Various untruths or misleading information circulate around mattresses and their selection. Take a look at the 7 most common myths about mattresses and find out what the truth is about choosing the right one.
Even the best-rated or best-selling mattress on the market won’t suit everyone. Therefore, the biggest mistake of all is not to test the mattress in person. The ideal is to try at least 3-4 different mattresses. Lie on each one for at least 10 minutes, in the exact position you sleep in most often. Don’t be shy at all and especially don’t rush, this is common practice in mattress stores. Try to really feel how you feel on the mattress and whether it is pressing on you, even if just a little. Close your eyes and relax, this is the only way to ensure that the mattress works as if you were sleeping on it.
If you have several favourites and can’t decide, smart tools come in handy. For example, X-SENSOR, which evaluates the pressure your body exerts on the different parts of the mattress. Accordingly, an expert retailer will recommend which mattress is more suitable for you. However, this calculation should only be an additional factor in your choice – your individual feeling is definitely more important.
This myth is very widespread, especially among men who see a firm mattress as a guarantee of firm support. However, sleeping on a hard bed is very unhealthy, even for well-built men. On such a mattress, unhealthy counterpressures are created, for example on the hip joint or shoulders, which then hurt. Moreover, when sleeping on the back, the buttocks do not dig into the hard mattress sufficiently, which distorts the natural curvature of the spine in the lumbar region. The result is chronic back pain, stiffness and limited spinal mobility.
Therefore, always choose the firmness of the mattress taking into account your weight and subjective feeling of comfort. Even a slight counter pressure can turn into unbearable pain after a few nights. The mattress should be flexible and firm, not hard. A good quality mattress works with you as you sleep, so you certainly don’t have to worry about getting too “buried” in it.
That people once slept on straw is true, but incomplete. A hundred and more years ago, people were also constantly “on their feet”, they moved enough, their musculoskeletal system was much healthier and more resistant. While sleeping on improvised beds, their musculature was able to keep their spine and joints in a suitable position.
Today, sedentary jobs or other unhealthy movement patterns lead to the vast majority of the population having flabby muscles in the middle of the body and around the spine. And even active athletes – as we know, even an hour of active movement a day cannot compensate for the effects of sitting for long periods of time. These muscles are thus unable to ensure a healthy spinal position during sleep. That’s why it’s now important to sleep on a quality mattress to help alleviate the effects of lack of movement.
Yes and no. While an orthopaedic or zoned mattress is not a bad thing, it does have its drawbacks. A really good quality mattress does not need to have any zoning at all and will “zone” itself during sleep. For short people, on the other hand, zoning could cause the individual zones of firmness to not match their body parts. So if you are under 150 cm tall, avoid mattresses with zones.
And the label orthopedic? This word is usually used by manufacturers to describe their best quality mattresses, but of course every manufacturer has a different bar. There is no objective criterion for this label, so orthopaedic mattresses from different manufacturers can vary greatly in quality.
Mattresses made of lazy or memory foam are suitable for about half of the population. Not everyone is comfortable sleeping on these mattresses, as it takes a while for the mattress to change shape when you change position. This can wake some people up and interrupted sleep is definitely not healthy. However, if you are not uncomfortable, a lazy foam mattress will give you unparalleled comfort without any back pressure. These mattresses are particularly suitable for lighter people and permanent sleepers, for whom the lazy foam has an anti-cubic effect.
Who should forget about the lazy foam mattress? Especially people with a higher body weight and people suffering from excessive sweating. This foam is very dense and relatively impermeable, so anyone who sweats while sleeping will sweat even more on a lazy foam mattress – not to mention that these mattresses do not provide a sufficient standard of hygiene when sweating. Lazy foam is also not suitable for people with orthopaedic problems or after joint surgery.
On the contrary. On the imaginary list of priorities when choosing a mattress, a person’s weight is second only to the subjective feeling of comfort. You should therefore definitely not overlook the load capacity of the mattress. The load capacity is based on the bulk weight of the material used – and the higher the bulk weight, the more durable the material.
However, a higher volumetric weight or load capacity of a mattress is not the same as the firmness of the mattress, so if you have a higher body weight and prefer a soft bed, you don’t have to worry about only hard mattresses being suitable for you because of the weight. However, matching the load capacity will ensure that the mattress doesn’t get ruined. Add at least a 10-20% margin to your weight when choosing the appropriate load capacity.
This is a complete misconception. The load capacity of the mattress is the same at each point, so this figure does not tell you the maximum total load the mattress can bear. For example, if the load capacity of a mattress is 130 kg, any number of people weighing up to 130 kg can sleep on it side by side.
But the problem is often that the partners have a big weight difference or simply different preferences. This can be solved by combining the 2 mattress cores of the partners’ mattresses with a single cover to create one large mattress that meets the requirements of both partners.
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