Your hips and back hurt, and you haven’t purchased a mattress in ages. A major factor that can be leading to your pain may be your mattress. The best bed for bad backs can help keep the back and spine aligned while providing support, and beds meant for hip pain will provide just enough cushioning to keep the hips supported without putting pressure on the joints. The first thing you need to know is how to pick a mattress for lower back and hip pain. DreamFoam Mattress Ultimate Dreams Cushion – DreamFoam offers everything from style to a variety of sizes and the ability to select the firmness of your mattress. The Ultimate Dream Cushion is 10” thick with a bamboo cover and is considered medium-firm, which is ideal for back and hip support. Broken down into multiple layers, sleepers will enjoy a 6” thick base that adds support, 3” of latex which provides contour support and relief of pressure, and a 1.5” hyper flex foam layer on the top. Handcrafted, the 3 and 5 firmness levels are ideal for back pain.
Also, side sleepers will not want to exceed the level 5 firmness for best results. Resort Sleep Queen Size 10 Inch – The Resort is a queen-sized mattress that is priced in medium price range. Perfect for people on a budget, this mattress provides a 7.5” high density support core to offer the utmost in body support and 2.5” of memory foam at the top to add unmatched comfort. Designed for sore shoulders, back and hips, this mattress is medium to medium-firm to offer the perfect balance between comfort and pain relief. Many users with back pain and arthritis recommend this mattress due to its support yet superb comfort thanks to the 2.5” memory foam top. If you’re on a tight budget and need a good pain-relieving mattress, this is a great choice for you. Gel Memory Foam 10-inch Mattress – Comfort and memory foam allow for a comfortable, contoured sleep. This mattress offers the best of both worlds, with a 3” top layer of gel memory foam that alleviates pressure when you sleep and a 7” base for maximum support.
The top gel layer is ideal for anyone who wakes up at night in sweats as the gel promotes cooling. With the gel memory foam, the gel will contour to the body and adjust to ensure your spine and hips remain supported and aligned while you sleep. If you wake up with hot flashes or sweat at night and are combatting hip or back pain, give this mattress a try. Sleep Innovations Taylor 12-inch Gel Swirl – Medium-firm is the best way to express the “feel” of the Taylor by Sleep Innovations. This 12” thick mattress is slightly bigger than the other mattresses on our list, and it’s known for its cradling comfort and enhanced support while you sleep. If you toss and turn, the gel swirl has been shown to adjust to your body’s alignment for proven pressure point relief. And the TriComfort design features a top layer with cooling gel memory foam. The middle layer promotes air flow, and the 8” bottom layer offers optimal support needed to keep your spine and joints aligned while you sleep.
If you need the additional height and further cooling, this is the best choice. Casper Mattress, Queen – The Casper offers a 1.5” latex foam that provides energy balance when sitting and laying, and is backed by a dense base foam that adds further support and longevity to the mattress. Simple and supportive, this model has a length of 80” (perfect for taller users) and is just 10” thick for optimal support. Latex and memory foam are combined with the Casper to provide support, bounce and proper air circulation for a cool night’s sleep. The firmness is a little on the high side, so if you like softer mattresses, this isn’t the best choice for you. With that said, the firmness allows for better overall back and hip support. When buying a mattress, there are a lot of key factors that need to be considered. Adding back or hip pain into the equation makes choosing a mattress even more tedious and painstaking. But with the right information by your side, you’ll be able to find the ideal mattress that alleviates pain and doesn’t break the bank.
A few points when buying a mattress include: These key factors along with reviews will allow you to remain comfortable and pain-free when you sleep.We receive free products to review and participate in affiliate programs, where we are compensated for items purchased through links from our site (at no cost to the buyer). See our for our list of comped products and affiliate programs. If you sleep on your side and have the wrong mattress, it can lead to shoulder pain or hip pain. A good mattress for side sleeping should conform to your body, taking the pressure off your hips and shoulders and aligning your spine so that your muscles can relax. Thus for side sleepers specifically we recommend buying a mattress online. Don’t get roped in by a two-minute test in a store — that will tell you nothing about ultimate feel and durability in the long run. Online companies typically have a trial period (up to 100 nights in some cases) where you can return the mattress for a full refund if it doesn’t suit your preferences.
You should definitely do your research before buying, but at least this trial process takes away the risk of you being stuck with a mattress for years that actually isn’t a great fit. I have reviewed a number of mattresses that claim to be good for side sleepers, however I’ve narrowed down my top 4 for the purpose of this review. My top 3 are: These mattresses are not necessarily #1 in my overall mattress reviews, but they do rate the highest when considering side sleepers. Note these are all high-quality mattresses that I consider very durable, with GhostBed as an option for those with a little less of a budget. Amerisleep is very high quality memory foam and ranks at the top of my memory foam mattress list as well. They have a few models, for side sleepers I would go with a softer option (their Liberty, Colonial, or Independence are good choices). Amerisleep in general is very comfortable (in my opinion) and very good value (get an extra $50 off here).
They also have some unique cooling features in their foam and some very cool features in general, learn more in my full Amerisleep review. Layla is a relatively small and unknown memory foam mattress mattress company, but we need to mention them due to their great specs and price. Layla easily compares to models that are 3x expensive in stores (see more details on their website). The mattress is flippable, with two relatively soft options for sleepers. Read my Layla mattress review for a full analysis of the specs. Layla also delivers only online, passing on some of the savings of not having retail stores to buyers. Layla stands out from the competition in my mind because the memory foam is copper infused, so it sleeps cooler than most memory foam mattresses. Loom and Leaf is designed to be a luxury memory foam mattress at an affordable price (see more HERE). The mattresses is sold only online, so it can compete with some of the top memory foam brands in terms of specs (think Tempur-pedic) at a fraction of the price.
They’re not marking up the product by a huge margin just to fund retail locations. The company uses very high quality memory foam that offers side sleepers great support. Learn more about this mattress in my full Loom & Leaf review. Loom & Leaf is made by an online innerspring mattress company (Saatva) that has been in the game a long time. They wanted to take on the high-end of the memory foam market, and Loom & Leaf is doing just that. The mattress comes in three firmness settings: soft, medium, and firm. For side sleepers, we definitely recommend either the soft or the medium. The great thing about memory foam (especially quality memory foam like you get with Loom & Leaf) is that it has the best tradeoff between comfort and support while providing great orthopedic benefits. People often tell us their backs feel better after sleeping on these mattresses. GhostBed is similar to a lot of medium tier mattresses on the market (think Casper competitors), however they have made a few key changes that makes them one of my preferred mattresses in the price range, and a good fit for side sleepers.
They added an extra inch of comfort layer foam (the mattress is 11 inches total), which as discussed is good for pressure relief and spinal alignment. They also invested in higher quality foams throughout, which gives me more confidence in the durability. Finally, GhostBed comes out of Nature’s Sleep, a company that’s been doing large volume in the mattress game for a long time. Nature’s Sleep appears to have leveraged their volume to edge out even the biggest online players in terms of price. Get the full read on this mattress in my GhostBed review. If you sleep on your side, you are going to be naturally putting a lot of pressure on your hips, shoulders, and neck, which can cause tension throughout the spine. To sleep comfortably, you want a mattress that is soft enough to relieve those pressure points. Foam mattresses tend to be great at relieving pressure points and can be ideal for this aspect of sleeping on your side. If a mattress is too firm, it will cut off a lot of the blood circulation in your body, and it will potentially cause major aches and pains because it doesn’t contour to the widest points in the hips and shoulders.
It could lead to waking up in the middle of the night a lot, as well as a significant amount of tossing and turning as your body struggles to find a supportive position. A mattress that is too firm is something you want to avoid if you spend most of your time sleeping on your side. As I mention in my Tempur-Contour Supreme review, not all mattresses are suited for side sleepers. It is critical for your health that you find a mattress that contours well to your body and supports the natural alignment of your spine. If you sleep on your side and the mattress is too firm, your neck won’t be properly supported and your spine will be thrown off its natural alignment. This could lead to back and neck pain fairly easily, which may compound over time. That’s yet another reason why purchasing online from a company with a 100 night free trial can be so beneficial. You truly get to test to see what works for you! If the mattress is too soft, you could sink in too much and your spine will be too curved.