You can buy just about anything online nowadays – books, dinner, shoes. Shopping online can be done within the comfort of our homes, regardless of the weather or time of day. It’s easy to do your pre-buying research, there’s no sales pressure and return policies are (mostly) simple. But buying a mattress online can be a slippery slope of dissatisfaction. We believe buying a mattress should take longer than it takes to order a pizza. You might suffer indigestion one night if you order the wrong pizza but a wrong-for-you mattress has a bigger impact on your life. We’ve been making mattresses for more than 75 years and we know a thing or two about selling AND buying them. But because you only buy a new mattress once every 10 years or so, your learning curve is understandably steep. We’d love to sell you a mattress but we also want to support your dreams for healthier, happier mornings. Feel free to use our list of reasons to (almost) never buy a mattress online as your mattress shopping cheat sheet.
My mother uses a flip, pay-as-you-go cell phone and would flush my smartphone down the toilet if she was forced to switch. Mattress buying is just as intimate because we all have different sleep needs and preferences. There’s no better way to learn yours than by lying on different mattresses – a whole lot of different mattresses. You’ll learn very quickly which ones you don’t like and be able to narrow in on the one that’s best for your body’s needs. Hint: When mattress shopping, lie on each mattress the same way, using the same pillow if possible. And if you suffer pain during your sleep, pay close attention to how each mattress feels against the tender area. When you add up all the things you do in 24 hours, no other piece of furniture gets as much use as your bed. And when you’re replacing something that important, you need to collect information from a wide variety of sources: your friends, online reviews and your salesperson. When you find a good salesperson, hone in on her knowledge and ask the questions you can’t find answers to online.
S/he does this every day and knows as much about beds as your mechanic does about your car. Do your research, ask questions and place your trust in the collaboration of ALL your collected data. What’s the true cost of a good mattress? If you spent $2,000 on a new mattress and slept comfortably on that mattress for 7 years, the cost of healthy sleep would be $1.27 per night – less than the cost of Starbucks coffee in the morning… Goldilocks knew all mattresses weren’t made equally, which is why she tested each one. If you live in a small home, space will be an issue – a king mattress may simply be too big to get up the stairs. Maybe the look and feel of the ticking on the mattress is important to you. Maybe you like the deeply quilted look – or perhaps you prefer sleek sophistication. How will you know unless you see and touch the mattresses and box springs? Until your bed becomes a battle zone, you probably have no idea how much a mattress can affect your sleep – or lack of sleep.
Reading through expert advice on mattress shopping and then polling your Facebook friends will show you that your problems aren’t all that unique. Lots of people suffer through their nights with on terrible mattresses and there are valuable lessons to learn online. But most of us still like to connect with a real human being, to ask our questions and discuss all the possible solutions. And you just can’t do that online. Sometimes things go wrong. When that happens, it’s comforting to call or stop by the store and talk to the person who sold you the mattress. Don’t get us wrong, we love our communities on social media, but we believe nothing replaces a handshake. And while Internet companies come and go like the seasons, we’ve been around for more than 75 years. If you’re ready for a new mattress, we’d love to help you find the right one for you. Visit our Find a Retailer page and we’ll locate a store close by where you can lie on our mattresses and talk to a trained sales professional.
Some of our retailers do sell their mattresses online, which helps you buy from the comfort of your home – after you’ve been in the store.“People buy shoes online even though you can’t try them on… a mattress is no different, right?” Faced with buying a new mattress two years ago, I uttered these words to Mrs. Frugalwoods and then embarked on a frugal slumber experiment. My goal was to see if my wife and I could buy a mattress online, save tons of money, and still get a great night’s sleep. Let’s start at the beginning. Mrs. Frugalwoods is what we would lovingly call an “active sleeper.” She is a tiny woman with powerful kicking legs. Must be all that yoga. We had a double bed for the first several years of our marriage and I have the scars to prove it! So when we moved back to the Northeast a few years ago, getting a bed large enough to provide Mrs. Frugalwoods with room to roam and myself to sleep without being pummeled was on the top of my list. And holy mother-of-pillowtop are king sized mattresses expensive!
This low-end tempurpedic is $2,400! Our car isn’t worth $2,400! The Mrs. and I saw those prices and were not impressed. It also quickly became apparent that mattresses are extremely profitable and sold in a manner similar to used cars. I do not need a salesperson to assist me, thank you very much. But we really needed a mattress. So we made a list of our snoozing requirements and asked the internet. anyway (gloves for hound teeth brushing, for example) so it was a natural place to start looking. Turns out, they have an entire mattress section. After reading through a bunch of the firm mattress reviews, we settled on the LUCID 8″ Memory Foam Mattress. It checked all the boxes and 2 years ago was only $279 for the king size. Plus, and this is the really crazy part, Prime Shipping! That’s right, Amazon shipped a king sized mattress to our door in a mere 2 days from ordering it, FOR FREE. When it arrived, we warily eyeballed the heavy, awkward, long tube that the mattresses was vacuum packed into.
The box was plastered with warnings to put the box in the room where you want the mattress before opening it and releasing the tightly coiled foam. We carefully put the box in the bedroom and then slit the straining plastic holding back the surging foam mattress. As dramatic as it sounds (and as we had imagined it), in reality the foam just slowly unrolled itself and started gaining the shape of a mattress. Did it smell a little “new car-ish” (for lack of a better term)? Yes, but it wasn’t overwhelming. The box suggested leaving the windows open for a few hours while the foam attained its shape. We opened the box when we got home from work and by the time we were ready to go to bed, the smell was no longer noticeable. So how does a $279 mattress from the internet feel? I actually remember chuckling as I lay down for the first time. We picked the 8″ version specifically because it was the firmest (they also make 10″ and 12″ which are softer) and wow does it deliver.
Firm but comfy and extremely supportive of our backs. Two years later, internet mattress is still firm and supportive! Since this mattress has foam layered in a specific order, you can’t flip it but you can rotate it. We do that every 6 months to try and keep the wear level the same. So far I haven’t noticed any significant settling of the foam. One of the things I was most concerned about was how it would feel during the summer. I’d heard from some people that memory foam can hold the heat next to your body. In practice we haven’t noticed any additional heat. In short, it’s been a great mattress and we expect to get many more years of good sleep on it! Over the past two years, I’ve evangelized buying a mattress from Amazon to coworkers and friends, several of whom have bought the same or similar mattresses. So far no complaints! Take a look at the Amazon mattress section, in particular the Lucid foam mattress, and keep it in mind the next time you’re in the market for a bed.