Firm, plush, or soft feel? �Firm,� I said to the 1-800-Mattress guide as I lay on a Simmons Beautyrest. �Thought so,� he said. �New Yorkers like firm. Soft only sells in the suburbs.� That was the simplest thing I had to consider in my journey through modern bed-land. A lot has changed since the days when a bed was just some springs buttressing iridescent quilted polyester. Mattresses of the moment are made of foam, latex, and sometimes coils in a mind-numbing array of combinations. The original foam is Tempur-pedic, the solid-memory foam developed by nasa and made famous by its infomercial; now there are legions. Tempur-pedic is one of the firmest beds you can buy and a best seller in New York. (Note to shoppers: This time of year, as white sales abound, Macy’s lists a California King Rhapsody mattress set at $3,799.) Converts like that unshakable feeling�one person can get up without the other inhabitant feeling the weight shift (it’s called �motion separation� in the mattress business).
Memory foam is also hypoallergenic, since dust mites can’t live in it. But most of the foam beds I tested felt like warm quicksand, and the way they slowly rose up after I rolled off was slightly creepy. My favorite of the lot was from the Italian company Magniflex, whose �geoethic� line of beds have layers of plant-based memory foam ($1,399 to $5,399 for a queen). Magniflex cuts channels into their foam so air circulates. As I reclined my way through the Soho showroom (59 Crosby St., nr. 646-330-5483), I felt supported but not swallowed. And the delivery is smart; the mattress arrives rolled up a like a rug and vacuum-packed, which makes it a lot easier to lug up to a sixth-floor walk-up. Then there’s latex, which can be natural (made from rubber) or synthetic. It has bounce, so it feels closer to a traditional coil mattress, and manufacturers often layer various densities to �build� a bed�firm on the bottom, soft on top, and so forth. The rule of thumb here is the more natural latex involved, the higher the price.
A mid-priced queen like the Stearns and Foster Julep, which has a puffy �Euro� pillow top, costs $1,799 (Sleepy’s, 157 E. 57th St., nr. 212-421-3090). I found Ikea’s $899 queen-size natural latex quite satisfactory and�in this time of gargantuan, 21-inch-deep pillow-top giants�appealingly slim. (Ikea Brooklyn, 1 Beard St., nr. Otsego St., Red Hook; Hybrid beds made up the majority of the mattresses I tried. By and large, they felt exactly the same�an inch more latex here, a firm pillow top on a soft mattress or vice versa. Some even had a core of inner springs, each nestled into their own fabric pockets. I sunk happily into the Empress Exceptionale by Simmons at 1-800-Mattress ($3,499 for a queen, 369 W. 34th St., nr. 212-239-0127), made with springs covered in latex plus memory foam and a pillow top. But it is so enormous, I can’t imagine getting it into my New York apartment. Which is one of the problems with beds today. Some salespeople I spoke with reported a supersize backlash.
1-800-Mattress just introduced a house brand of shallower, cheaper mattresses with old-fashioned coils ($599 for a queen Classic Gem). They’re also two-sided, which many mattresses aren’t anymore, meaning they can be flipped periodically, thus lengthening their life span. I admired the thriftiness, but after trying all the pillow tops, the throwbacks felt too springy. If I were going to replace my ten-year-old embodiment of old technology, I’d buy the David from OrganicPedic by OMI at ABC Carpet & Home’s organic emporium ($3,395 for a queen, 888 Broadway, at 19th St.; 212-473-3000). Three layers of pure organic latex, customizable to your preference: firm, soft, medium. And the cotton cover is removable, so if the top latex layer seems saggy after a couple of years, you can just replace it for $850 instead of buying an entirely new mattress. It’s just a fact of life that anyone who sets foot inside the meandering maze of a furniture store known as Ikea must emerge having bought something, from a candleholder to a couch (along with a side of Swedish meatballs, of course).
This is understandable, because Ikea has some undeniably great bargains. But whether you should surrender to all of what Ikea offers is quite another story.Many home decor experts argue that there are two main categories of products at Ikea: ones you should buy, and ones you should avoid at all costs.“The key to a great shopping experience with Ikea is to focus on basic items or staples in the room,” says Christophe Pourny, author of “The Furniture Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Identify, Restore & Care for Furniture.” “I’ve relied on sturdy office furniture, and chairs in particular.” Not sure how to tell the good from the bad? Just check out this list of the no-nos (some of which could already be in your home—but hey, at least you’ll know for future reference). The problem with Ikea dressers isn’t primarily that they’re nearly impossible to cobble together (although that is certainly maddening). It’s that there have been safety issues involving children.
Just this year, after a third child died when an Ikea dresser toppled over onto him, the store issued a recall of millions of dressers and stopped selling its MALM line, which failed industry stability tests. There have been previous recalls of other dresser lines due to similar safety concerns“In some sense it’s up to concerned parents to make sure that their purchases and previous purchases are safe, which at this point may involve attaching chests to the wall,” says Russell Bienenstock, editorial director of Furniture World magazine. “Tip-over is certainly a concern, and is a problem not easily solved by manufacturers.” How wrong can you go with an affordable, customizable closet system? Plenty wrong, it turns out. When the troubleshooters at Consumer Reports reviewed Ikea’s ALGOT closet system, they discovered that it left a lot to be desired, from faulty parts to missing pieces.“The directions are wrong, and it’s hard to achieve the correct spacing,” the review noted.
Neither are wall anchors; we had to stop work and buy them. Drawers didn’t fit properly. The upright width was listed wrong, and we had to re-drill.” Setting up the problem-plagued system took 160 minutes, it noted, not including multiple trips to the hardware store for reinforcements. Get a good night’s sleep by buying your mattress somewhere, anywhere, other than Ikea, experts advise. Yes, the prices ($80 to $1,000, not including the company’s mattress foundations which you’ll need as well) are good, but the quality, say customers, isn’t quite on par. Many models have below-average thickness, according to one industry site that reviewed all of the offerings in Ikea’s mattress line, from the eight foam-and-latex versions to the seven spring mattresses.“The below-$400 models are best suited for limited adult use or child use,” it reported, citing “questionable” durability. “A main complaint for IKEA spring mattresses (and spring mattresses in general) is sagging and development of body impressions which can cause discomfort and back pain.”
And the foam mattresses? “They can become excessively soft and/or sag as they age and wear.”Also, many of the mattresses are sized a bit differently than their American counterparts—enough to make buying fitted sheets a waking nightmare. We’d be remiss if we didn’t shine a light on another category of Ikea products that pose a home safety risk: lights. Ceiling lights, floor lamps, and even night lights are among recent recalls Ikea issued due to injury reports.More than 840,000 overhead lights from the HYBY and LOCK lines were cited in February after the company received 224 reports of them breaking, falling, shattering, and injuring 11 people.A month later, Ikea issued a statement about its GOTHEM floor and table lamps, urging consumers to “immediately stop using the lamp and return it to any Ikea store for a full refund.” It turns out that for some units, the cables were damaged during manufacturing and if they came into contact with the metal body of the lamp, they could give someone touching it an electric shock.