Mattress Choice: How to Ensure Your Healthy and Relaxing Sleep

A third of your life is spent in bed sleeping. How the rest of it is spent is up to you (though we would totally understand if you decided to spend some of that time in bed doing other stuff too). Since a huge chunk of time is allocated to your mattress, it's reasonable to assume that you need to put a lot of effort in making sure you have the perfect one.

Now, we all know how important quality sleep is to our health and happiness. Scientists, health professionals, and our mothers have only been stressing it for so long. So, it's also very reasonable to ensure that the bed you choose is not only super comfortable but also gives you the quality sleep you need.

So, how does one go about finding the perfect mattress? Well, we’ve got the tips you need to get started.

Mattress Type

The first step to finding your mattress mate is to choose the type of mattress you want. There’s the traditional innerspring mattress for those who prefer that extra bounce. There’s the memory foam mattress that “hugs” you while you sleep. Latex foam does that too but is better at regulating the bed’s temperature and is usually a good choice for someone with allergies. Another type of bed is the air mattress which allows you to adjust the firmness of the bed any time you want. And then you have the hybrid mattress which is a combination of two or more of types of beds such as memory foam + latex or memory foam + latex + coils.

Now, it is important to note that there’s no perfect mattress type. Comfort and support is highly subjective. Your choice of mattress type will also depend on your lifestyle (more on that later). In short, pick the mattress type that fulfills all your needs, not the ones that experts tell you is the right one for you.

Support and Firmness Rating

There’s a lot of emphasis made on support when talking about the perfect mattress. But what is it really? Support is how the mattress keeps your spine in proper alignment while you’re sleeping without creating pressure points in your body. Now, the support you get from a mattress will depend upon several factors - your sleeping style, your body size, and your weight. Firmness, on the other hand, has more to do with comfort. While mattress companies provide ratings for their products, there is no industry standard for them to follow. And comfort is always in the perspective of the sleeper. This means that whether something is comfortable or not is entirely up to you. Just like support, the perfect level of firmness you should get is dependent on the same factors. A heavyweight person may find a bed soft but a lightweight one might find the same bed too hard. When choosing your mattress, don’t ask anyone’s opinion but your own. You are, after all, the one who will be lying in it.

Mattress Size

No matter what they say, size always matters. The quality of your sleep is affected by how much space you have in bed. Ideally, you should have an extra 10 to 15 cm of space surrounding you at all sides. If you're sharing the bed with someone, you'll need about 10 cm of space between you two to ensure you don't bump into each other at night.

Here's a tip: don't rely on expect mattresses to have the same exact dimensions even if they have the same labels - King, Queen, Double, etc. There is no industry standard to these sizes so you will need to take a measuring tape to find out the dimensions of each potential mattress before you make your choice.

Lifestyle

Ok, what does your lifestyle have to do with your mattress? A lot, apparently. You need to figure out your sleep style. Do you sleep on your stomach, on your back, or on your side? Do you move around a lot at night? How hot do you get when you sleep? Are you planning on having a bit of adventurous sex on this bed? What about your partner’s sleeping style? What is your body size and weight? The answers to all of these questions will help you find out the features you need for your mattress. For example, stomach sleepers will need a bed that they will not sink into because that would suffocate them so they might have to consider an innerspring mattress. If you’re planning on having a bit of wild lovin’ in the sack, you will need a bed that has that extra bounce and maybe one with good edge support (because you don’t want to slide off the bed at a pivotal moment). This means that memory foams may not be your style.

Shopping tips:

Try before you buy. You will never know how well you chose your mattress until you sleep on it for at least 30 days. It takes that long for you to “break in” your bed and to find out if you are getting the quality sleep you need to stay healthy and happy. Find a company that will let you try out their bed for at least a month with a money-back guarantee.
Check the warranty and customer service. Does the company offer free delivery? What about their return policy? If you’re not happy with your bed, are they willing to give you back your money? Do they have a restocking fee?
If you sleep with a partner, you should buy a mattress with your partner. No individual is completely alike, no matter how much time you’ve spent together over the years. Each of you will have his or her own needs that must be met in order for both of you to get quality sleep.