Last week I gave Sara and myself a little on-the-spot quiz. It went like this: Quick! How much do you expect to pay for a "good" mattress and box spring (or the equivalent)? I found that the answer is very revealing and one of the central issues in the bedding industry. My own price was stuck around $450, with an upper end of $1,000 for a splurge. Both of these prices were the last and second to last price I'd paid in my life for a mattress. (I have never bought a box spring.) Image from How To Make a Platform Bed on the Cheap Were you at the low end of the spectrum? What does that say about you? In thinking about all this, I'm developing some "Bed Buying Theories" that I hope to test this year. To begin, my guess is that the bulk of us fall in the middle to low end of the spectrum, and that all of our choices are somewhat predictable. Here's why (or rather, here are my only lightly tested hypotheses so far). First of all, a "good" bed is an extremely relative term, and you can get one for almost any price.
I remember the first time I graduated beyond a futon and paid over $300 and it felt like I was buying the Taj Mahal. It was soooooo comfortable (relative to my futon on the floor!). So "good" probably changes depending on who we are — particularly as we grow older. Theory 1 — Older People Spend More On Beds As we get older we not only tend to earn more, but we also get more sensitive about what we sleep on and the how well we're sleeping. This means that we'll tend to shop harder and most of us will spend more on "sleep technology" later in our life. If this is true, then you may have partially answered the quiz above based on your age. To me, this means that the high end of the bedding industry and all their ads for plushness and comfort are aimed at older folks, baby boomers, etc, who have become sensitive sleepers AND have the money to pay for it. So, unless you're a rock star, you probably won't see lots of young people trawling around fancy bed stores. And while high end mattress companies advertise scantily clad young things on their beds, their clientele is most likely NOT them, and probably not most of the readers of Apartment Therapy (which tends to skew younger).
BUT you are in the mattress companies' future, and they know it. Theory 2 — Women Spend More On Beds To make a gross generalization, I would also bet that women — in general — are a. better at pricing what they'd actually spend on a bed than men and b. that they'd be more interested in spending a little more. While I'm coming to appreciate the differences between beds, I'm less conscious of it than Sara and VERY resistant to spending a lot on a bed. I just don't think it's necessary. As an interior designer, I've also noticed that, in my experience, while couples split their input into what they want in their home, women usually control the bedroom. And the only big public bed buying moment I can imagine for younger people is as a wedding purchase, and most of this also seems aimed at women (see Vera Wang). If this is true, then you may have answered the quiz above based on your gender. Theory 3 — Most Beds Are Simply Not "Good" This is the most controversial theory and one that will require a lot more research, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.
Despite everything I've already said, I think many people would rather spend their good money on a more noticeable purchase than what lies under the sheets, and that many more people don't have much choice. Everyone needs a bed to sleep on, but even at a few hundred dollars, a bed is a big ticket item and a lot of money for most people. Therefore, to make another gross generalization, I would also bet that most people will seek to underspend and buy a cheaper mattress/boxspring, so they can spend or save more elsewhere. Which could be the reason that, while there may exist a thriving high-end mattress business, it is SMALL. Meanwhile, there's a HUGE low end mattress business, AND there's a perverse incentive for most bed makers to give you the illusion of quality while keeping things as cheap as possible. Which means that most beds are made out of inexpensive, non-natural foams and fabrics (poly, poly, poly), coated in flame retardant and sold with lovely names. These beds are totally non-recyclable and non-renewable and going straight to landfill.
Which is crazy, when you think about it. But, to make a "good" bed is simply too expensive. Even when I've talked to some of the natural bed companies, they all have to offer hybrid products (natural + unnatural) beds to reach the lower price points that most people are willing to pay. Which means it's a tough business to be "good" and "green" in, but a very interesting one. I'll have more later on, and I'll be researching and testing my theories to see if they hold up. In the meantime, what do you think?_________ • About The Year In Bed • Preview: The Hastens Excelsior II • Some Things I've Learned So Far • Follow daily progress on Twitter at #yearinbed Top Image: Royal Bed at Versaille by Flickr member Jason Tinder used under Creative Commons licenseThe last time I bought a mattress for myself was about 11 years ago. I bought a fairly new full-sized one off a coworker. Four moves and a decade later, we’ve decided it’s time to replace it with an adult (and sometimes an extra toddler)-sized bed.
When we started looking, I was shocked at the prices. $3000 for a mattress? What the heck are these things made of? Knowing very little, we went shopping for a mattress and other things on a Saturday morning. The first place, we stopped, Sleepy’s, seemed nice enough. We laid on a few and honed in on the one that we both felt most comfortable in. Meanwhile, Audrey discovered the fun of letting herself fall backwards onto mattresses and did it all over the store. She was giggling and the whole store couldn’t help but look and smile at her. Unfortunately, we soon stopped smiling. When we found something we liked, the seemingly helpful salesman started to get more aggressive. He asked how much we were looking at paying and I made up a number on the spot, something way below the listed price on the bed. The said he would “talk with his manager” and see if he could get us that price. Then he started asking us if we could commit and have it delivered tomorrow. Anne had walked outside to give Audrey a break by that point, so I said I had to go out and talk with her about it.
We talked about it for a bit, then decided we didn’t like the high-pressure sales pitch, so we got ready to leave. I had the car started up when the salesman came out and approached the car window. He then said that he had “talked to his manager” and he could give us the price we wanted AND a free “platinum package”. I said we would talk about it and let him know. We again decided this was sketchy, but to make good on my promise, I went in and gave him my phone number and left. Later that day we went to Jordan’s Furniture, generally known to be a reputable place with reasonable places. The salespeople there were nice and NOT high-pressure. Prices were generally lower, but strangely, we couldn’t find the mattress we found at Sleepy’s. They had Sertas, but not the one we liked. Being indecisive, we left with a couple new names of ones we liked. Later, we went to Mattress Discounters. The woman there was not pushy and told us about the BBB complaints that Sleepy’s (a 700-store chain) had gotten.
We decided to think some more and head home. At home, I did some research online and I found something strange – I couldn’t find much of anything on the mattresses we saw that we liked. I found some mattresses, many of the same brand, but not the same models. I later came to find out that this was completely intentional. The mattress industry is one big scam. There is no way to make an objective decision on a mattress using actual facts. Here’s a few things that the mattress industry does to get you: 1. They mark up their prices 100% to 200%!! No wonder the first guy was able to get his “manager” to give me such a steep discount. They were probably still going to make hundreds of dollars of profits on it. 2. They give the same mattresses different names in different stores or they set up exclusivity agreements by mattress line in certain stores. This makes it impossible to comparison shop because… 3. They make it really had to get actual facts about the mattresses.
Stuff like coil counts, materials, overall construction are shrouded in secrecy. But that doesn’t really matter because… 4. There’s no objective measure of mattress quality. Consumer Reports won’t rate them because they can’t get the data and there’s no testing that actually says higher coil counts are better or the number of wires in the coils makes a difference in any way. You’re left to deciding how much you believe the marketing. Is a pillow top made of alpaca hair any better than one made of cotton? Your guess is as good as mine. 5. There’s very little online reviews of mattresses, probably because the model names are so fractured. The ones I did find looked more like content-free sites designed to attract referral credits. With some more research, I found out that it was somewhat possible to compare mattresses models from different places. It turns out that they really only make one hardness variation in each line. So you can assume that a Plush Firm mattress in the “Classic” line, is the same as another Plush Firm in the Classic line, even if they have different names.
was very helpful in figuring this out. We were able to understand which mattresses we saw and how they related to each other. For example, the mattress we liked at Jordan’s was a product line better than the one we saw at Mattress Discounters, even though they came out to the same price! Clearly Jordan’s had the better deal, but US-Mattress had an even better deal. So I did something I never thought I could do, buy a mattress over the internet. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one we saw in the store and the free delivery and frame were a good deal. I’m sure that even if I’m getting it at half the price I saw it listed at elsewhere, they’re still making a decent profit on it. Anne and I agree that buying a mattress is worse than buying a car. While both have sketchy salespeople, when you buy a car, you can compare them on MPG, size, features, etc. Multiple dealers have the same models so you can compare prices and make an informed decision based on their invoice prices.