What a nightmare. The choices are endless. The prices are all over the board. The internet and places like Consumers Report are of little help.

So far about all I've been able to research says to lay on them from 3 to 15 minutes. Moderately firm is better than too firm and too soft. Get 1-1/2 to 2" thick padding on top.

Rankings are nearly impossible to find. ConsumersSearch suggests Simmons Beautyrest World Class is best for couples, especially if one tosses a lot. Sealy or Serta or whatever they are called is another that is recommended for heavier folks.

It seems impossible to do any cost comparison shopping as each store has it's own names; ie, what might be Simmons Sweet in one store is Simmons Sour in another........ and they may be the same or they may be different.

People either rave or hate the foam, like Tempur-Pedic, so I've scratched that one off the list.

The wife and I have spent a couple hours laying around testing at least a two dozen different ones. After a while it gets really frustrating.

We had been planning on getting a King, until I took some measurements - there's no way I can get it around the corners & up the stairs. So it's back to a Queen.

We are leaning towards a Simmons that's priced at $1600.

I think the most frustrating part is, when I was young we could have slept on the hard floor but no more; now we have much higher expectations but feel like we are at the mercy of pot luck. It's hard for me to believe that our particular comfort preferences are such that we are all so different. In any case, how does one make a rational selection from 850 different mattresses!

 

Dave,
We did this a couple of months ago......settled on the Select Comfort Sleep Number 7000 in queen size......so far it's working well...no more waking up sore.

 

We did our mattress hunting earlier this year. We had a Sealy for many years, this time we ended up with a pillow top Serta. It took my wife some time to get use to, but now it's working out. For me, I can sleep almost anywhere. Mattress hunting is in the same category as looking for appliances. The more you look the more you are confused by what you really want. You are in the right price range for the mattress, based upon my experience.

 

I don't envy you your task. We have gone through three mattresses in ten years. We could never seem to get a setup that worked for both Deb and me. We tried mattresses from the usual suspects and even considered the Swedish Duxiana at a quite high cost.

We finally settled on a system sold at a local store (when we lived there) in Folsom called European Sleep Designs (www.sleepdesigns.com).

Here is a bit of info taken off their web site:

"Discover alternatives for more healthful and sound sleep: natural latex foam, lightweight wool, cotton, 3,500 ultra-responsive carbon steel innersprings, dual-adjusting slat systems

 

^ I'll be making note of that.

As for us, we've had waterbeds, then the motion reduced waterbeds (with baffles), then the Somma waterbeds (with tubes), tried regular beds, and now have four Select Comfort beds. We started with a California king in our room, and then got queens for the kids and the motorhome. (www.selectcomfort.com)

We loved the regular beds, with the pillow tops, but our experience with them was that they would cup or hammock no matter how often they were flipped end to end and over. It mad us angry to spend so much money just to have the thing give us back aches in a few years.

We now go for the least expensive Select Comfort, the Classic or Traditional 3000, and only get the mattress. http://www.selectcomfort.com/bedconfigurat...formsubmit=true
(A queen is about $499). We have platforms so we don't need the bases. We have the wired controls, not the remotes, and not the numbers. Just a remote that you can pump to how you like the feel, or let air out.

On the regular mattresses, we discovered they weren't warrantied for "Normal sag". That was the problem we had with them, and it wasn't covered. The foam on the beds was what seemed to get indented so what we do now is buy the least padded Select Comfort, and then I get the thickest available (2 3/4") polyurethane foam mattress pad from JCPenney catalog to put on top.

http://www3.jcpenney.com/jcp/Products.aspx...cmResetCat=true

When the foam gets too broken down, we buy a new pad, not a new mattress.

 

We bought a new mattress and springs for the daughter when she moved out in August and in the search, I tried out at least 500 mattresses since we really need to replace ours. I LOVED the tempurapedic, but haven't bought one. We had to leave home for a couple/months and I lost my enthusiasm for shopping for a mattress, so we're still on the same old one. I'm thinking though, that I'm going to try one of those foam toppers first to see how I like sleeping on the foam before I invest in the complete mattress. I was shocked at the pricing difference from store to store (same brand, same mattress). A mattress that was several thousand in one store would be only 1k somewhere else. We ended up getting the daughter a much better grade mattress that sold in a sleep shop for about $1000 for $300 elsewhere. I really don't understand the difference in prices. I do like the pillow top mattresses better than the plain ones though. They feel so much better to me.

 

I don't know how you find them to try them out, but we've always used platform beds -- that is, a mattress without the innerspring piece supported by a platform of plywood or something. This gives an entirely different feel to any of those "sleep systems" out there -- not nearly so wiggly and, to my mind, more supportive.

In a store, I guess you could try to get them to slide the mattress onto the floor to try it out without the springs. HPH

 

We missd a connecting flight in Miami (AA fault) They put us up at the Sofitel in Miami. Maybe because we were so exausted, the bed was super. I just found that they sell their brand of mattress. Check it out here.

http://na.soboutique-hotelsathome.com/ECpu...rt=Sku&Start=0#

 

Bought my last one @ IKEA. The price for the frame, mattress, etc, was really good. They have varying firmness with their mattresses that you can check out if you have a store nearby. It's been great, and again the price was good.

 

I forgot to mention:

In shopping around for mattresses, I've yet to find a place that's set up to let you really try one out. HPH