Best Mattress Reviews And Buying Guide 2020 (Updated)

But first….

Consider the following bedroom facts: In your lifetime, you will spend about one in three days sleeping —most likely than not in a bed and on a mattress. Quality sleep in a bed begins with a good sleep posture.

Sleeping posture depends on the quality of sleep surface you have. The sleep surface you choose can help ease symptoms for people with sleep apnea, back pain, acid reflux, sleep insomnia, and other issues. Similarly, the mattress you choose can aggravate these issues.

Moreover, your body size and type, combined with the type and size of the sleeping surface you choose, will have a ripple effect on how many nights, in fact, live up to the good night tag. Moreover, your sleeping habits —both natural and adopted— also weigh in on your mattress and sleep quality, and vice versa.

If you are sharing, and your partner tosses and turns during downtime, you can choose a mattress that will significantly save you the disturbance without an argument. Fortunately, advances in technology can help.

Ultimately, the one you opt for will either worsen or optimize your sleep quality and duration.

The quality and duration of sleep you get directly affects your next-day mood, body weight, productivity, body shape and size, and energy levels for carrying out day-to-day activities.

Clearly, the mattress you select can make or break your nights’ sleep for the next 10 years or so.

When it’s time to either replace or buy a new mattress, there are multiple considerations to make regarding the purchase.

It is then safe to suppose that buying the best mattress is a health investment. The best Wall Street investors will conduct due diligence before committing precious resources towards any project.

Here is the savoir-faire approach to steering around the various beds with uber confidence.

To summarize my finding, for decades specialty mattresses have been rated higher than traditional springs beds based on user satisfaction.

Memory foam has in particular remained top of the chart for many years. After memory foam, hybrid, innerspring, latex, and air mattresses are next. However, depending on your personal choice, the best beds for your needs might be different from what someone else considers the best.

Each kind of bed has its pros and cons that make is suitable or not. Likewise, there’s no such thing as a brand that makes everyone happy, all the time.

With that in mind, there are bed brands that tend to review higher than other, and there are those that rank consistently above average.

The ratings given are determined by our in-house testing results, user reviews in other 3^rd – party platforms. The result from our analysis is a selection of the top rated mattresses and best beds on the market today for the various categories.

These are also referred to as foam mattresses. Memory foam have a polyurethane core. This means foam sleeping surfaces are made entirely or mostly of memory foam. For this reason, these types are rather firm compared to other types. However, foam is a moldable material. This means the mattress molds to your body’s shape after lying on it. When you wake up and move out of the bed, it springs back up to its original shape. This is made possible by the fact that they’re modern and take advantage of advanced bedding technology from NASA to adapt to the sleeper’s sleeping habit.

People who experience back pain and joint pain particularly find foam cores to be suitable to them as it reduces the symptoms.

The moldable foam maintains body posture and helps align the spine horizontally when sleeping sideways especially. Also, the foam affects sleeping temperature.

A memory foam mattress is accused of “sleeping hot;” it can get fairly warm, according to some owners. However, more recent and advanced varieties are being released into the market with cooling properties to mitigate the complaint. You can decide which variety suits your ideal sleeping temperature, residence and climate —and even time of year.

The sinking motion absorbs the sleeping person’s weight, thus improving body contouring, pressure relief, and support. This can also mean fewer disturbances from your partner’s toss and turns if this is already or is an anticipated problem. Yet, foam choices provide an extra firm base.

Varieties of memory foam include latex and gel foam cores. Latex foam options are said to be hypo-allergenic. If you are concerned about off-gassing, be sure to air your memory foam mattress before first use to avoid an allergic reaction to it.

Gel foam surfaces are supposed to add a cooling effect to the foam mattress type. Check also our comprehensive guides on top rated memory foam mattress reviews here.

It’s made wholly from latex foam. In terms of feel, it is almost as firm as memory foam, but with a little more buoyancy. While you’ll find options made out of natural latex, some others are made out of synthetic latex. There isn’t any major difference, though. However, natural latex is known to be both resistant to dust mites and mold as well as being antimicrobial. A Latex mattress core is also especially breathable. This property is a plus for people with allergies (especially to dust mites) and breathing conditions such as asthma.

The fact that latex mattresses combine a spring-back effect and firmness makes it a choice for people who prefer an orthopedic-level of back support, as well as joint and back pain relief. Still, many types of latex mattress are designed to achieve a plush level of comfort. As well, sleepers who appreciate features such as responsiveness, good bounce, and cooling effect prefer to buy from the latex category.

Latex foam cores also make for heavy latex mattresses. They can be difficult to move and turn, for example when cleaning. Furthermore, most manufacturers and sellers claim this variety lasts longest and most durable —hypothetically lasting in shape for up to 20 years. To go with this tribute, most of them are often expensive. However, cheaper options in the market, but some buyers have complained that these tend to develop dents and lumps over time.

There are myriad choices in the market for latex varieties. But there are really two categories:

Dunlop Latex: These are made from more dense, solid, and heavier latex foam

Talalay Latex: These are made from softer latex foam

This means a huge pool of manufacturers, stores, and price points for everyone. Despite these being good things in the market, they can also mean more frustration for the buyer from having to choose on so many aspects of one product.

Check out our detailed and unbiased latex mattress reviews and ratings here.

3. Innerspring Mattresses

This type is the traditional choice of sleeping surface in the market, meaning they are the most extensively sold, least expensive, and until very recently, the most popular in terms of new purchases.

People with a liking for beds with bounce prefer an innerspring mattress way more than both a latex and memory foam mattress. Innerspring offers an ultra-plush feel compared to a latex mattress.

Innerspring mattresses are available in two distinct tastes:

Open Spring: This variety comprises of a single, long metal wire that is coiled into multiple springs. This is why it is also known as a continuous or open coil mattress. An open spring will also comprise of an additional border wire or rod to add to support. However, most people prefer to use open coil mattresses to serve less used quarters or where they are likely to be replaced soon such as guest houses and children’s rooms. This type of innerspring mattress will tend to give off the most ripple effect when a partner on either side of the bed shifts.

Pocket Spring: This variety comprises of multiple, independent steel springs/coils that are also enclosed in a fabric pocket. In most coil spring build mattresses in the market right now, each coil is individually enclosed. This can help dumb down the effects of a moving partner since.

Want to go right to the top spring mattress recommendations? Click here to check out our detailed and unbiased reviews and ratings here!

Typically, innerspring mattresses are composed of steel rings that are coiled and arranged in various configurations. Be sure to choose the amount of preferred bounce by deciding on the metal coil gauge between 12 and 18. The latter gauge makes up the most compressible and thinnest coils while 12-gauge coils are the most solid and are thickest.

Choose either depending on your specific needs. For example, people who are heavier tend to go for steel rings with a lower gauge. These are also more durable than higher gauge cores. For even more durability, consider interconnected coils which offer extra firmness. Firmness ranges from soft, medium through to firm versions.

Pocket innerspring tend to be more breathable than both memory foam and latex mattresses. This could mean they might help reduce sleeping hot tendencies of the latter two, so sleepers can base the decision to buy depending on areas of residence and climate and body heat tendencies. Still, the fact that the springs/coils are individualized means when a partner on one side of the bed moves, there is likely to be less of a ripple effect to wake the other person on the other side of the same bed.

Typically, an innerspring or coil mattress will either have a foam or fiberfill exterior layer that is in turn covered or enclosed in quilted ticking. It is good to note that despite appearing puffy, the layer can become less puffy in a few months after purchase.

Still, some manufacturers choose to include lamb’s wool and other natural materials as fillers. Such may cause people with an allergic reaction to them to react to the stimuli. Also worth noting is the fact that a pocket innerspring mattress is heavy to turn during such a time as cleaning.

4. Air (Inflatable) Mattresses

Also referred to as air-filled mattresses, these are inflatable beds. Most people like it that they can inflate the bed to their preferred firmness at any time. This adds to the customization appeal of a sleeping pad. One moment the bed is firm and the next it can be deflated to adjust to a sleeper’s needs.

There is an electric air pump included in the purchase to help. Some people might be concerned about the sound of the pump to be disturbing, especially if inflating at night. But cheaper packages may have manual, feet-operated pumps, which can be wearing and cause sleep loss especially when used immediately before sleep. Nowadays, most of the air mattresses on offer are shipping with inbuilt pumps, which are electric and blow up the set faster than manual pumps with just a turn of a knob.

Other more advanced air beds have a remote from which you can control how much air to deflate or preserve inside on a whim. Obviously, the latter are also more expensive considering the high-tech functionality added to them.

Essentially, with an air bed, you can pretty much adjust it to your or a partner’s sleep preferences, and it is, therefore, easy to turn it into a latex, memory foam or innerspring-like kind of mattress. Many forms of the air sleeping surface are available in differentiated chambers. There are also different types of chamber designs—which are usually air-filled rubber or vinyl chambers (air is pumped into the PVC chambers).

While some are arranged in halves along the length, others may comprise of more air chambers. The good thing about this is, if sharing, sleep partners can choose to inflate their halves to their specific preferences. This way is supposed to reduce disturbances across the entire airbed as in the case of an open spring mattress.

If you choose to get into the market for one, there is a conventional selection of sizes ranging from twin to king sizes.

The chambers are then covered much the same way as in an innerspring mattress. Quilted foam or fiberfill is usually used to cover the exterior of the air mattress. However, many owners who have used several types of mattresses report that an air pad feels more comfortable and delivers higher satisfaction than an innerspring sleeping surface. But they also point out that an air pad is not as highly satisfying as either latex foam or memory foam.

Campers prefer air sleeping pads to sleeping bags on hard floors. The pros include that an air-filled is easy to deflate and move around, making it uber-portable than other bed options. Back home, owners can choose to deflate the bed and store it as an additional guest room sleeping pad. And of course, this variety is less cumbersome to turn and haul around.

Air mattresses come in varied heights and thickness:

• Raised: These are the most popular of the three air bed types. Sleepers who prefer the traditional bed experience away from the bed opt for the raised air pad. In addition to the air-filled chamber(s), it comes with its own support platform attached to the base. The attachment makes this the heaviest choice among the three.

• Medium: This type of air pad is similar to a raised air mattress only less thick.

• Low Profile: This type of air bed is the thinnest of the three options. The platform attached in a raised air bed is missing here and tend to be the smallest of the bunch. That implies low profile air beds are lightweight, easier to roll up and backpack for a trip, as well as inflate and deflate, in addition to using up less space for either spreading or storing.

Detailed reviews and ratings here

5. Hybrid Mattress

Nowadays, many manufacturers have introduced various types of sleeping surfaces that combine different aspects of the other four major mattress types. They’re also referred to as adjustable mattresses.

The perfect mattress ensures your body receives support in a neutral position. In this position, your spine employs a good curvature. At the same time, your head, shoulders, buttocks, and heels below are well supported and aligned correctly. These body parts are referred to by medics as pressure points. How soft or firm the bed surface is affects these pressure points.

If a mattress is too soft, your body will tend to flop backward since the pressure points are inadequately supported. If it’s too solid/firm, the mattress will apply pressure to the pressure points causing aching, discomfort and interrupted sleep.

The best hybrid combines different build materials that are customized to optimize a particular sleeping preference. For example, in the market right now, you might find a hybrid bed surface core that comprises an adjustable/coils base, latex foam support at the center, and a top layer made of memory foam.

Another example can be in the form of a pillow-top hybrid. This is best for sleepers who prefer a top layer of soft fabric or stuffing material sewn or stuffed into the cover to enjoy a floating-like feel. A good example would be where the base of the mattress comprises of 8-inch support coils base, a central layer of 4-inch pocketed coils and a top layer of 1.5-inch soft pillow top material.

A hybrid pad can be made to adjust to each sleeper. It’s ideal for people with medical conditions such as spinal injuries, people with chronic back and joint pain, and old sleepers. Some hybrid options in the market right now have extra features such as cooling, heating, vibration, and massaging ability. Detailed reviews and ratings here.