I am a side sleeper. The bed I have has adjustments for 3 areas so you can adjust the firmness of not only the the foot and head of the bed but the lumbar area as well. That makes it perfect for side sleepers because with the pressure my hip puts on the middle I just lower the firmness a bit. I am guessing the adjustable frame helps some as well. I know things don’t always work the same for everyone but for me getting this bed was the best thing I’ve done for improving my quality of sleep. I used to be lucky to get 5 hours of broken sleep, now I get between 7-8 solid hours and rarely wake up. For me it’s been a total game changer.
Also went with Saatva after reading some reviews and honestly just being annoyed at the whole process generally. We have been happy with it for the year+ we have had it.
I hate mattress shopping. They all feel great in the store, especially when your king at home is 12 years old and worn out. The couple of popular review sites that aren’t mattress sellers hate everything except some hand made mattress from somewhere in New England that costs $34,000 and they make one a year (or some such stuff.) And for my wife and I, we get a king, it feels wonderful, and in about a year it has sags on both sides of the middle and we’re rotating it once a week to try to get some better support, etc.
SOOOO. Big move across the country, leaving old mattress behind. I was living in an apartment for a few months while my wife was selling the house in another state. Unfurnished apartment. I purchased a high end air mattress, then put a 3" Tempurpedic Supreme foam topper on it. It felt better than any bed we’d ever had. My wife moved here, loved it (waiting to buy a new house before we bought a bed.)
We looked at the big name memory foam mattress companies, but my mother and my brother had purchased Tempurpedic and they had kept like their like-new feel for years. We did research and purchased a Tempurpedic Pro-Adapt Medium king. And loved it. Still love it. My wife was worried about heat, but they’ve solved that issue.
We’ve had the mattress for about 3 years now, and it still feels amazing. It was not cheap, but for us, it was worth it. When we travel, we can’t wait to get home to our mattress.
I think that the interesting advice I read from consumer reports a while back was any new mattress is better than your 10 year old mattress. Mattresses have about a 10 year life cycle, and replacing an old mattress with any new mattress will be an improvement.
Also, it is important to remember that you shouldn’t feel bad for buying premium mattresses or being spendy. Sleep is super important, and it affects the rest of your life entirely. You spend 6-8 hours a day using it. I can’t think of many other things I use that I own that much. (Now that I am WFH, my chair is one of those, I suppose)
When we went shopping, we went to a local mattress store (non chain, locally owned for decades) tried out a bunch of mattresses and found our favorite. It was some sort of sealy posturepedic name.
Another interesting thing is that the Mattress companies will give the same mattress multiple names (a name for each store) so it is basically impossible to comparison shop. You have to go in to the store and try them out to understand.
I wish we would have went with a King sized upgrade, rather than sticking with a Queen, but the Master bedroom is not huge, and space would be tight, but I think it would have worked out O.K. looking at measurements now. Luckily the dog doesn’t sleep on the bed much, so we aren’t being shoved of.
After about 5 years of ownership, I am not super impressed with the box spring. IT has sagged in some places, and the corners have had the wood slats busted from sitting there to put on socks etc. The mattress itself is good, but the box spring is woefully bad. We bought a 3 inch foam topper, probably the same one as @JeffL and that has made it more comfortable as the mattress has aged.
We have an air bed at home; we were looking to replace the mattresses at our vacation rental house without going super spendy (four needed replacing). We got a Tuft and Needle foam to try (comes rolled in a box), but it was too hard to really sleep on. Before we sent it back I thought I’d tryI putting an $80 Sealy memory-foam topper on there, and now it’s an awesome mattress, one of the best we’ve had. So maybe you can save some money with a roll-ypur-own hybrid mattress-- getting the equivalent"premium" layers built into the mattress is going to cost hundreds more.
We just got a foam topper for our IKEA couch bed. My brother said it was much comfier, and it rolls up to stuff in the closet down there. Highly recommend for guest beds!
Our main mattress has years of life left, but the bed frame has reached the point of squeaking if I so much as turn over. Are there any major red flags to avoid with bed frames? We don’t use a box spring.