<p>I am shopping for a new bed and mattress, and the parent cafe folks always seem to know the scoop on these kinds of things so I thought I’d ask for advice here!</p>
<p>The bed frame that I want to get is a shaker style bed designed to be used with a slatted base. We’ve always used box springs, so I’m not sure what to think about that. I’ve also read that you’re not supposed to use memory foam or latex mattresses on slatted bed bases, while the store insists this is absolutely no problem-- not sure if I WANT a memory foam or latex mattress, but if I do I need to know to buy a different frame!</p>
<p>As for the mattress itself, my decisionmaking process appears to be paralyzed by too many choices. How am I supposed to know the differences between all of these?! Testing them in the store will tell me what I think is the most comfortable, though I question how much you can really tell from laying on a store model for two minutes, but that doesn’t tell you what’s going to be a good buy and what isn’t. I was planning on doing Ikea just because they’re across the street and that’s where the frame I like is from, but I’ve heard mixed reviews so I’m wondering if I should look elsewhere and if I do if that would mean I have to pick out a different frame (really don’t want to-- had my eye on this particular one for months.)</p>
<p>Does anyone have any advice for how to proceed?</p>
<p>Mattresses are one category of consumer purchase where I’ve read that you should never pay full price. (Luggage is another.) They go on sale for half-price at regular intervals and there’s always a store with a big discount somewhere. But it is very difficult to comparison shop because they don’t use consistent brand/model designations from store to store.</p>
<p>Memory foam mattresses are a very specific experience. Squishy. I wouldn’t buy one unless I was positive that’s what I wanted. You can get memory foam toppers for regular mattresses, too.</p>
<p>go into the Ikea scratch and dent section. YOu can probably score a great deal. We did when DS was in college. He LOVED that bed, and ultimately sold it to a friend.</p>
<p>He got his current bed form a local place that was going out of business. He did a lot of shopping around and price comparing, but the problem with mattress companies is they make up different names for the same models they put in different stores. So decide if you want hard or soft, pillow top or not, coil or not, and whether you want to be able to flip it. These were things he looked at (there were other things but this is what I recall). Threis also a low, middle and high end ddifferentiation. He picked middle. Good luck.
BTW he still misses his ikea bed!</p>
<p>Most likely, you can retrofit your frame for a foam mattress. We have a slatted European cherrywood bed (very pretty) designed for matresses without box springs. When we got our memory foam mattress, H bought a couple of pieces of good, sturdy plywood, cut them to fit the bed and put them on the top of the slats. Problem solved.</p>
<p>Funny…we think our Tempurpedic memory foam is might firm. It is, however, very different than a regular mattress…and MUCH more expensive.</p>
<p>I would agree with IKea for the frame. They have nice ones…and very much less expensive than most other places. You usually have to do the assembly yourself so be prepared for that. </p>
<p>For the mattress…what are you sleeping on now? Is it too squishy, to hard or just right. Figure that out and then go and try the ones in the stores that make it a “just right” bed based on what you have now. </p>
<p>We found that even with a regular mattress, we needed a flat thing that went over the “slats” to make the bed firm and comfortable. We did NOT put our mattress directly on the slats. They make these “bed boards” you can put under the mattress.</p>
<p>Ikea makes a platform bed (a number of styles) that you can put a mattress on directly.</p>
<p>We just bought a mattress today. It is very helpful to just go to a store and lie down and find which one you like the best. This mattress was for our D1 and she wanted it “squishy”. She didn’t like tempurpedic and found that Sealy postupedic was her favorite although she ended up getting a similar but less expensive model. She has a slatted platform bed frame that works just fine with only a mattress. They are much higher and more solid than they used to be (the mattresses).</p>
<p>I currently have a spring mattress which is tolerable with a 1in cheapo target memory foam topper, but I can feel the springs in it and I don’t like it-- but this mattress is also 20 years old and I don’t remember what it was like before. Pretty much all of the beds in the store feel comfortable enough to me, although I think I like a medium or soft bed rather than an extra firm one, but I don’t know what they’d feel like after a few years of use and I want the bed to last quite a while. I’m wondering if the memory foam and latex beds last long enough to make the price worthwhile, do they hold up as long as a spring mattress? And what’s REALLY the difference between memory foam and latex? I was leaning towards maybe a “latex pillowtop spring” mattress but I don’t want the pillowtop part to get all lumpy and gross. And I am very prone to back pain and stiffness and don’t want to get something that won’t be good for my back. </p>
<p>I am okay with getting something more on the expensive side as long as it’s a good buy in terms of longevity. I was planning to wait to get a new bed until I got moved into my apartment, and I am coping with the disappointment of not being able to move any time soon by going ahead and getting the bed anyway. It needs replacing and I deserve it! And without rent to worry about, I can afford to invest in a good one.</p>
<p>This is what I want for my frame, I’m thinking queen size if I can find a way to make it fit in my room: [HEMNES</a> Bed frame - black-brown, Full - IKEA](<a href=“Products - IKEA”>Products - IKEA) It’s the hemnes bed in black-brown.</p>
<p>Good luck on this one. I hope you get many posts; maybe I too can glean some advice. I too want to buy a better bed, but the last two times I get so inundated with the 100’s of models, I give up and just buy some cheapo mattress that lasts a few years.</p>
<p>Lying on them in the store is of little use. Most of them feel pretty much the same to me. Who can really test a bed in the store? I want to know what it feels like after 5 years and with something a little more strenuous than lying still in a store full of people and a salesperson watching me.</p>
<p>Ikea has a program where you can exchange it “hassle free,” I think within 90 days if I’m not misremembering, but I bet that involves paying for shipping again and that would be the definition of hassle for me! But I agree, all the beds feel pretty much the same to me in store.</p>
<p>I understand your dilemma. We have been looking at the IKEA Hemnes bed as well. Our concern is that we are used to sleeping on a box spring and mattress and worry that the slatted bed support and a mattress alone will make the mattress feel too firm. When we have shopped for mattresses (at Sleepy’s and department stores, not IKEA) the mattresses are always place on top of box springs, so it’s hard to get a sense of what it will feel like alone on the Hemnes bed. This concern is making me rethink getting the Hemnes bed or other platform bed although I do like the look.</p>
we had to replace my parents’ mattress when my mother had cancer- the pillow top had developed a very uneven texture- it became lumpy and had peaks and valleys, so it was not at all comfortable for her.
my father does not like the memory foam or latex style- he feels that it takes a while for the edges to poof back up. YMMV
H and I are super-happy with the medium thickness memory foam topper (generic from BB&B, nothing fancy) on a regular mattress- comfiest bed ever- the mattress is quite firm, but the topper makes it cosier and absorbs some of the movement when we change position, so we sleep deeply and undisturbed. </p>
<p>Happy mattress shopping!
P.S. We get mailing from Macy’s periodically showing big promotions on their mattresses. I am not sure whether these are good deals or not, but check it out…</p>
<p>p.p.s I do worry about the off-gassing from these foam products, though… oh well.</p>
<p>No worries. Just open the package and let the product air out for a day or two, and you will be fine.</p>
<p>Ema: even the best mattress pad will not be of much help if the mattress is 20 years old with springs poking out of it. You can get a reasonably cheap new mattress and supplement it with a memory foam topper. Costco online sells toppers that can be returned to any Costco store (and you do not need to be a memeber to shop Costco online).</p>
<p>I just bought a new bed for our second home – and I love love love my bed up there. I did buy a latex foam mattress and it did outgas for a bit. I kept the windows open for a few weeks in May. They guaranteed the mattress for 20 years if we bought their mattress protector cover. </p>
<p>I really love the way it is supportive, but I sink into it a little. I also really really really love that I cannot tell if my partner is tossing and turning – which he does much less in this bed.</p>
<p>We paid plenty – but I think it was worth it.</p>
<p>Yeah, I meant to go yesterday to check out the beds again but was delayed by a storm, and with only an hour left before they closed was not comfortable going-- it’s a MASSIVE store and it takes a very long time to get through it. And if you’re like me, no matter how many times you’ve been in there you get distracted by the fancy kitchens and end up playing with all the drawers. XD</p>
<p>My current mattress actually doesn’t have a box spring, it’s just sitting on a slab of wood-- I have one of those wooden beds with the built in drawers underneath and it’s just sitting on top. I mentioned that when my mom freaked out about me looking at a bed frame designed to be used without a box spring, and she said that the only reason they allowed my bed to be the way it is because I was little and with the box spring my bed would have been way too high for a child-- it’s already about 3.5ft up. She thinks it would be crazy for me to buy another bed with this set-up. I can’t really say whether I’d have thought this bed would be more comfortable with a box spring, since I haven’t had one since 1998 and this bed has had broken springs for as long as I can remember-- probably early 2000s. So I really have no usable experience.</p>
<p>If it turns out that I do like the latex pillowtop spring mattress best, if it is true that the pillowtops do get lumpy and obnoxious after a while I am wondering if I should just get a nice spring mattress and buy a topper for it so that I can replace the topper without having to buy a whole new mattress. But if I do that, I can’t really test the set up in the store before I buy the mattress, and that’s SCARY!!!</p>
<p>Another question-- some of these mattresses are WILDLY thicker than others. How do you buy sheets for them!?</p>
<p>ETA: A bit of irony for you… I actually LOVED my current mattress until I slept on, of all things, a DORM MATTRESS. We had brand new spring mattresses in the dorms when I started at umich and after I slept on those I couldn’t stand the one at home!</p>
<p>I went back to the store today, and I think at the moment I’m mainly torn between the holmsta (spring with latex pillowtop) and the hansbo (spring with memory foam pillowtop). The hultsvik is also in consideration, which is another spring with memory foam pillowtop which is more expensive and more plush, I think there’s more memory foam. </p>
<p>I actually really liked a plain spring mattress without any pillowtop to it too, so it seems like I don’t have a very strong preference toward firm or soft. That makes the decision REALLY hard!</p>
<p>On a bit of an impulse I went ahead and bought the hemnes bed, so that matter is settled. It looks like they’re discontinuing it in the black-brown color and I didn’t like the white or the gray-brown color, and there were like six families there today drooling over it so I wanted to snap it up while it was still there. I’m not sure if I’ve ever bought something that expensive! It was kind of scary!</p>
<p>Also worth mentioning-- someone in this thread, I forget who, I think also mentioned considering the Hemnes bed and being worried about the lack of box spring? The sides are adjustable “to accommodate different sized mattresses,” and I could have SWORN they had the showroom model with a box spring in it yesterday. I’d confirm that you can’t use a box spring if you really want the hemnes and are worried about it! It looked like it just had a mattress on it but upon further inspection it really looked like there was a box spring encased in the sides of the bed frame-- no slats.</p>