If your mattress is keeping you up at night, it may be time to shop. Fall sales mean discounts, but if you’re not ready to invest just yet, no worries.
“Mattress sales happen almost constantly, so you should always aim to knock some money off of the full retail price no matter when or where you’re buying,” said Consumer Reports’ Sara Morrow. “For online retailers, look for discount codes. And always negotiate, especially in a store.”
To help you wade through the choices, Consumer Reports put several through a battery of tests to find out if it will support back and side sleepers of all sizes, if it’s durable, if it will hold up over eight years of use and whether you’ll feel your partner’s every movement.
Testers also used special equipment and calculated how firm a mattress really is.
“Each manufacturer has a different idea of firmness, so CR’s testers assign a number from one to 10, where one is very soft and 10 is very firm. That way you can compare firmness from mattress to mattress,” Morrow said.
Consumer Reports’ latest tests revealed consistent top performers like the Avocado Green innerspring mattress for $1,500 and the Casper Original foam mattress for $1,100. They found both offer at least very good support for a variety of sleepers and are on the firmer side of CR’s scale.
On the softer side and new to the recommended list is the Denver Mattress Doctor’s Choice innerspring mattress, a Consumer Reports Best Buy at $750. It received an excellent score in CR’s durability tests, as well as excellent ratings for back sleepers, whether you’re tall or petite. It earned very good scores for side sleepers, too.
And for budget-minded back sleepers, they say consider the newly recommended Leesa Studio foam mattress for about $500. It also offers a softer level of firmness and earned an Excellent score for durability.
And since one person’s comfiest mattress might be another’s worst nightmare, Consumer Reports says your best bet is to try a mattress out before you buy it. Look for a mattress with at least a three-month or 90-day trial period. That gives you plenty of time to work out any kinks that could come up and still get a full refund.