There’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. It’s basically torture. If you struggle to get your full night’s rest because your sweaty pajama shirt is waking you up, or maybe you’re too hot to fall asleep in the first place, this post is for you. In this cooling bed review, we’re going to run through our picks for the best mattress for hot sleepers, including the best cooling memory foam mattress and the best cooling bed for side sleepers. 

A lot of mattresses claim to have cooling capabilities, but many fall short in comparison to some of the physically cold beds we’ve tested here at the Slumber Yard. Learn all about the mattresses that made the cut below and why we thought they were cool enough for our list (no pun intended).

Top 6 Cooling Mattresses Of 2022

  • Honest Video Review For Top Rated Cooling Mattresses

  • Why These Are The Best Cooling Beds

    We spend hundreds of hours testing, researching, and thinking about these beds, which is why we feel so confident that our list will be helpful in finding the perfect cool mattress. We have numerous methods for testing the temperature regulating properties of a mattress, but in the end, it’s a blend of all of these that helps us to discern whether the cooling mattress is worth your time. We pay attention to the types of materials that are used and often will pull out our thermometer gun to test surface temperatures and how quickly a bed returns to room temperature. We also have individuals on staff that are 225 lb and some that are as light as 95 lb; this gives us a great range of perspectives. Each cooling bed listed below proved to provide active relief or phenomenal airflow for hot sleepers.

Compare Mattresses For Hot Sleepers

Editor’s Choice

Brooklyn Bedding Aurora
Brooklyn Bedding Aurora
Why it’s Great

Aurora is one of the best cooling hybrid mattresses online. It’s made in the USA, comes in multiple firmness options, and has a cool-to-the-touch cover.

Best for
Hot sleepers that want a cooling mattress available in three firmness levels
All body types
All sleeping positions
Sleep Positions
Back, Side and Stomach
Product Details
Firmness
All
Type
Soft Foam
Temp
Cooling

Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling is a hybrid mattress that incorporates various technologies and textiles to actively cool you down at night. It might feel too cold for some sleepers, but if you consistently sleep hot at night, we think it’s one of the coolest beds available today.

Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling’s best features

  • The Aurora Luxe Cooling mattress from Brooklyn Bedding comes in three different firmness levels (Soft, Medium, and Firm) and is a viable option for all sleeper types. Especially side sleepers, thanks to the “soft” model. 
  • Its durable hybrid construction offers plenty of support for heavier individuals. 
  • The cooling cover is seriously cold thanks to its special phase-change technology. 
  • Bottom line—the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling is among the nicest mattresses we’ve reviewed to date, especially if you’re a hot sleeper.
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Best Budget Mattress For Hot Sleepers

Cocoon by Sealy Chill
Cocoon by Sealy Chill
Why it’s Great

Cocoon Chill is one of the best budget-tier cooling mattresses. It’s a firmer bed with a dense memory foam feel, but it incorporates cooling technology in the cover to help hot sleepers rest more comfortably.

Best for
If you like memory foam
Hot sleepers on a limited budget
People that like firmer beds
Petite to average-sized individuals
Sleep Positions
Back, Side and Stomach
Product Details
Firmness
Firm
Type
Memory Foam
Temp
Cooling

Cocoon Chill by Sealy is a moderately-priced bed that uses phase-change materials in its cover to keep you cool at night. It sleeps similar in temperature to Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling, maybe slightly less cool, but it also costs less. It’s physically cool-to-the-touch, and it is a great option if you’re looking for a budget mattress with a memory foam feel that hugs your body.

Cocoon Chill’s best features 

  • Cocoon comes in two different firmness levels –– both of which are best for back, stomach, and combo sleepers.
  • If you’re open to a dense feel, Cocoon is a comfortable and cooling memory foam mattress. Sealy does offer a number of different options with their bed-in-a-box mattress, but we think the best for really hot sleepers is the firm Cocoon Chill. 
  • The firmer the bed, the cooler it will sleep, generally speaking. Therefore, your best bet is the “Firmer” option of Cocoon Chill for hot sleepers. 
  • There’s a Cocoon Chill Hybrid bed for all the folks who need a more supportive, durable mattress.

Best Cooling Memory Foam Mattress

GhostBed Luxe
GhostBed Luxe
Why it’s Great

GhostBed Luxe is a premium memory foam mattress that incorporates special cooling materials in the cover and a “Ghost Ice” layer that makes it physically cold to the touch.

Best for
If you want a cooling mattress
Individuals who like the feel of memory foam
All sleeper types (medium firmness)
Sleepers who weigh under 230 lbs
Sleep Positions
Back, Side and Stomach
Product Details
Firmness
Medium
Type
Memory Foam
Temp
Cooling

GhostBed Luxe is as much a memory foam mattress as it is a cooling mattress. What we mean by that is, the memory foam is there for support and pressure relief, but the cooling gel and other technologies are there to help regulate your body temperature effectively. Ghostbed Luxe is a top pick for the best memory foam mattress for hot sleepers. It’s also accommodating for any sleeper type, thanks to its medium firmness profile.

GhostBed Luxe’s best features

  • GhostBed Luxe has a layer of Ghost Ice on top of the gel memory foam to help with your core body temperature. 
  • The cover incorporates cooling fibers that make the mattress feel cold and is another contributing factor to its cooling feel.
  • It’s a thick foam mattress, standing at 13” tall. It’s best for petite to average-sized sleepers, but the thick construction makes it a decent option for heavy sleepers fixated on a foam bed. 
  • Another great thing about GhostBed Luxe is that Nature’s Sleep is always discounting it. So, while it looks relatively expensive on paper to some, they often have specials that make it more palatable.

Best Natural And Organic Cooling Bed

Avocado Green Mattress
Avocado Green Mattress
Why it’s Great

The Avocado Green Mattress is the most sought after natural/organic mattress online. It’s supportive, comfortable, and constructed with high-quality, certified organic and eco-friendly materials.

Best for
Anyone that wants a natural/organic mattress
Stomach and back sleepers
People that want a firm, responsive mattress
All body types
Sleep Positions
Back, Side and Stomach
Product Details
Firmness
Firm
Type
Latex Foam
Temp
Breathable

Avocado is a luxury mattress made with pocketed coils and a number of eco-friendly, breathable materials, including organic latex foam. This allows for increased air circulation, which helps to dissipate heat, thereby keeping you cooler at night. We think Avocado is the best natural cool mattress for hot sleepers. Avocado is technically not designed to be a cooling mattress, but the firmness level and construction to naturally keep you at a comfortable temperature.

Avocado’s best features 

  • Avocado is made with two layers of material (three if you purchase the additional topper). It utilizes recycled steel pocketed coils, organic latex, organic cotton, and organic wool. 
  • Natural latex, like Avocado’s, is hypoallergenic and antimicrobial. It’s also perforated for airflow. 
  • The firmness level is also a huge reason why we like this bed for hot sleepers. By default, our editors consider Avocado to be a truly firm mattress around an 8 to 9 out of 10 on the firmness scale. Even if you add the optional pillow-top, Avocado is still a medium-firm mattress.

Best Cooling Mattress For Back Sleepers

Loom & Leaf
Loom & Leaf
Why it’s Great

Loom & Leaf is one of the nicest, most luxurious memory foam mattresses online. It comes in two firmness profiles and has an organic cotton cover. Not to mention, the center includes a special cooling gel strip that helps make it a cooler sleeping bed.

Best for
If you want a luxury memory foam mattress with cooling tech
People that want a firmer-feeling bed
Petite to average-sized sleepers
Back, stomach, and combination sleepers.
Sleep Positions
Back, Side and Stomach
Product Details
Firmness
All
Type
Memory Foam
Temp
Neutral

Loom & Leaf is a premium mattress brought to you by the folks over at Saatva. It’s their firm memory foam mattress offering, and it even comes in two different firmness options that are suitable for back and stomach sleepers.  

In the middle of this memory foam mattress, you can find a laminated cooling gel spinal panel that helps keep you cool while you sleep. This sets it apart from many memory foam beds that tend to have a hot-sleeping reputation. We also aren’t mad at the price of this bed, compared to other hotel-luxury mattresses on the market.

Loom & Leaf’s best features 

  • Its laminated cooling gel is made with the same material found in hospital burn units. We think it’s a nice touch to keep this memory foam bed on the cooler side of the sleeping spectrum. 
  • You can choose Relaxed Firm, which we rated a medium-firm, or Firm, which we rated a true firm. Either way, this bed will have a firmer mattress profile that will keep back and stomach sleepers properly supported during their sleep.
  • It’s not a hybrid, but it is about 12” thick, making it a suitable mattress for all body types, including some heavy sleepers.
  • Loom & Leaf is moderately priced, especially considering it’s a luxury bed. 

How To Find The Best Cool Beds For Hot Sleepers

Pay attention to construction and materials

We just want to talk in more detail about mattress construction and how it comes into play when you’re looking for a cool mattress.

  • Gel-Like Materials

    Infrequently used, but generally allow for great airflow. The Original Purple Mattress is the prime example here. It uses the company’s proprietary Hyper-Elastic Polymer as its top layer. It’s more of a neutral material in that it doesn’t heat up, nor is it cool to the touch.

  • Innersprings

    Traditional innersprings let in a lot of airflow. These are usually the support system for the mattress and can be buried in layers and layers of foam, which limits any effect that you might feel. The more spring you have the less overall material, and therefore the better the airflow.

  • Pocketed Coils

    Similar to innersprings, but the coils are wrapped in a light fabric. Still lets in plenty of air. These also have the added advantage of limited motion transfer, as compared to innersprings. It’s durable and does sleep cooler than poly foams.

  • Proprietary Foams

    Judge this on a case-by-case basis. We’ve tried some that sleep cool and some that are warm.

  • Cool Gel Memory Foam

    New-age memory foam with gel interwoven to remain cooler. It’s still memory foam, but tries to proactively keep you cool.

The Cover On Your Mattress Is Important To Cool Sleeping

Most people largely ignore the cover of their mattress, but it can be a key element in keeping you cool at night. The best mattresses for hot sleepers will have special covers to help cool you down. If you sleep hot, you should be looking for one of two types of covers.

  • Phase-Change Material

    This helps to pull away your body heat and cool you down. This phase-change material is becoming quite popular. It’s effective at keeping you cool and is actually cool to the touch, even when it’s hot out. It’s impressive stuff. You’ll even see it sometimes incorporated into foams.

  • Breathability

    If the cover doesn’t have a magical textile to keep you cool, then it should at least be breathable. That way you can feel the effects of the cooling gel memory foam or latex foam, for example. If the cover is too thick, it can absorb and retain your body heat, which will warm you up even more. As an example, if the cover on Purple mattresses wasn’t breathable, then you’d miss out on a lot of the cooling effects of the Hyper-Elastic Polymer. Testing breathability is fairly simple. Lift a portion of the cover off of the mattress and see how thin or thick it is and also how easy it is to blow air through it.

Combining Two Cooling Technologies

This is the Holy Grail of mattresses for hot sleepers or people with night sweats/hot flashes. If you get a cooling bed that has phase-change materials plus innersprings or pocketed coils, you’re in for an Arctic experience. It will be cool to the touch and get great airflow from the coils.

Do not get these beds if you sleep just kind of warm. They’ll be too cool of a mattress for your preferences. Do not get them if your sleeping partner is petite and runs cold. They will freeze to death. You should only consider one of the best cooling mattresses if you absolutely burn up at night. Sometimes we even see beds with coils, cooling memory foam, and a phase-change cover. That bed should be a really nice refuge for hot sleepers.

Add a Cooling Pillow

Believe it or not, sometimes just swapping your regular pillow for a cooling pillow one may do the trick. Turns out cooling pillows can help lower the temperature in your upper body, specifically around your shoulders, neck, and head to provide you with the comfort you need for a good night’s sleep. If you’re interested in a pillow with cooling technology, we highly recommend the Purple Pillow.

Avoid Softer Mattresses (Generally)

In general, a firmer mattress (usually for back sleepers and stomach sleepers) is going to sleep cooler than a softer mattress, simply because you sleep more on the bed rather than in it. We’ve tried plenty of mattresses that we expected to sleep more in the neutral range, but they ended up being warmer because either the cover wasn’t breathable or the mattress was on the softer end. If you need a more plush mattress, look for one that has a phase-change material in the cover. While the bed won’t be especially cool, it also won’t be alarmingly warm.

  • How We Test The Mattresses

    The Slumber Yard has been around since the beginning of the bed-in-a-box craze. Our team has personally tested over 175 mattresses so far, and we keep more than 150 beds in our office so we can compare them (and take afternoon naps).

    When testing mattresses, we evaluate the following factors:

    • Construction: We cut mattresses open to see what’s inside and how it’s made.
    • Feel: We check if it has a stuck-in-the-mud memory foam feel, or if it’s more of a neutral foam or a plush pillow top, etc.
    • Firmness: We have our own firmness scale and evaluate how that may vary depending on your body and sleeper type.
    • Pressure relief: We test what’s the sweet spot for different body and sleeper types.
    • Support and how that changes by body/sleeper type
    • Edge Support: This is important for couples who share a bed. Would you roll-out of the bed or can you sleep confidently close to the edges?
    • Motion Isolation: We use the water glass test to see how the bed fares with motion transfer. This is another important factor for couples that don’t want to wake up one another when they move.
    • Temperature Regulation: We use a temperature gun to evaluate if the bed warms up, stays neutral or actively cools while you are sleeping.
    • Noise: This could be an issue in beds with coils or innerspring.
    • Off-Gassing: Some beds could have a smell for a few weeks after unpacking, and we try to warn you about it.
    • Company policies: We also take into account policies such as shipping, returns, trial period and warranty.
    • Value: We look at a bed’s price in the context of what it offers in terms of features and quality of materials and construction.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a cooling mattress cost?

In most cases, for a queen mattress, the cost of a cooling mattress is about $1,500 after discounts. That’s a fairly reasonable price to pay considering most of these beds for hot sleepers are more luxurious.

How can you cool down a mattress?

If you’re not ready to invest in an actively cooling mattress, mattress pads or toppers are an inexpensive way to stay cool at night. Memory foam tends to trap heat, so be careful with which one you choose. It’s also a good idea to think about what type of sheets you use –– jersey will often leave you waking up sweaty.

What is a “cooling cover” and how does it work?

A cooling cover is typically one with a phase-change material that uses a really neat chemical reaction to get colder when it passes a certain temperature. At a micro level, the cover actually liquefies to cool you down.

Do cooling mattresses really work?

Some do and some don’t. You can’t always trust marketing language when it’s on a mattress brand’s website. We recommend you look at mattress reviews to get perspective on how cool-sleeping a mattress actually is.

Which mattress does not produce heat?

Breathable mattresses like latex foam and hybrid beds typically produce the least amount of heat. Purple is also great at not retaining your body heat because of its gel-like, airy design. Memory foam beds have a reputation for retaining heat, but you can find some that incorporate cooling technology if you really like the material.

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Why Trust Us

Get the kind of sleep you’ve only dreamed of with some help from our team of mattress experts. We personally test more than 175 of the best sleep solutions from over 60 leading brands on site, so you can be sure you’re getting unbiased reviews, fair comparisons and personalized recommendations.


The Review Team

  • JD

    JD Christison

    Combo Sleeper

  • reynoso

    Jack Reynoso

    Combo Sleeper

  • dillon lopez slumber yard

    Dillon Lopez

    Combo Sleeper

  • Owen Poole

    Side Sleeper