GoodBed + Dow 
How We Work Together

The mattress industry’s first-ever scientific testing program stems from a uniquely powerful collaboration between scientists and mattress experts.

Setting a New Standard for Mattress Testing

In October 2024, GoodBed and Dow announced the mattress industry's first comprehensive, consumer-facing product testing program — one that brings scientific rigor to how mattresses are evaluated and sets a new standard for how they’re understood.

The launch of this program in 2025 was the culmination of four years of intensive work to design a truly comprehensive battery of mattress tests. Beginning in early 2021, our teams worked side by side to develop every aspect of the testing process. We built custom equipment, developed new metrics, analyzed vast data sets, and have even presented our findings at scientific conferences. The result: a gold standard for mattress testing.

Today, these tests are actively shaping how mattresses are rated, reviewed, and understood.

• When we say a mattress offers great pressure relief, it’s because we’ve measured it scientifically.
• When we say it sleeps cool, that’s based on 8 hours of controlled thermal data.
• When we say it’s highly durable, we’ve simulated ten years of use to be sure.

A Collaboration Built on Complementary Strengths

This effort combines two highly specialized forms of expertise, and that’s precisely what makes it so effective.

On one side is Dow, a Fortune 100 leader in materials science, known for cutting-edge testing capabilities and a world-class research team.

On the other is GoodBed, the most trusted source for mattress information online, with deep knowledge of how mattresses work, and what truly matters to sleepers.

What Dow Brings:

• Team of world-class PhDs and materials science experts
• Unrivaled laboratory testing facilities of the ComfortScience™ Studio
• Global reputation for scientific rigor and innovation

What GoodBed Brings:

• Proprietary Mattress DNA™ testing framework
• Industry-wide database of standardized mattress ratings
• Trusted platform that reaches millions of mattress shoppers

Using GoodBed’s Mattress DNA™ as the foundation, we assembled a cross-disciplinary group of researchers, including PhDs and an MD, to create objective testing protocols across every major dimension of mattress performance. Together, we spent four years building something completely new: a rigorous, data-driven approach to evaluating how mattresses actually perform for real people.

Why It Matters

For decades, mattress performance claims have gone largely unchecked, with little more than marketing language to guide consumers. While this has long frustrated mattress shoppers, it’s also become an existential threat to makers and sellers of quality products.

Even more importantly, your sleep deserves better. Science continues to underscore the critical role of good sleep in health and well-being. Consumers increasingly understand that the right mattress plays a major part in this, yet they’ve lacked accurate, reliable data to make informed choices.

Through the work of GoodBed and Dow, that has now changed. Powered by Dow’s lab testing and GoodBed’s independent certification of the results, consumers now have access to mattress insights grounded in science — bringing transparency, objectivity, and credibility to an industry that’s long lacked all three.

This isn’t just mattress testing. It’s mattress science — and for the first time, it’s available to everyone.

What Can We Test?

Our testing goes far beyond surface-level impressions or generic marketing claims. Every mattress is subjected to a rigorous battery of machine tests that quantify more than 50 performance attributes, including:

• Durability (via multi-year fatigue simulations)
• Cooling performance (over an 8-hour sleep cycle)
• Spinal alignment and pressure relief (for various body types and sleep positions)
• Feel characteristics like softness, memory response, bounce, and cushioning
• Motion isolation, edge support, and more

In building this testing program, we had to go well beyond any pre-existing protocols. Most mattress characteristics had no applicable ASTM or ISO standards. Where standards did exist, they were typically outdated, designed for components (not finished products), or insufficient for modern mattresses. In every case, we used existing methods as a starting point, then advanced them.

To accurately measure real-world performance, we developed proprietary testing methods, engineered specialized equipment, and created novel approaches for interpreting results. This work has involved thousands of test cycles, millions of data points, and multiple peer-reviewed presentations of our findings.

What Makes This Program Unique?

Mattresses are among the most complex consumer products, which is the chief reason that no one has scientifically tested them at this level before.

Unlike hard goods like TVs or washing machines, mattresses are soft goods. Their performance depends not just on materials and design, but on how a human body interacts with them. They include dozens of subjective attributes — like softness, bounce, or memory feel — that have historically defied consistent measurement. And because every body is different, a mattress that supports one person perfectly may perform poorly for another.

These factors make mattresses uniquely difficult to test. Attempts by other organizations to adapt general consumer product testing to this category have repeatedly failed — often reinforcing misleading tropes, like the notion of a single “best mattress.”

What makes our effort different is the rare combination of capabilities we bring to the table. GoodBed contributes more than 15 years of mattress-specific expertise, proprietary testing frameworks, an unmatched database of comparative ratings across all major brands. Dow contributes advanced lab infrastructure, scientific testing experience, and a deep bench of materials experts.

Either company alone was more qualified than most. But solving this problem required a precise mix of ingredients, and neither GoodBed nor Dow had them all. Only by working together were we able to create something that had never existed before: a truly scientific, consumer-accessible mattress testing program.