Our guide to buying a mattress

When you go looking for a mattress its typically because youre getting problems sleeping on your current one, but the thing is, mattresses deteriorate quite quickly, but unlike a car where you can see the mileage going up, a mattress just gradually gets softer and softer, deteriorating a little bit every time you sleep on it.

Let’s start with when to change your current mattress. So many people think mattresses last years, but this simply isn’t true! I’ve had conversations with people about their mattress that start “oh my mattress is FINE, I’ve had it for the last 25 years and its been no problem at all!” and they’ve been shocked that their body has improved significantly when they got rid of their old mattress and bought a new one. We have had our current mattress about 2 years and already I can feel it starting to soften too much and I’m aware that very soon, we will need to buy a new one. That will be the same for most people too, although there is one exception that we will come to later.

So now you’re thinking you need a new mattress, but with all of the adverts on TV and the number of different options in the shop, where do you begin?! The answer is start simple. To keep your body well supported throughout the night you need the mattress to be as firm as you can get. Mattresses are typically rated between 1 and 5, 1 being very soft and 5 being firm, although recently companies have started bringing out extra firm mattresses and rating them as 6.

Now there are 2 ways to get a mattress as firm as we need it to be, we can either get a sprung mattress which is cheap and cheerful, easy to find, but will deteriorate quickly, or we can get a latex mattress which is more expensive, harder to find but will last a lot longer and wont really deteriorate and get softer over time. Anything that isn’t either latex or sprung won’t support your body in the way we need, and yes that includes memory foam, gel or whatever else is being marketed as you’re reading this! It even includes toppers too!

You’re probably thinking something along the lines of “I can’t possibly sleep on a firm mattress, its uncomfortable and I won’t be able to sleep!”. Trust me, you will. Let me explain. When you’re lying on your mattress, different parts of your body are different densities, meaning they need different amount of support to stop them sinking into the mattress and twisting your body. So by having a very firm mattress that you don’t sink into, no matter which part of your body we look at, it’ll stay in the position we need all night, stopping your body twisting into awkward positions which means that you wake up feeling achy, groggy and tired because you’ve had a poor night sleep.

To give you a good idea on the ‘money-doesn’t-matter’ best mattress that we have found, check out the latex mattress on the ABC™Europe website! Here’s the link: https://abc-europe.org/postural-support-products/

Now that you’ve got the perfect mattress to give you the best support, check out our guide to the best sleeping position for your body too! And don’t forget to let us know how it goes too!