts which have a warm side and a cooler side. There are also cooling pillow protectors, cooling mattress toppers, cooling mattress protectors, and gel top memory foam pillows, and even gel infused memory foam pillows. And the list of goes on.
MATTRESS SLEEPING POSITION
Some mattresses don’t suit some sleeping positions. If you sleep on your tummy, for example, a super soft mattress probably won’t suit you.
If you change sleeping positions throughout the night, like most people do, and you’re not sure if a mattress will be comfortable in all your sleeping positions, you may be best to choose a mattress that you can trial for 100 daysor more and return the mattress free of charge if it’s not the right one for you.
MATTRESS ACHES & PAINS
Some mattress types are said to be better at relieving existing body aches and pains, like sore necks and sore backs, as well as preventing them than others.
This partly explains the popularity of memory foam and latex mattresses, similar to Tempur mattresses.
Memory foam mattresses have a particularly good reputation for helping to manage sore necks and backs, because they contour the body for custom support and in doing so eliminate pressure points.
If you have suffer from neck and back pain, particularly in the mornings when you wake, consider buying a mattress that has a memory foam top layer, or latex top layer with memory foam middle and base layers.
INDIVIDUAL OR SHARED MATTRESSES
If you aren’t sharing your bed, you don’t need to consider anyone else’s preferred level of comfort or support. But if you do share your bed, you should consider your sleeping partner’s preferences as well as your own.
For many people, the worst thing about sharing a bed with someone is that their sleep can be disturbed by any movements that their partner makes during the night. This can be particularly bad if your partner is a restless sleeper and you’re a light sleeper.
It’s for this reason that many of the new mattresses on the market promote the fact that their mattress is a zero disturbance mattress, which means that one person’s movement on the bed won’t disturb another.
Zero disturbance technology is available in traditional mattresses, as well as new memory foam and latex mattresses.
MATTRESSES & BODY WEIGHT
Your body weight and the body weight of your partner needs to be considered when choosing the ideal mattress.
Bodyweight can impact on the comfort, support and durability of a mattress, and of course can also impact the amount of partner disturbance created by movement on the bed.
If you’re particularly light, or a little heavy, traditional mattresses may not suit you, and you should consider mattresses with latex layers, and high density memory foam, or similar, bases respectively.
Again, if you can trial the mattress for an extended period to see if it’s right for you, and return it free of charge if it’s not, do that.
MATTRESSES & AGE
How young or old you are can affect your mattress purchase decision in a couple of ways.
The younger you are, the more flexible you’re likely to be in the type of mattress you buy or choose, and you’re less likely to suffer from ongoing neck and back pain. Conversely, the older you are, the more used to a particular type of mattress you’re likely to be, and you probably experience neck and back pain at least every now and again.
As mentioned earlier, memory foam mattresses like Tempur are great at relieving aches and pains associated with sleeping on a poor or worn out mattress, but they do take a little getting used to if you’ve never slept on one before.
In fact, during the first few nights, these mattresses can even appear to make things worse, but often that’s just your body getting used to this new type of mattress.
If you’re young and fancy free, you can try any mattress you want, and chances are you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.
BED SIZES
This seems like a pretty obvious consideration, but you’d be surprised how many people move into a new apartment because they’re moving out of home for the first time, or down-sizing, and buy a mattress that doesn’t fit their new bedroom particularly well.
Many teenagers refuse to sleep on a single mattress these days, and king size mattresses are growing in popularity all the time.
Whichever mattress size you choose, make sure it fits your bedroom as well as your new lifestyle!
SPECIAL NEEDS AND ANTI ALLERGY MATTRESSES
Many people have special needs to consider when choosing the perfect mattress for them.
For example, some people have mobility issues and need mattresses that can assist them in getting in and out of bed.
Other special considerations aren’t as serious as the one described above, and include things like suffering from allergies, etc.
Traditional materials used in bedding, including inner spring mattresses, can encourage, or at least not inhibit the growth of mould and bacteria as well as dust mites. Dust mites are known triggers of allergies and asthma, so if you or your family suffer from one or both of these, you should consider memory foam and latex mattresses that are naturally anti-allergenic.
If you have a latex allergy, perhaps a latex mattress isn’t right for you.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, choosing the right mattress for you and your family isn’t as straight forward as deciding if you want a soft or firm mattress and how much you have to spend.
And although there are quite a few factors to consider, the investment in choosing the right mattress and buying the right one for you, will pay off in spades.
After all, we spend a third of our lives asleep, and few things are as important in determining our general happiness and health, as the quality of our sleep.
For the perfect mattress, and comfort you can trust, the brand to choose is Tontine.