Best Mattress Under 1000

Different Types Of Mattresses

Chance are that you’ve heard of the most common materials used in mattresses, but you aren’t completely familiar with their relative advantages and disadvantages. We’re lucky in the sense that there are plenty of mattresses and mattress types to choose from nowadays, but making a decision can be hard given the marketing rhetoric from all of these brands. It’s hard to know exactly what a bed is like without actually trying it in person. With that in mind, here’s a brief overview of a few popular materials that you find in mattresses. Hopefully, this will clear things up and make your decision easier.

Polyurethane Foam

This is the most common foam that you’ll see with online mattresses. It comes in various thicknesses, densities, and firmness levels, and is incredibly affordable to manufacture. You will generally see it as the foundation for all-foam beds and even the middle and top layers depending on the mattress. While it’s affordable, it also can be really comfortable and there are a lot of people that like its more neutral feel.

Memory Foam

This is just polyurethane foam, but with a viscous material injected to make it remember shapes, hence the name “memory” foam. It is fairly cheap to manufacture, but is usually great in terms pressures relief and support. It also can be somewhat of a dividing material—some people love it and some people really don’t. If you’re not sure whether you like memory foam or not, you may want to stop in your local mattress store to see how it feels. Chances are, the store will have a wide selection of memory foam beds for you to test. Alternatively, you can also take advantage of the generous risk-free trial periods online companies offer.

In terms of downsides, it can warm up as it contours to your body and retains heat. It can also make switching positions a little more difficult. And it tends to feel firmer when in colder environments and softer in warmer environments—not surprisingly, some people do not like this. We’ve also posted a review of the best memory foam mattresses.

Innerspring

Innersprings are more of a traditional support system and—like anything—they have pros and cons. One the positive end, the innersprings can be very supportive and grant the bed a little of that bounce that you may be used to and prefer. Also, they allow for plenty of airflow and typically last longer than their poly foam counterparts, especially for heavy folks. As for the negatives, innersprings generally transfer motion more, which can disrupt your partner if you’re active during your sleep. And given how much space there is between the coils, there is technically more room for dust mites, which may perturb people with allergies.

Pocketed Coils

While innersprings can have issues with motion transfer, pocketed coils tend be much better here. Unlike an innerspring unit, pocketed coils are just individually-wrapped coils that are stacked next to each other. Therefore, the motion or pressure on one coil doesn’t necessarily impact the other. Like innersprings, pocketed coils are generally regarded as being more durable and supportive than foam materials, particularly for heavier individuals who can wear down thin, all-foam mattresses in short order. Just so you know, we’ve also published a list of the best hybrid and spring mattresses.

Latex

This is a natural material actually made from the sap of a rubber tree. Latex (whether Talalay or Dunlop) is bouncy, airy, and really supportive. In fact, if you lay on an entirely latex mattress it may actually feel like the bed has springs, that’s how bouncy the material is. As such, it tends to be very resilient and you’ll end up sleeping more on the mattress rather than in it. It’s naturally cooler than a lot of poly foam products, as well. There are a lot of people that are drawn to latex because it’s natural (mostly), durable, responsive, and comfortable, but latex beds tend to be quite expensive, heavy, and hard to move, which is partly why you see so many poly foam beds out there.