The Original Purple mattress is one of the most sought-after beds online. It also happens to be a fan favorite among a few of us in the office at My Slumber Yard. That said, the Purple bed can be a little divisive — for example, Owen LOVES the Purple mattress but couldn’t convince his significant other to sleep on it because of its unique gel-like feel.
The Purple Mattress is one of the only beds to feature Hyper-Elastic Polymer, a proprietary comfort material, which happens to be both pressure-relieving and supportive at the same time. In our Purple bed reviews, we reveal the types of sleepers we think will like it best and who should consider other options.
Purple Mattress Firmness and Feel
How firm is the purple mattress?
In terms of firmness, honestly, it’s hard to rate the Original Purple bed given the unique characteristics of the polymer top layer. However, if you really pulled our collective arms, we’d say it’s about a medium on the firmness scale. Overall, the Purple mattress finds a really nice balance between pressure relief and support.
How does the Purple Bed feel?
The Purple bed looks and feels more like a gel or silicone-like material, unlike any type of memory foam or poly foam. The top layer is laid out in a grid formation, which creates a bunch of tiny squares across the bed’s surface. The polymer material is extremely soft, flexible, and responsive. In fact, Hyper-Elastic Polymer can be stretched to 15x its original state. Try doing that with foam and see what happens (spoiler alert: it rips).
We know what you might be wondering. How does it feel to sleep on a Purple Bed? Honestly, pretty weird at first. We like to compare it to a huge Dr. Scholls insert. Some people love it, some people hate it.
What really makes Hyper-Elastic Polymer special, though, is that it’s also really supportive. You kind of get the best of both worlds with the Purple mattress. It’s soft, comfortable and pressure relieving, yet it’s also able to support all types of sleepers.
Purple Mattress Construction
Since you can’t cut open that new mattress of yours, we got our hands dirty and sliced apart our Purple Mattress just to show you what the inside looks like. Below, you can see the bed’s three layers and an explanation of what they do.

Bottom – The Purple mattress in a box starts with a 4″ layer of dense support foam, which serves as the foundation for the bed. Most mattresses in the online industry start with a thick foam base, and here is where Purple sticks to the status quo.
Middle – The transition layer is 3.25″ of 1.8-pound polyurethane foam to neutralize or soften up the feel of the dense neutral foam at the foundation of the mattress.
Top – A 2″ layer of the brand’s patented Hyper-Elastic Polymer, which some people call the “Purple Mattress Topper,” provides a bulk of the bed’s comfort. It truly is a unique mattress material that’s supportive but also knocks it out of the park in terms of allowing for great pressure relief. It also offers additional benefits as well, which we will get to below.
Purple bed cover – Bringing all the layers together is their “SoftFlex” cover, which truly lives up to its name. It’s soft-to-the-touch, stretchy, and breathable. It’s also a removable cover but not machine washable. If you happen to get a stain on the cover, we suggest you remove it and spot clean the spill instead. Otherwise, you might risk shrinking the cover, making it very difficult to put it back on.
Purple Review Sleeper Type Analysis
To put it simply, the Purple mattress is great for all types of sleepers, whether you sleep on your side, back, stomach, or some combination of all three. Here’s a look at how you can expect the mattress to feel, depending on how you sleep.
Body Type Analysis
Your weight and body type play a huge role in how firm or soft you will perceive a mattress. In general, the more you weigh, the softer a mattress is going to feel.
