IKEA Mattresses

[coldforge]

Who among you has an IKEA mattress? What sort of mattress is it? Do you like it? Answer me.

We're starting mattress shopping. We're looking for something very firm. I am told there's several varieties, and that the spring ones got shitty reviews and that apparently R— hates foam. Do you have any of these? What is the spread?

[davy]

I have one! I love it!

It's the most satisfying mattress I've ever owned, but I realize that's not saying much. Still, I love it. I used to wake up with a sore back every morning, kinks in my neck, that sort of thing, but within a couple weeks of getting my IKEA mattress home, I was sleeping much better and waking up feeling better.

For the money, they blow away the competition and they're much less bulky. I sold mattresses for two years--Sealy, Simmons, and Sterns & Foster--and I can tell you without qualification that they're all rip-offs. You can get an upper-range IKEA mattress for the same price as the absolute cheapest model that Sealy or Simmons makes, and it'll be much higher quality.

I mean, if you like your mattresses full of springs and a foot-and-a-half thick, then they might not be for you. But I wanted something low-profile that I could put on my platform bed without a box spring (box springs are ridiculous and unnecessary), and my IKEA mattress was perfect for it.

I've got this one  -- Sultan Finnvik -- and it was about $450 for a queen.

[dumbfish]

Are you sure you want super-firm? I'll repeat an anecdote from when I was mattress shopping a few years ago.
I told the salesman I wanted a pretty firm mattress, and he just said, "Hmm, right," and offered me one to try. Then he showed me another that was a fit squishier. And another, etc. Long story short, I favored the softest of the four mattresses I tried. What I wanted was actually a reasonably soft mattress without the stupid fucking pillowtop so many come with these days.

[Em]

I have the same one davy has, and I also love it. It replaced a firmer Ikea mattress that my firm-mattress-loving ex picked out, and I like the softer one better. So yeah, I've owned two Ikea mattresses and have found them to be of good quality.

[davy]

By the way, I'm a foam guy, but there's lots of different kinds of foam. I hate memory foam, for instance, but I love latex foam.

[davy]

Are you sure you want super-firm? I'll repeat an anecdote from when I was mattress shopping a few years ago.
I told the salesman I wanted a pretty firm mattress, and he just said, "Hmm, right," and offered me one to try. Then he showed me another that was a fit squishier. And another, etc. Long story short, I favored the softest of the four mattresses I tried. What I wanted was actually a reasonably soft mattress without the stupid fucking pillowtop so many come with these days.

Haha, we were explicitly trained to do this. And not necessarily because we wanted to trick anybody or sell a particular mattress, but because so many of the people who buy firm mattresses end up returning them, and that's a gigantic fucking hassle for everybody.

[alex]

By the way, I'm a foam guy, but there's lots of different kinds of foam. I hate memory foam, for instance, but I love latex foam.

Hmm. The one you linked to claims to be memory foam.

I have a Sultan Fåvang and like it fine. My boyfriend has something firmer and thicker (and more expensive) and some days I like it more, other days I like it less than my own - my preferences for firmness are not entirely stable, it seems. Either way, I've never been dissatisfied. That said, each time I go back to sleeping in my old bed in Vienna - which contains a super-fancy non-IKEA mattress that my parents bought for me about 10 years ago and which I probably would have figured out a way to move to Maastricht were it not for the fact that it's for a single bed - I am blown away by just how comfortable a mattress really can be. So my appraisal of IKEA mattresses is that they are certainly quite solid for what they cost, but if you're looking to invest in a really, really good mattress, it might be better to save up a bit more and look elsewhere.

I've never really given any thought to foam vs. spring vs. whatever. I just tried a couple of mattresses that were in my price range and picked the one I liked the most.

[davy]

By the way, I'm a foam guy, but there's lots of different kinds of foam. I hate memory foam, for instance, but I love latex foam.

Hmm. The one you linked to claims to be memory foam.

Weird. I could have the name slightly wrong (or they may have made changes to that mattress in the past couple years since I bought mine). I thought it was the Finnvik, but mine is definitely not memory foam.

[Johnp]

Beware new mattresses - we bought one in November '05 and by August '06, we were parents.

[Bernard]

http://ptbs.typepad.com/penn_teller_bullshit/ep_605_sleep_inc/

[dumbfish]

Top hazard of used mattress: bedbugs
Top hazard of new mattress: babies

[eula]

I never post, so hello. It's R--- with follow-up mattress questions for the LPTJ hivemind.

From what I read online, latex is the way to go and it's what people seek out. I want to spend money now, but not really "invest" in like a $2000 mattress. But I've had such shitty experiences with "memory foam" and the like that I can't really see the value there, but I haven't purchased a real mattress in like 10 years so what the hell do I know?

We've been sleeping on a used futon we got from cf's mom 5+ years ago, and honestly it's fine, but now the frame is starting to fall apart and that feels shameful as a  job-having adult. What I'm looking for in a mattress is actually what the futon does well, in that I don't want it to have any give where I could feel my hips sink, but I want the top to be just a little bit soft for I am a sucker for the pillow top.

Do I just need to go jump on some mattresses? I want to believe that Ikea mattresses are not pieces of shit because there's no way I'm buying from a big mattress chain in this godforsaken city, and I would like to get out of this (bed, mattress, support beam thing or whatever) for less than $1000 total. Am I kidding myself?

[davy]

The only way you're getting a halfway decent mattress+bed+frame combo for less than a grand is IKEA. I mean, that much is simple.

The entry-level Simmons latex mattress--my favorite model of theirs back when I was selling them--ran $1000 for a queen, all by itself, and that was pretty middle-range when you lined it up with the rest of their stuff.

Alll that said, yes, definitely jump on a bunch of mattresses. Jump on them, lay down on them, and pretend to sleep for a minimum of 3 minutes. You can't really tell much before your body gets used to the give, and that takes a little time. Laying down on mattresses, repeatedly and in quick succession, and for a decent amount of time, is the most important thing. People hate to do that, I found. They don't like laying down in a public place because they feel exposed or shy or whatever, but DO IT. It's really important.

[clare]

I've loved mattress shopping when I've done it in the past. Lying down in a shop and pretending to go to sleep is really fun, but my ex and I were the only ones actually doing it when we went. And I do like a firm mattress. The bloke and I are sleeping on his old latex core futon, which is precariously balanced on some other frame. He's now at a point where we can buy a new bed without me worrying that he'll break it in 6 months. Now we jsut need a bigger bedroom to put it in.

[Bernard]

If the link was too long, the summary is that Penn & Teller did an episode of Bullshit, and they found that the best way to buy a mattress is to go lie down on a bunch and just go with what you like.

[FreddyKnuckles]

I have some sort of ikea mattress and it is a piece of shit.

[Thermofusion]

If the link was too long, the summary is that Penn & Teller did an episode of Bullshit, and they found that the best way to buy a mattress is to go lie down on a bunch and just go with what you like.

That sounds way too sensible

[Greg Nog]

bed, mattress, support beam thing or whatever

I will once again rep for Heimdal, which has the twin virtues of:

1) steel frame that is unlikely to be infested by vermin

2) horizontal bars that can be grabbed for leverage during fuckery

I think I also have the Sultan Leroy support-beam-thing, though my mattress is a secondhand futon-mattress from an ex.

[FreddyKnuckles]

I think it's the huglo that i've got. Utter. Shit. 

[Bernard]

Sorry, my reply was actually intended to be helpful -- the point was that expensive mattresses are a bit of a scam and if you feel ok on a cheapo mattress it won't somehow harm you. I have had IKEA mattresses and liked them just fine. I don't like memory foam mattresses, I find they don't breathe. I currently have an expensive pillow-top coil mattress and like it. We swapped ours with my MIL because she prefers a firmer mattress, then I hit the point in my pregnancy where a softer mattress was painful. Now I'm mostly back to normal and liking the softness. I once had some kind of super soft something down something which was about a million dollars and it was freaking heaven. I've had futons and am not a big fan, they're too dense for me.

[FreddyKnuckles]

I slept on a hand-me-down first generation memory foam mattress for about 4 years.  It was about two feet thick and a thousand pounds. I was pretty happy with it i suppose. I am a stomach sleeper and don't use a pillow so I need something soft for my face, but do prefer firmness. I used to get out of bed as a kid and sleep on the floor

[peacocks]

I have had a pretty nice futon mattress for about 5 years that I put on an ikea bed when my futon broke. I love it. I actually have a serious problem where once I lie down it takes will power or someone yanking covers and sheets off and out from under me for me to get up because it's just too comfy. It's like sleeping on a cloud, but I have had a friend say it's too soft and she felt like her ribcage was going to cave in or something dramatic like that.

[milesofsparks]

I had the earlier version of the IKEA Sultan mattress when I was up in Cambridge.  I loved it.  a friend who regularly apartment-sat for me loved it so much she bought the same one from IKEA, but they had changed it and she didn't love it as much as mine.  if only she could have waited until I left, I would have given her mine.

[stanislav]

I am not sure about Ikea mattress yet. I have read few interesting thing online about them and the several types of mattresses but still something is stopping me from buying one. But to be honest I need a new one fast. Can anybody help me more about this?

[Greg Nog]

jeb just got a new taint tattoo, so I'd check in with him before you make any major purchases.