3½ years on my custom emperor mattress – a retrospective
middleendian.com
middleendian.com
Nobody talks of how foam mattresses change the dynamics of sex. Gone is the nice bounce back from the coils. Instead you get the firm motion deadening of the foam. Participants expecting to find that extra spring in their step find they have to provide their own bounce. I hope your muscles are up for it.
I personally don't having sex on a foam mattress. I think those seeking a foam mattress should consider keeping around a spare coiled sex bed. Call it your guest bed if so inclined. It will be there for you, providing that extra spring you may be missing from you foam mattress.
Not what I'm used to reading on HN.
No guests have ever slept in it either, so there’s that. It’s more of a sex and snoring bed.
I prefer a firm that you won't find in 80% of spring mattresses.
There are a lot of foam bed options out there these days, so you have lots of choice. Unfortunately, the composition of them is often not really spoken about, you really have to dig to find them.
FYI: A "memory foam" mattress only tends to have a little memory foam in it.
Most mattresses tend to be a high density foam base (~5"), a lower density foam on top of that (2-3"), and the memory foam or whatnot on top of that (another 2-4"). The more expensive latex beds IIRC are all or mostly latex, but most of the <$1K mattresses are largely high density foam.
~10 years ago I had a memory foam mattress that was comfortable to sleep in, particularly once it had warmed up for a few hours and was easier to move in. I tend to move a lot when I sleep, rolling over regularly. But for sex it was fairly annoying.
I swapped it after a couple years for a new bed, I ended up doing a bunch of research and selected a Leesa, because it seemed to be one of the few that had a latex-like top layer. As I mentioned previously, finding the composition to compare mattresses was fairly hard, the vendors don't really seem to talk about it (circa 7 years ago). On top of that I put a 3" latex topper, because my wife wanted something softer.
I'm sorry but you personally don't what on a foam mattress? You left out like the most important word of all of your comment. Don't mind, don't like, don't love, don't prefer?
It can be guessed from the context but still.
Recently, I even wrote "buy" instead of "by"! Crazy times
I think it is an advanced state of distraction that causes it, a brain unable to really care about anything until the next dopamine hit.
[0] the intentionally missing word is "true"
[1] the intentionally missing reference ([0]) is after the word "so"
[2] there are no more omissions
It's just something occasionally goes wrong with the thought -> word pipeline buffering in the one case. I find the homophone substitution more interesting - I would never, ever make the mistake writing, or if I was paying attention to what I type (I find it happens even more commonly if I'm not paying attention to the window I'm typing on), at some level it seems that the unconscious word-to-keyboard process 'hears' and transcribes somewhat phonetically in a way totally disconnected from my conscious thought process. I find it fascinating I can 'visualize' the spelling of and think a word like, I don't know, 'bare', but my hands, as if completely independent, type out 'bear.'
Another piece is that, if someone talks to me while I am typing, sometimes words from our conversation creep into the text.
Interestingly, I find these mistakes are more common when I am taking stimulants (caffeine) than when I am not.
[1] This is another common mistake I've noticed. I am quite certain I thought 'reduced', but 'reducing' came out anyway. I think this is usually due to me changing the grammatical structure of the sentence midstream; I probably originally thought "you're reducing" instead of "you've reduced", but I typed faster than the thought completed. Maybe this says something about my intellectual capacity. :)
also, i tend to agree with your conclusion, i think what i described are normal human errors, not necessarily signs of dyslexia.
The bounce is also not QUITE spring levels but I’d say 85% which I find to be a reasonable compromise.
No need to buy layers and such I say go full latex.
Foam I feel I just feel I sink into a divot and have to lift myself out before moving side to side. Which reduces agility. That feeling is compounded with another body.
Even when agility isn’t the main goal, it’s like you have to work twice as hard with foam and maybe 80% as hard with latex; as compared to coils.
This same sinking/floating type feelings also is the big contributor to why foam is feels so hot to me. It absorbs my heat then engulfs me in it.
Thank you for coining the term.
We could also merge two domains of highly hypothetical expectation and call them Temporarily Embarrassed Copulators.
They are hard to find, so maybe get one custom made. You'll need a bit of a larger bedroom too. But it's the real deal.
This is why about 65% say foam is worse for sex than springs, while ~35% say it’s the same or even better.
That said, I just prefer foam for sleeping. Much more comfortable and I wake up feeling more refreshed with no back pain. We keep a separate guest spring mattress bed for sex (and obviously guests). We bought it a year ago and our sex life has never been better but ymmv!
if we're talking about knees on the mattress, I'd say it's still worse... the more cushioning the more the blood flow is restricted, the faster you'll get weak and shaky knees. Just like a too cushioned bike saddle is bad for you crotch area.
Sorry, I now realize this sounds like an advert - but I'm fascinated how 'online mattresses' have become 'a thing' Previous online examples (say amazon with books) were just higlighting that online can provide the same item you could checkout offline, for less.
Mattresses should be an item you have to check out in person - but due to the outrageous markups, people will now happily buy sight-unseen online.
Not only that, but traditional mattress shops still use some of the highest pressure sales tactics I've experienced. It only takes once to make you never want to set foot in one again.
He also had a bunch of religious stuff around, so I think he felt it was part of his Christian mission to give people fair treatment. Either way, next time I need a mattress I will go there.
I caved and purchased a Nectar mattress (I'm also in the UK), mostly because you got a year's (!) money back guarantee. Best choice I ever made - it highlighted how poor my old mattress was and I never needed to use the guarantee.
Nowadays you probably have a friend or two who's ordered an online mattress you can try out.
Really, though? I feel like part of the whole scam with online mattresses is that the review sites where people think they're conducting all this independent "research" are mostly in on the racket, getting freebies and kickbacks and taking payment for top recommendation spot, etc— Fast Company had a big expose on this a few years ago, but they're far from the only ones who have tried to blow the door off it:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
I ended up taking a chance and went with an online purchase Leesa Hybrid [1] mattress that combines foam and pocket springs. I am mainly a side sleeper and the mattress feels really, really good. In fact, I think I might take a nap right now!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GTCL3JA
Reading the comments on AZ, the less-deep mattresses have firmer support, so I got the 8". I did add this topper (not foam) after a few months:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075486MDK
3 years later I still love them and am glad I didn't waste money on the name brand at the mattress store (which went out of business).
This is such a beautiful sentence and sentiment. If HN were to have a motto it could do a lot worse than that
2. It is quite common for beds to be occupied by two people simultaneously.
> I ordered a custom-sized bamboo bed set from Advanced Bedding. Their website had a form where I could just fill in the dimensions so it seemed like it would be the only purchase that didn't involve any human interaction, but they called to confirm anyway as the numbers were "unusual."
My comforter is too large for my washing machine, so I wash it in the tub every few months.
Put comforter in tub
Fill tub with cold water
Add laundry detergent about halfway through
Swirl it around with your hands (make sure you wear gloves, laundry detergent usually has bleach in it) and make sure at some point every part of the blanket goes under water. My tub is larger than most tubs (lip to lip is just under 6' long instead of 5' long) and it still can't completely fit in at once.
Drain tub
Repeat previous steps with cold water again but no soap this time to rinse it out
Let it dry out for a couple days
Enjoy clean comforter
Something like this?
Alaskans will not ""sleep"" in beds smaller than 9' x 9' it seems.
But I do enjoy the bed quite a bit lol
I've had the luxury of owning real silk sheets. I can't go back from that experience. Do silk sheet manufacturers do custom orders? I love the idea of building an emporer sized bed from scratch like this but the sheets are a huge deal...
Form-wise, memory foam will respond to your positions but I feel like it's very slow and I also feel like I'm slowly sinking downward forever when I sleep on memory foam. Buckling gel responds very quickly, latex does as well. Latex is more springy, makes for a good core and isn't too bad to sleep on directly itself either, but buckling gel really fills in gaps and is super supportive.
Temperature-wise, memory foam makes me very hot when I sleep and I dislike that. Latex is much cooler and buckling gel even cooler than that.
(Everything I said about latex applies to polyurethane, which I believe Purple uses for its core rather than latex)
For what it's worth I have a "2m x 2m". That's very big for many european countries: it's actually a bit complicated to find mattresses / sheets for such size (typically you need to order them and wait a bit), while if you go with the more standard "180cm x 200cm" you've got sheets and mattresses on display in many shops.
Even within the UK bed size section of Wikipedia they couldn't decide if an Emperor was 7'x7' (213x213) or 6'8"x6'6" (203x198), although most UK websites seem to use the 7x7 definition.
>find sheets
I had to order custom sheets online and when I eventually need to replace them I'll have to do it again. They called me to verify that my order was correct, and I assume they will the next time too lol
That's ridiculous.
Material quality: Purple, which I roughly used as inspiration for my original mattress design, used polyurethane which is cheaper and lighter, but less durable, than the latex I used for the core of my mattress. I have no idea what they used now but that was the case at the time.
Economies of scale: They can keep making the same few shapes cheaper. I was unable to buy specific dimensions of buckling column gel so I had to buy several toppers to extract the material and I only used 49 square feet out of the 64 square feet (although I found other uses for some of the remaining gel), plus the toppers came with other cheap foam that I had little use for. It's really difficult to order buckling column gel directly.
The literal scale: My mattress is larger than most of the US mattress companies, more material = more money. I imagine an emperor sized mattress would be similarly or more expensive from Purple. I would've gotten slightly better ROI per size had I made my bed larger due to the aforementioned discarded buckling column gel. Plus I needed to get nonstandard custom sheets and a custom sized encasement.
A good quality mattress, where you spend 5-8 hours every day - is one of the areas where skimping is not worth while in my opinion. Same with computer chairs, or any other thing that impacts back and joint health over prolonged periods.
I looked into buying just the sheets or a topper after returning the one I trialed. I really enjoyed the feel of it, but not to the tune of $2000(!) for a twin(!!!).
In a different life I'd consider setting up a buckling column gel manufacturing station and just sell people custom sized buckling column gel sheets.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Foldable-Supportive-T...
Any danger with chemicals?
1. The HxW dimensions didn't necessarily match anything I wanted well. I needed four toppers to make the original mattress and offhand it looks like I could probably make it with four gel sheets from alibaba but the cuts would be more complicated to lay out and attach.
2. The thickness was listed at 4cm vs the 2" thickness of the buckling gel from intellibed. 2" is about 5cm.
3. Despite the intellibed toppers coming with a useless amount of foam, it wasn't actually any cheaper per square inch to order the gel from alibaba at the time, not that either was especially cheap. Numbers may have changed by now.
Ordering a slab of foam from a foam factory, etc?
If you want something more specific, check out the mattress underground forums. Very helpful users there.
Saved me all the hassle of figuring out what type of foam and cover etc. still only ten percent of the price of a fancy mattress from a mattress store and took ten minutes on amazon. I doubt it's that much more expensively than a comparable block of foam. (I think it has multiple layers, as well).
Three years in, no problems. Good mattress.
Looks really reasonable pricing-wise
My biggest regret of moving back home from the States was that I didn’t ship my sleepnumber mattress home because it cost so much.
Sleepnumber stores look (and probably are) gimmicky but man, the first couple of nights I slept on them, I didn’t know when my head hit the pillow and when morning came. I truly understood what “sleeping like the dead” means.
Now I’m planning to somehow insert a thin air mattress into my current latex foam mattress for extra back support.
this is why i never considered them. I hate hard sells more than i love sleep.
it's been 10 years btw since I build mine. There's a slight give in the densest lower layer but it's held up enough that I still only really need to replace the top layer to get it back up to snuff.
My question: how in the hell do you afford sheets that size? lol
Foamorder's max latex size is king or cal king but they were willing to glue a bunch of chunks together for me. I'm not sure what glue they used (presumably latex?) but it's held without issue. I cannot feel the dividing between the latex chunks under the buckling gel while in the bed.
>sheets
I ordered two sets of bamboo bedsheets from that Advanced Bedding and they've lasted me all this time without ripping or stretching or anything. I usually leave the comforter at the foot of the bed when I get up so that probably helped them air out. Can't remember how much they cost but you can run the numbers on their site.
However if we want to get into semantics, the word King descends from the word Caesar. Perhaps replace King with Minister, and Queen with Representative?
(yes, I know it's a myth; I am doing my bit to preserve it)
The best thing I found was a really hard spring mattress with a 2" memory foam topper, it offers the support I need but also takes the pressure spots.
Also I can smell the outgassing volatile organic compounds from here.
Like barbegal mentioned, there are some safety requirements for selling a mattress. I don't recall exactly how you'd get approved, but I vaguely remember that it wasn't actually that hard to meet them and had the production quality of my mattress been a bit better I probably could have gotten the approval to sell it.