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!
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.
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.
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.
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:
| SIZE | PRICE (MSRP) |
|---|---|
| Twin | $649 |
| Twin XL | $799 |
| Full | $999 |
| Queen | $1,149 |
| King / Cal King | $1,449 |
| Split King | $1,598 |
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
| Weight | Petite (<150 lbs) | Medium (150-230 lbs) | Heavy (>230 lbs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| pressure relief | |||
| support | |||
| durability | |||
| noise | |||
| firmness | 6 | 5 | 4 |
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
Why Trust Us
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The Review Team
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
| SIZE | Dimensions |
|---|---|
| Twin | 38” x 75” |
| Twin XL | 38” x 80” |
| Full | 54” x 75” |
| Queen | 60” x 80” |
| King | 76” x 80” |
| Cal King | 72” x 84” |
| Split King | 76” x 80” (comes in two packages) |
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.