Finding the right bed sheets and buying a mattress that works for you are important to a good night's sleep. However, sometimes a well-appointed bed is not quite restful enough. Enter: The mattress pad. Also called mattress toppers, these can range from a thin padded protective sheet to thicker slabs that are almost like a small mattress. Moreover, mattress pads are great for providing extra cushion to a firm mattress and they can often help guard against dust mites. The style, thickness and size of a mattress pad will depend on your personal sleeping habits and your bed. But, if you're looking for one in the market, here are some very general things you should keep in mind.Cotton, latex and wool are commonly used for mattress pads. Cotton ones are usually thinner and quilted, but they are machine washable. Latex and wool pads are dust mite and mold-resistant, which makes them more durable than cotton. Almost counterintuitively, wool pads can work for the warmer months -- since they're absorbant, which helps keep you cool.
However, natural latex will stand up to the test of time (20 years or more!) because it's derived from rubber trees.Another alternative to materials for mattress pads is memory foam, which molds to your body. Although it's lightweight and comes thicker than the other options, this option absorbs heat and can sometimes get too hot during the night. However, because of memory foam's thickness, some thicker pads can actually be a good alternative to buying a completely new mattress when you need one. Good to know: If you're often hot when you sleep, the perfect temperature to sleep in is about 65 degrees. In that case, a wool or cotton pad will definitely be a better option than memory foam. Keep featherbeds in mind. These are extremely soft and great alternatives to mattress pads if you're looking for something that's more lightweight and soft. Filled with down, they're great at regulating body heat when you're sleeping, keeping you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. If you're looking for one, go for one with about 200 thread counts, which makes it more durable but still soft.
Go for the extra features. If your mattress is not hypoallergenic, a mattress pad that is can make for a simple, affordable add-on. More recently, odor-eliminating mattress pads that act as a protective layer between you and your mattress have also hit the market. Flip through the slideshow below to see some of our picks for mattress pads in the marketplace now. And, let us know in comments below what are other important things that you look for in mattress pads and featherbeds. Have something to say? Be sure to check out Stylelist Home on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.The 300 per cent mark-ups, huge profits, and hundreds of near-identical mattresses being sold under different names and prices – the bed you sleep on every night is taking you for a ride.A Fairfax investigation has revealed strong evidence the mattress industry is taking advantage of uninformed consumers to charge huge mark-ups. The industry itself admits you're a sucker if you ever bought a full-price bed."
I would say if we bought a bed for $1000, it would probably sell between $2400 and $3000," says Roger Wilson, who worked as Forty Winks' general manager for 21 years before retiring in 2007.Fairfax has also obtained wholesale price lists for mattresses. These reveal beds that retail for $10,000 are being made for as little as $1500. Mid-range beds, the type that cost $4000, are being manufactured in China for less than $400.Meanwhile mattress manufacturers are working closely with retailers to ensure shoppers cannot comparison shop for mattresses – by selling essentially identical beds under different names, and ensuring competing stores' mattresses have different names. Welcome to the mattress industry – where they know exactly how much a good night's sleep should cost. Inside a mattress factory. The cost of a good night's sleepHow much should you pay for a bed?Certainly not full price or RRP, admits Forty Winks CEO Con Dekazos. "That's the nature of the industry. It averages around a 30 per cent discount basis, but I would argue that you'd get that almost every day from a bedding retailer."
In the retail environment, there are always mark-ups. That's because of the bricks and mortar model – you've got to pay wages, electricity, gas. You can't compare the mark-ups on a bricks-and-mortar versus online model."Forty Winks has been in trouble for this before – the ACCC whacked them with an enforcable undertaking in 2005 for selling products far below the RRP.But even if you buy a bed on sale, the margins are still huge, says former GM Wilson. In addition to marking a bed up 240 to 300 per cent, the retailer gets a "rebate" from the manufacturer for each sale – about 12 per cent of the sale price.Why do consumers accept such huge mark-ups? Because all mattresses essentially look the same, and manufacturers carefully guard the details of what's in a bed, says one former franchise owner who spoke on condition of anonymity."There is a lot of confusion in that space, because apart from looking at the mattress you cannot tell what's inside it. It's a trust issue, to be honest.
You've just got to trust what the seller is saying." Manufacturers and retailers also work together to ensure shoppers cannot comparison-shop mattresses, says Wilson.Each individual mattress chain is given a range of beds by manufacturers including Sealy. But each bed is given a different name and price point for each retailer, ensuring no competing store is selling the same product.Fairfax found 131 different Sealy mattresses on sale at Snooze, Forty Winks, Bedshed and Harvey Norman under names like Trafalgar, Navi, Molise, Threadbo, Veneto, Hotham and Guthega. Every single mattress was unique and couldn't be purchased at another store."They are dealing with all the major retailers including all the smaller retailers, and they are providing an individual product to each store so they can say this is only available at our store," says Wilson."They'll have a different colour, a different name, and probably a slight difference in the materials that are above the springs."Wade Gunzer, marketing manager at Sealy Australia, says the company tailors individual mattress ranges to meet the needs of each company's customers."
Each bed is individual, so it get so it gets a different name. In some beds there might be minor changes, and in some there might be major changes."The former franchise owner puts it differently."Nowadays you could call it the Nurofen rule," he says. "That company was packaging drugs for various things, but they were all the same Nurofen tablet."So how much does a mattress cost to make?There are an emerging group of young upstart entrepreneurs who say they have discovered a secret: mattresses are much cheaper to make than you'd think."We thought – wow, there is a lot of margin in the middle," says Richard Li of his first impressions of the mattress industry.After calling a few factories, Li discovered he could make a bed thousands of dollars cheaper than the ones that are sold in stores. So he did – he called it Greywing, priced at $1195, and says business is booming.Ringo Chan, founder of Ecosa, is another upstart. His foam mattresses cost up to $1350.He was approached by a major retailer – he won't say which one – who wanted to stock his range.
But they baulked when they realised in order for the store to make a profit, they would have to sell it for a 300 per cent mark-up on the amount of money it actually takes to make the bed."They would have to get us to mark-up the price to cover everything," he told Fairfax.Stefan Papas makes OzMattress, an online mattress that includes springs and gel, just like something you might buy in Forty Winks. His top of the range sells for $2100; the mark-ups in-store are so big, he says, that it competes on quality with beds sold for $10,000."At some point the major manufacturers along with the major retailers decided to take the Australian public for a ride. It's a racket," he says.Wade Gunzer, marketing manager at Sealy Australia, rubbishes those claims. There are no mark-ups, he says. "A lot of technology, innovation and work goes into making these."It's a really unique and precious industry."Greywing and Ecosa's foam mattresses are much cheaper, but they aren't without their own problem. Gunzer says they can never be as supportive as a spring mattress;