Is your mattress giving you a bad “impression”?

“Body impressions” are normal with the vast majority of mattresses.  Depending on the amount of “impression” or the support component they may not have a significant effect on the quality of your sleep.

Conventional innerspring mattresses will have a “tolerance” of 1.5″ of  “impression” or indentation and some of the really thick pillow-top mattresses will even goes as high as a 2″ tolerance.   Usually the “impression” is not caused by the coils, it is a compression of the cushioning materials, which can be a combination of foams and fiber.

If the coil system is highly responsive, such as a pocket coil system, your alignment and pressure distribution should still be be pretty good even with an 1″ to 1.5″ impression in the mattress.   But some sleepers may still have issues with that.

Prior to the year 2000, most mattresses were “2-sided” or required to be ”flipped” and rotated.  Currently the vast majority of mattresses are “1-sided” or “non-flip”.  Consumers were told they no longer had to “flip” their mattress.  But what wasn’t explained is that now they COULD NOT flip their mattress.

The high end “two-sided mattresses” if properly maintained would perform well for 20+ years.  The “non-flip” mattress consumers often complain that within a few months they have a “body impression” and now they can’t flip their mattress.  There are still quality “2-sided mattresses” like those that are handcrafted by 110 year old Vi-Spring.

So what mattresses will not develop a significant “impression”?  All fibers will compress.   That compression can be somewhat reduced if they are “hand tufted”.   For example, a Vi-Spring mattresses will be anywhere from 4″-6″ thicker before the ”tufts” are sewn through the mattress, top to bottom.  The “hand tufting” pre-compresses the mattress.

Most conventional cushioning foams will compress fairly quickly.  The exceptions are higher density “memory foam” and latex foam.  These are known for their shape retention and yet perform well for pressure relief.

Mattresses can be made entirely of latex foam.  Latex is known to resist forming “body impressions”.  Memory foam mattresses are not made entirely of memory foam,  usually the top 3″-6″ of the mattress is memory foam over a very firm polyurethane base.  If the memory foam is of high quality, these mattresses again are very resistant to “body impressions”.

If you want to be impressed with your mattress and not leave an “impression” in your mattress, hopefully this post gives you some options.