Upholstery layers are the bulk of today's mattress cost. Twenty years ago, the average mattress height was nine inches thick. Today the average mattress height is fourteen inches thick. The coil unit itself hasn't gotten much taller, usually about six inches. However, the upholstery layers, commonly referred to as padding, have caused the mattresses to become thicker. These layers of material are the most expensive component of a mattress today. They consist of real cottons, polyester blends, natural fibers, as well as, man made fibers. This is what most of your money is really going towards.
Looking at these three major components, the padding cost alone will be more than the innerspring and foundation unit combined. Padding is considered anything that goes over the top of the coil. Padding is also the most difficult item to try to price out. Each bed will have about 3-7 layers of padding, with each layer of padding being a different material. Trusted name brand manufacturers will give you better padding and more of it as you spend more. However, it is near impossible to grade every layer of padding in each mattress. Wool, cashmere, memory foam, latex foam and other layers are more commonly known, and usually signal a better quality of padding. As with most items these padding layers also come in different grades. So don't expect the wool in a $1,000 mattress to be as good as with a $3,000 model. The same goes for the rest of the padding layers. There is no formula today that will tell us how good a certain type of padding will last when it is used in conjunction with several other layers of different padding. Your best option is to find the manufacturer that best suits the type of mattress you are ready for and find what models they make that match your comfort guide number. Then you can compare piece and mattress thickness to help you decide.
Mattress Height originally retailers began listing the heights of mattresses because people would ask if there sheets would fit or not. So they needed to know how thick each mattress was. Today most sheet manufacturers use very deep sides, so almost all new sheets will fit today's thicker mattress. With the sheet issue solved, we still keep the mattress height listed on every mattress we sell. Many customers use it as tool to measure value, and when it is used properly it does help, if you are comparing different models of the same brand, apples to apples. If you want to compare mattress heights between brands this will not help because they all use a different coil height. Heights are good to know, however, its best to also use our Comfort Scale. Our comfort scale will help you see, for example, if you find a Simmons pillow top that is your comfort scale number, you can then look at all the rest of the Simmons pillow tops that have that same comfort scale number. You may find a thicker mattress at a better price or maybe a model just a little thinner at a big savings. This will only work within a brand, any attempt to compare height of two mattresses from two manufacturers will do nothing to show you value. So remember, comparing different heights among the different brands will not work. For those of you with a very low comfort scale number, (FIRMER) keep in mind that the firmer mattress sets will always be thinner than plush mattresses. Firm mattresses have all their materials compressed together, to create the firmness. So be sure you are comparing the right comfort scale number to other mattresses that are the same comfort scale number.
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