Buying a Mattress: Is The Mattress Or The Bed The More Important?

When buying a mattress you also have to decide whether or not the design or construction of your bed contributes significantly to your comfort. Would you be just as comfortable to lay your mattress on a stone floor as if you had it resting on a properly sprung bed frame? In fact, the answer to that question is 'Yes': If you purchase a well-constructed modern mattress, the base it lies on is irrelevant to your comfort other than the ease of lying down and getting up the morning!

First consider the bed. Are you buying your mattress together with a new bed, or for a bed you already have. The mistake that many people make is to see a bed in showroom that looks good to them, and say 'I want that!'. They will get the bed plus the mattress that is on it - probably put together only for display. The bed and the mattress should be chosen separately: each plays its own part:

What the Bed Offers

Your choice of bed offers the style you want for your bedroom. Perhaps a wall bed would attract you with all its added features, or may a sleigh bed with its sweeping curves just like a sleigh. Or maybe just a simple plain pine bed is more to your liking. Whatever you prefer, the bed should match the general design of the furniture in your bedroom.

That is for looks! Your bed frame matches the look of your bedroom. What lies on the frame will be what you mattress will lie on. Early beds consisted of a headboard and floorboard with a metal frame between these that contained regular steel springs. A mattress filled with foam or teased flock wool lay on these springs.

Later came spring mattresses, lying either on a solid wooden base, a lathe base or still on a sprung base. You can have any of these today, although the bed itself would not be made from metal rails but from a wooden box structure. However, the base the mattress lies on is relatively unimportant with modern mattresses - it is the the way the mattress is made and constructed that contributes to your comfort.

Mattresses can be spring or foam. The type of foam known as 'memory foam' conforms to your shape when you sleep, and will 'remember' the same shape the next time you use it. Those that are not, tend to be supplied with cheap mattresses that are produced for price rather than comfort. Foams can promote night sweating because they don't offer much air movement or ventilation. The better of the mattresses made using 'memory foam' help to prevent sweating and keep you cool because they include a unique ventilation system.

Spring mattresses are of two fundamental types: inner springs and pocketed springs. With inner springs each spring is attached to its neighbor, and when you lie on it, each spring moves those next to it so that the comfort of your partner is disturbed. It is possible to avoid this to a large extent by means of what are referred to as 'smart springs' in which adjoining springs are coiled in opposite directions, so that the movement of one is negated by the opposite movement of its neighbor. This evens out the depression of the mattress so that there is less disturbance between partners.

With the more expensive pocketed spring construction, each spring is tied into individual pockets that stand vertically from the bottom of the mattress, lying on the frame, to the top on which you would lie. Since the springs are not attached to each other, but move independently, there is no disruption of the level of the mattress between partners. Because each spring is individually inserted into the pockets, the pocketed springs are the more expensive of the two, the innerspring mattresses being made from a framework of springs produced as a single item.

A modern mattress is constructed using a system on internal springs that can be either innersprings or pocketed springs (explained latter) with a a number of additional comfort layers added over this. These could include ordinary foam or latex to remove the discomfort of the springs and then a memory foam to render the mattress even more comfortable. The best mattresses can consist of a sprung core with several comfort layers added to it.

The price you pay will naturally vary according to the maker's name, but also with the number of layers involved in forming the mattress 'sandwich'. The springing system used in the mattress, and the layers covering that, will generally determine the comfort of the mattress. The base of the bed, whether that is solid or sprung, will have little influence on the comfort of beds fitted with most modern mattresses, but might be a factor with those fitted with cheaper mattresses.

However, all that aside, your comfort when sleeping comes from the mattress - and usually from the mattress alone, even average mattresses today being able to remove any discomfort in the base of the bed itself. That's why many beds today are made with slatted, solid wood or foam bases rather than with springs - select a good comfortable mattress and the base upon which it lies is largely irrelevant.

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