Purple Mattress Review

Purple Bed Overview

The Original Purple mattress is one of the most sought after beds online and happens to be a fan favorite among a few of us in the office at the Slumber Yard. It’s completely unique and is a great option for those that are interested in trying something new.

It’s 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. With that said, it 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.

Here’s a quick overview of the subjects that we’ll be covering in our post. Click the links to jump to the appropriate section in this Purple mattress review:

In this review, we’ll try the best we can to describe how it feels to sleep on Hyper-Elastic Polymer, and who we think it is the best mattress for!

Honest Purple Mattress Reviews Video

How Does The Purple Bed Feel?

We think it 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 surface of the bed. 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).

What really makes Hyper-Elastic Polymer special, though, is that it’s also quite supportive. You kind of get the best of both worlds with this material. It’s soft, comfortable and pressure relieving, yet it’s also able to support all types of sleepers.

Firmness

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 mattress finds a really nice balance between pressure relief and support.

Pressure Relief

As you lay down on the bed, you can sort of feel the polymer squares below shifting, folding and conforming to your body’s shape. It feels a little weird at first but after a few nights, we’ve found that most people warm up to the feel and end up really liking it. It basically has the pressure relief of memory foam without creating that sink-in feeling that you may or may not like.

Temperature

Cold isn’t the exact word, but Purple beds are definitely some of the best out there when it comes to airflow and temperature regulation. This is largely due, again, to that top layer of Hyper-Elastic Polymer.

The polymer material is constructed in a grid formation (Purple calls it a Smart Comfort Grid). Basically, this creates columns and rows of little polymer squares where air can move freely. Overall, this is one of the big advantages that Purple beds offer. If you tend to heat up at night or just live in a hot climate and don’t like to use the air conditioner, this is one of the Best Mattresses For Hot Sleepers on the market.

For an in-depth explanation, you can read our article about how we test temperature regulation.

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 Original Purple mattress starts with a 4″ layer of dense support foam, which serves as the foundation for the bed. Most mattresses in the online industry start off 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.

Durability

The Hyper-Elastic material inside all of the purple beds is extremely durable and malleable. However, the Original Purple isn’t the most durable bed of them all because it contains a foam base, rather than a steel coil foundation. Hybrid beds prove to be more durable and long-lasting, especially for heavy individuals.

Body Type Analysis

In almost every piece of content we write, we always make sure to talk about weight. Every mattress will feel different to various individuals. That’s because your weight and body type play a huge role in how you perceive a mattress to feel.

Petite Body Types

This mattress is great for smaller-sized sleepers! Petite individuals (150 pounds or less) place very little pressure on a mattress. As a result, these body types tend to think most mattresses are on the firmer side since they sleep more on top of the mattress and don’t sink in as much.

Average Body Types

In general, it’s easier for average sleepers to find a mattress that strikes the right balance between supportive and pressure relieving. We write our reviews from the perspective of an average sleeper, and this Purple Mattress works fine for these sleepers.

Heavy Body Types

Finally, heavier sleepers (250+ pounds) will feel like most mattresses are on the softer side of the spectrum. Big folks exert quite a bit more stress and pressure on a bed than small and average size people. As such, they tend to sink into the bed a little more and have a more immersive experience with the top layers.

As such, we would suggest one of the Purple hybrid models to individuals who weigh over ~250 pounds.

Purple Reviews 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.

Back Sleepers

Back sleepers will find that the Original Purple mattress provides the necessary support. Your hips will sink down a little into the polymer material (as they should) but not to the point where your spine is no longer in proper alignment.

Stomach Sleepers

Like back sleepers, stomach sleepers will also enjoy the feel of it. If you’re a heavier back or stomach sleeper, the Original Purple bed will still work, it’s just probably not the best option out there. We’d recommend checking out the coil Purple mattresses, which contain coils. Or you can check out our Best Hybrid Mattresses list.

Side Sleepers

The Purple bed is ideal for side sleepers of all sizes. The top layer of Hyper-Elastic Polymer does a great job of conforming to your body and cradling your hips and shoulders. Overall, the bed provides a ton of pressure relief.

In fact, Purple made our list for the Best Mattresses For Side Sleepers. We hold Purple in high regard as it relates to side sleepers. We consider the Purple mattress to be a nice alternative to a lot of softer memory foam beds since it offers enough pressure relief but also is fairly supportive.

Combo Sleepers

As you can probably guess, we also think the Purple bed is a viable option for combo sleepers. The bed provides ample pressure relief for side sleepers and a good amount of support under the lower back and trunk of back and stomach sleepers. Plus, given the top layer is so responsive, you’ll find it effortless to switch between positions.

Is Purple A Good Mattress For Couples?

As we mentioned above, the feel of it can be very divisive. Some people love it and some people find it a little too weird. As such, this is the first hurdle that couples need to face. If one person in the relationship finds it too odd, you should probably take a look at our list for the Best Beds For Couples.

If both partners like the feel though, it’s time to discuss motion isolation and edge support, which are two important considerations for couples.

Edge Support

Edge support previously was one of the big complaints with the Purple. However, in late 2019, the company added dense foam side rails around the perimeter of the bed in order to help combat the issue. As a result, the bed now performs much better in this category compared to the previous version.

All in all, we’d say the Purple bed provides pretty decent edge support. We still wouldn’t put it in our great category, but it’s definitely good enough to get the job done.

What is edge support and why does it matter? We have a detailed explanation on our edge support blog post.

Motion Isolation And Noise

Surprisingly, the Original Purple does a pretty good job of limiting motion transfer. You might not think so given how responsive and sort of bouncy the polymer top layer is, but the bed actually passed our tests easily. It also doesn’t make any noise, virtually none, which is standard with most new online beds nowadays.

What Does The Purple Mattress Cost?

The Original Purple mattress is priced about average for the bed-in-a-box industry. It wouldn’t be considered a budget tier mattress, nor would it be considered a luxury tier bed.

However, considering the special material this bed utilizes (we’ll get to that below), we actually think the original Purple bed is a pretty good value with a king size mattress coming in at $1,449. Here’s how the price break-down by size:

Unfortunately, Purple doesn’t regularly offer coupon codes or promo codes to make their mattresses cheaper. However, they will almost always throw in a free gift (pillow, sheets, etc.) with each mattress purchase. Be sure to check their website to see what promotion they’re currently offering.

Purple Mattress Review Verdict

We are big fans of Purple beds in general. We like all the benefits that Hyper-Elastic Polymer provides. There’s a reason why this mattress is a staple on our list of the Best Beds Under $1,000. Bottom line, if you’re open to a new style of mattress, we highly recommend giving Purple a try.

Other Purple Mattresses

It’s important to note that Purple offers three other mattress models. In short, the company recently introduced pocketed coil models, which are similar to the original but use coils for their support and foundation layers to offer more durability. These Purple Hybrid models are quite a bit more expensive than the Original Purple, but they do offer several advantages.

Other Purple Reviews:

• Purple Hybrid Mattress Review
• Purple 3 Mattress Review
• Purple 4 Mattress Review
• Purple Pillow
• Purple Seat Cushion
• Purple Power Base
• Purple Weighted Blanket
• Purple Blanket

• 

  JD Christison

  Combo Sleeper

• 

  McKenzie Dillon

  Combo Sleeper

• 

  Owen Poole

  Side Sleeper

• 

  Jack Reynoso

  Combo Sleeper

Purple Company Policies

Like most of its competitors, Purple offers customer-friendly policies in terms of its trial period, warranty and shipping policies. Here’s an overview:

• Risk-free trial period: 100 nights
• Warranty: 10 years
• Shipping: Free
• Returns: Free; if you decide that you don’t like the bed during your trial period, customer service will arrange for a third party to pick up the mattress from your home

Purple Mattress Size And Dimensions

Comparing Purple Mattress Alternatives

Given that Purple competes in the online space, technically all of the mattresses that we’ve reviewed are competitors. That said, here’s a quick list of their major head-to-head competitors.

Purple vs. Casper

Casper is the foam mattress online. It’s incredibly popular and we can understand why. It’s a soft foam mattress that’s really accommodating for all sleeper types thanks to its medium feel. Purple and Casper beds are similarly priced, so it really depends on whether you prefer the feel of a foam mattress (Casper) or a gel-like one (Purple).

Purple vs. Leesa

Leesa foam mattresses are similar to Casper, but typically with a lower price tag. They’re much different from Purple beds, so take a look at our Purple vs. Leesa comparison to figure out which one is right for you. Leesa has a soft neutral-foam feel, while Purple is completely unique. 

Purple vs. Tuft & Needle

If Casper is the foam mattress, Tuft & Needle is the budget mattress online. Serta Simmons actually owns Tuft & Needle, which produces affordable soft neutral-foam beds. See how Purple stacks up to Tuft & Needle in our comparison guide. It mostly comes down to price and feel.