The Battle of the Beds
There’s a battle waging in the world of comfortable sleep delivery and it’s being waged on several fronts. Major contenders are manufacturers of high quality inner-spring mattresses, air mattresses and foam mattresses. While each brings something to the table, there is, in this writer’s opinion, only one clear winner if quality sleep is your condition for victory.
In selecting a mattress, your focus should be the best quality sleep you can get for your money. The features in a mattress that lead to quality sleep include its level of firmness and how it affects pressure points on your body. Another more difficult to quantify feature is general comfort. Mattress manufacturers try to excel in all these qualities and more, but the pursuit often requires sacrifices in other areas.
By far the most common choice, innerspring mattresses are particularly susceptible to increases in price in pursuit of increases in comfort. Quality construction options and plush padding can greatly improve a mattresses impact on pressure points. Likewise, higher spring density or materials greatly improve comfort, but all of these options increase the cost of construction and that cost is passed on to the consumer. Simply put, the mattress becomes more expensive as it becomes more comfortable.
An alternative to innerspring mattresses which will help save on cost are foam mattresses such as those offered by Memory Foam or Tempur-Pedic. The major advantage to these beds is that they can offer substantial improvements in comfort without an equally substantial increase in price. Foam mattresses do wonders, particularly in terms of pressure point comfort, but they do come with their own drawbacks. Without a quality topper or padding, foam mattresses tend to cocoon a sleeper in a way that feels terribly confining to some (me included).
Another downside to foam mattresses (and innerspring mattresses) is user compatibility. You may love the level of support provided by your foam mattress, but your spouse may be wholly unsatisfied. Short of buying separate beds, one of you will have to make a sacrifice in terms of preferred firmness and comfort.
The final option in the quest for the perfect bed is the air mattress. I’m going to show my hand here and talk, specifically, about the Select Comfort bed which is a high-end, everyday use air bed you might recognize as the Sleep Number bed.
Sleep Number beds have many of the desirable qualities of foam mattress beds. In particular, both do exceptionally well at minimizing uncomfortable pressure points owing to the absence of internal springs. The benefit to their design means that pressure is more evenly distributed and the beds can form to the shape of your body regardless in what position you may sleep.
The addition of a topper or pad is key to making both foam mattresses and air mattresses comfortable. In the case of an air mattress, you don’t want to sleep on the cold vinyl of a bare bed. But foam mattresses require the topper for legitimate comfort (to avoid that cocooning sensation I mentioned) while air mattresses only really need the topper to separate you from the material of the mattress itself. The topper isn’t required to adjust the bed’s firmness or softness.
Also in line with several quality foam mattresses, quality air mattresses offer substantially improved sleep quality according to several university and independent studies. The two run about even in this regard depending on the particular study you review. Even enough, anyway, to rate them a draw in this regard. But there’s one thing that sets the Sleep Number bed apart from the pack.
Where sleep number beds shine is in their independent firmness offering. You single folks might not care about this feature but those of us with a spouse can attest to the fact that being able to set the firmness on your side of the bed where you want it, independent of your partner’s preference, is a major benefit.
Foam and air mattresses provide very similar levels of general sleep quality, support and pressure point comfort. The only real considerations in your decision of which to buy are price and flexibility in accommodating different preferences. High comfort innerspring mattresses will generally be the most expensive. A quality air mattress will generally fall between an innerspring and foam mattress in cost. But don’t make the mistake of letting price alone dictate your decision. The money you save at purchase won’t count for much compared to the countless hours you’ll spend in a barely adequate mattress. With great benefits in terms of comfort coupled with the ability to adjust firmness as required without annoying your partner leaves an adjustable air mattress bed like the Sleep Number bed the clear winner in this equation.