| Today's mattresses have many types of padding
or upholstery layers, do you know the difference?
Upholstery layers are the bulk of today's mattress cost.
Twenty years ago, the average mattress height was nine inches
thick. Today the average mattress height is fourteen inches
thick. The coil unit itself hasn't gotten much taller, usually
about six inches. |
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However, the upholstery layers, commonly
referred to as padding, have caused the mattresses to become
thicker. These layers of material are the most expensive
component of a mattress today. They consist of real cottons,
polyester blends, natural fibers, as well as, man made fibers.
This is what most of your money is really going towards.
Looking at these three major components, the padding cost
alone will be more than the innerspring and foundation unit
combined. Padding is considered anything that goes over
the top of the coil. Padding is also the most difficult
item to try to price out. Each bed will have about 3-7 layers
of padding, with each layer of padding being a different
material. Trusted name brand manufacturers will give you
better padding and more of it as you spend more. However,
it is near impossible to grade every layer of padding in
each mattress. Wool, cashmere, memory foam, latex foam and
other layers are more commonly known, and usually signal
a better quality of padding. As with most items these padding
layers also come in different grades. So don't expect the
wool in a $1,000 mattress to be as good as with a $3,000
model. The same goes for the rest of the padding layers.
There is no formula today that will tell us how good a certain
type of padding will last when it is used in conjunction
with several other layers of different padding. Your best
option is to find the manufacturer that best suits the type
of mattress you are ready for and find what models they
make that match your comfort guide number. Then you can
compare piece and mattress thickness to help you decide.
Mattress Height originally retailers began listing the heights
of mattresses because people would ask if there sheets would
fit or not. So they needed to know how thick each mattress
was. Today most sheet manufacturers use very deep sides,
so almost all new sheets will fit today's thicker mattress.
With the sheet issue solved, we still keep the mattress
height listed on every mattress we sell. Many customers
use it as tool to measure value, and when it is used properly
it does help, if you are comparing different models of the
same brand, apples to apples. If you want to compare mattress
heights between brands this will not help because they all
use a different coil height. Heights are good to know, however,
its best to also use our Comfort Scale. Our comfort scale
will help you see, for example, if you find a Simmons pillow
top that is your comfort scale number, you can then look
at all the rest of the Simmons pillow tops that have that
same comfort scale number. You may find a thicker mattress
at a better price or maybe a model just a little thinner
at a big savings. This will only work within a brand, any
attempt to compare height of two mattresses from two manufacturers
will do nothing to show you value. So remember, comparing
different heights among the different brands will not work.
For those of you with a very low comfort scale number, (FIRMER)
keep in mind that the firmer mattress sets will always be
thinner than plush mattresses. Firm mattresses have all
their materials compressed together, to create the firmness.
So be sure you are comparing the right comfort scale number
to other mattresses that are the same comfort scale number. |