You were probably conceived on one and you’ll probably die on one. You spend nearly 3,000 hours a year sleeping in one. It’s where you spend the most time with your partner, and where you first bond with your children. Hundreds of thousands of people are injured by them each year. In short, there aren’t many things in your home more important than your bed. Which makes it all the stranger that most of us give them so little thought. For many, a mattress comes a long way down the list of domestic priorities. But it has been estimated that a quarter of the British population suffers from sleep disruption, and often a bad mattress is at the root of this problem. The wrong sort of sleep can also cause cricked necks and bad backs – not to mention domestic tension. David Villaverde knows this better than most. As a furniture specialist at John Lewis on Oxford Street in central London, he spends his days showing people how to get a good night’s sleep. As I sprawl out over his show beds in the middle of the day, he takes me through the bed basics.
“The first thing I tell people is to slow down,” he explains. “Most want to get it over with in five minutes. It’s such an important item – you might as well take the time to get it right.” David says that you should spend around 45 minutes choosing, and lie on each mattress you’re interested in for at least 10 minutes. First I try the glossy newcomer to the market, the Tempur mattress. I say “newcomer”, but it’s a relative term for a product that has been around for 20 years. The beds world, you may not be surprised to hear, is a relatively slow-moving industry. The Tempur mattress is made from “memory foam”, derived from a material initially developed by Nasa to cushion astronauts against extreme g-forces. They have become hot property in the past few years. It’s easy to see why. As I lie on it, each bit of my body is absorbed and supported just as much as it needs to be. If you are used to a firmer mattress, you might find it a bit too squishy, but I think it’s great.
It’s like lying on an enormous marshmallow. Next up are two more traditional models. Jensen, the Norwegian company, is widely seen as the market leader in pocket-sprung mattresses. This is the classic design, in which the stuffing is held in place by togs. I test an “Ophelia” model. I ask if the name means that purchasers sleep in it alone and cry a lot. David doesn’t think so, and as I lie on this two metre-wide monster of comfort, I’m rather inclined to agree with him. In the middle of the department store, I have a sudden sensation of being in a five-star hotel. A Jensen bed comes in three parts – the base unit, the mattress and the topper. They work together to provide the right resistance. The mattresses are “zoned” so that they’re firmer in some parts than others. “Your bottom and your shoulders stick out more than other parts of your body,” says David. If your partner prefers a firmer mattress, or is much heavier than you are, you can even have different levels of tension on your respective sides of the bed.
The final bed I test is from the hand-sprung Vi-Spring range, “the Rolls-Royce of mattresses”, as David explains. This venerable British brand, founded in 1901, is the leading “hand-sprung” model. These mattresses are hand made, and filled with a mixture of lamb’s wool, silk and mohair (the Jensen uses a blend of natural and man-made fibres). This makes the mattress more breathable. “People sweat on average between half a pint and a pint while they sleep,” explains David. Like good sportswear, a mattress must be breathable, to let out all that excess body heat. Poor breathability is often the cause of heat itches, which can seriously disrupt sleep. I certainly don’t think I’d be disrupted on this particular bed. I feel as if I should be eating grapes, and ordering soldiers into battle far away. None of this technology, care and quality comes cheap. A top-of-the-range Jensen will set you back almost as much as a small car. Unless you’re a serious art collector, or have a loo seat made out of gold, your bed can easily be the most expensive thing you own.
“It’s an investment,” says David. “And though they’re all covered by warranties, I’d say 99 per cent of the people who take the time to buy one of these beds are satisfied.” Compared with the tetanus-threatening, mite-ridden, prison-style bunk I usually make do with, all of these beds seemed excellent. I understood Heidi’s joy when she goes to Frankfurt and learns that it’s possible to have more than one pillow. I could have slept the day away on any of them. But forced to choose, I’d go for a Vi-Spring. British beds for weary British heads. The Tempur original, without a frame, starts at £1,500 for a double and goes up to £2,175 for a king-size “Sensation” Prices for a Vi-Spring go from £1,000 for a mattress up to £5,000 for a set Jensen mattresses start at £1,950 and go up to £4,050 for an Ophelia bed and mattress set Five tips for choosing a new bed 1 Take your time You’re going to spend many hours sleeping on your new mattress, so make sure it feels comfortable.
2 Think about long-term value £100 spent on a mattress is just 2.7p a night spread over 10 years. Even £5,000 works out at less than £1.50 a night. 3 Check your allergies Even mild allergies to some fibres can seriously disrupt your sleep patterns. Mattresses are available to accommodate every sort of problem. 4 Hunt in pairs When testing mattresses, make sure you go with whoever you’ll be sharing it with, so that you get something suitable for both of you. 5 Pay attention to details Pillows, toppers, sheets and duvets all make a big difference too. Spend your money equally, rather than blowing it all on a mattress and scrimping on the rest. MORE: The best mattress toppers MORE: How to choose a mattressSleep used to be for wimps - now, it’s become the ultimate status symbol. As evidence grows that a good night’s rest is essential for health, happiness and success, we’ve become a nation obsessed with the quantity and quality of our slumber. Sales of mattresses and beds rose by 4.5 per cent last year, according to the International Sleep Products Association.
We’re investing more time - and money - than ever on luxurious bedding and calming bedroom furniture and lighting, in a bid for optimal comfort. Soak & Sleep has reported a doubling in sales of its 1000-thread-count bed linen in the last year; The White Company has also just launched its first 1,000-thread-count collection. The tech industry has woken up to the sleep boom, too, with hundreds of apps and wearable monitors to monitor our sleep cycles now available. The latest incarnations are smart pillows, such as the Zeeq, launched on Kickstarter this summer, which tracks your movements during the night, vibrates to nudge you if you’re snoring, and has speakers inside so you can fall asleep to your favourite, relaxing music. Increasing numbers of companies are installing 'nap pods’ to allow employees to grab a snooze when their creativity is ebbing. The trend has no doubt been helped by leading business figures such as Arianna Huffington championing the need for more, better sleep - in her recent book, The Sleep Revolution, she described how transforming her habits to ensure she got eight hours a night made her “a better leader”.
In today’s wellness-obsessed culture, cavalier, macho attitudes to sleep seem out-of-date: Donald Trump’s erratic behaviour has been linked by some to the fact he reportedly gets by on four hours a night. One company capitalising on our renewed fascination with shut-eye is Eve Sleep, which launched 18 months ago promising to 'revolutionise’ the mattress industry. With an eye-catching yellow branding, it is so confident that its 'next generation' memory foam mattress will give a good night’s sleep that customers are invited to order it online, without seeing or testing it for comfort, with a no-strings 100 day trial period. The mattress can be customised to fit any bed and is delivered free, vacuum packed in a box; prices start at £349 for a single and £549 for a double. Over 34,000 people in the UK have already taken up the offer, and the business is growing by an impressive 25 per cent a month; Eve has also launched in Germany, France and the US. READ: The best food subscription boxes
“People recognise that sleep is a big part of being healthy,” says Kuba Wieczorek, co-founder and head of brand at Eve. “The proven benefits make customers want to invest in better products.” Wieczorek, who was formerly head of creative at Channel 4, says his mission was to simplify shopping for mattresses, historically a complex experience: “Being faced with hundreds of options and impenetrable jargon is bamboozling. Taking choice away from people isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Eve Sleep also sells protectors, pillows and sheets, and later this month is launching a duvet with toggles to make changing the sheets simple and swift. Wieczorek is only too happy to zealously rattle through the supposed benefits of Eve Sleep’s wares (‘We religiously believe in our product because we spent four years developing it before launch’) and the high rates of customer satisfaction (‘less than 6% of people send products back and we recycle all the returns.’).
Rapturous reviews on the company’s site back up his assertions that the eve mattress helped his wife, who suffers from a chronic back problem, to sleep better. A sample review reads: “I have had the mattress for two weeks now and it’s not going anywhere! Best mattress I have ever had, not to mention the best night’s sleep since I was a child. A Telegraph tester who trialled the Eve memory foam pillow was similarly impressed. After initial reservations (‘It is very dense and had a chemical whiff which went after airing for a few hours’) they are now so enraptured it will be packed for a forthcoming holiday. Not everything is rosy in the Eve Sleep world, however. The mattress wars are set to intensify with the arrival of Casper, a bigger, brasher American company which has just landed in the UK, offering an almost identical product and level of service to Eve. Casper, which launched in the US in 2014, has become one of the fastest growing consumer brands of all time, racking up $100 million in sales in 12 months.
The company has had significant investment and boasts the star power of celebrity backers including Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. READ: The best mattress toppers , which also specialises in selling mattresses in a box. Is Wieczorek losing sleep over the increased competition? “I have always slept like a log,” he says jovially. “I think competition is good. We’ve got a head start and are the clear market leaders here.” That bullish self-belief, and the bold claims of superiority on both the Eve Sleep and Casper websites, have ruffled a few feathers among more traditional operators in the industry. Do spring mattresses really cause aches and pains and lose 16 per cent of their support in the first year? The idea that it’s possible to create one 'perfect’ mattress using memory foam has also raised eyebrows. “We sell thousands of sprung mattresses every year and we certainly don’t have problems with customers returning them,” says Caitlin Price, head of furniture buying at John Lewis.
“I can understand why they make such bold claims. When you only have one core product that’s sold online you need to make it stand head and shoulders above the rest. “The fact is, there’s nothing better than coming into a shop and talking to one of our very experienced partners who offer impartial advice advice across all the ranges. Every customer likes to shop slightly differently and no one likes to be dictated to.” Wieczorek acknowledges that Eve Sleep’s mattress is not right for ‘100% of people’ but insists it suits the majority of people who are buying in a risk and stress-free way. “We have removed choice to make life easier, but there are people who will always want to sleep on a sprung or horsehair mattress.” Ever the innovator, John Lewis isn’t just catering for the stuffed mattress brigade and has announced an exclusive deal with Simba, selling its mattresses (hailed as 'the most advanced mattress in the world’) through the John Lewis website.