Mattress Feel FAQ's
Understanding Mattress Comfort Preferences

The amount of comfort you experience when you lie down in bed is based on the four key elements of mattress "Feel": Softness, Cushioning Depth, Memory Feel, and Bounce. Together, these factors create an overall experience that any given person will find more or less comfortable.

How do I choose the right mattress softness level?

One of the most common questions we receive is how a mattress shopper should know whether they need a soft, medium, or firm mattress. As with many aspects of mattresses, there is more to this question than meets the eye. The answer is a combination of sleep position, weight, pressure relief needs, and pure comfort preference.

The first thing to note is that there are two aspects of softness, but these two attributes are typically conflated into one by most mattress manufacturers. The first is how deeply you will sink into the mattress and how much it will conform to your curves -- this is what GoodBed calls "cushioning depth." And the other is how much actual softness it has when you interact with it -- this is what we call "softness." Materials like memory foam can sometimes have a lot more cushioning depth than they do softness -- this is because they are very firm at first but then slowly you sink in and it conforms to your body. Most manufacturers don't distinguish between these two separate comfort elements, and what they end up calling the softness typically corresponds much more closely to what we call cushioning depth.

For the consumer, the first priority is to find a mattress that will give them proper spinal alignment. No mattress can provide equally good spinal alignment for all sleepers, and the quality of spinal alignment it provides will vary based on the sleeper's weight, body shape, and preferred sleep position(s). In most cases, the spinal alignment will be driven principally by the underlying support system of the mattress, but for thicker mattresses and/or lighter sleepers, the 'cushioning depth' can play a role here as well. So that is one part of where this aspect of softness can be relevant.

If the consumer is a side sleeper, they will also need to consider pressure relief. Strictly speaking, this is a separate characteristic from both softness and cushioning depth, but oftentimes mattresses with more softness and/or more cushioning depth will also offer better pressure relief.

Lastly, there is comfort preference. This matters too because it's important that your mattress feels comfortable for you -- ie, that it's a place you look forward to going each night and that you find inherently relaxing. Ensuring that your mattress delivers proper spinal alignment and adequate pressure relief can sometimes limit you in terms of what softness and cushioning depth you can get, but typically it's possible to find one that meets those criteria and still skews toward your personal preferences in terms of how much softness and cushioning depth it has. 

Is mattress comfort subjective?

This is a bit of a tricky question as well. On the one hand, the amount of comfort that a mattress offers is completely subjective. This is why it won’t help you to know what your friend or a mattress salesperson thinks is comfortable. Likewise, it's why you will never hear GoodBed report data based on what we think is comfortable. When it comes to mattress comfort, the only thing that counts is what you think.

On the other hand, the factors that determine how comfortable a mattress will be for you are completely objective. For example, how soft is the mattress, how deeply you sink into it, how quickly it responds to your body – all of these factors are factual, objective, and measurable.

This is an important distinction and it explains how GoodBed is able to accurately measure the comfort characteristics of a mattress through our lab testing. The comfort attributes of a mattress are all defined in detail as part of our Mattress DNA™ framework. By breaking the mattress down into these discrete, objective characteristics, we are able to provide our readers with standardized objective metrics that can help you compare mattresses in a consistent manner in order to find ones that meet your personal comfort preferences.

It's also worth noting that mattress comfort is separate from whether or not that mattress is supportive for you. Support is based on getting proper spinal alignment from your mattress, which is personal but not subjective. The ability for a given mattress to provide proper support for a given person is based on Mattress "Fit".

Another side note is that this can be a great way to spot a fake mattress expert. There are many mattress reviewers on the internet who claim to be mattress experts. Most are simply copywriters who were staffed on a mattress review project and don't really have any expertise at all. Any real expert would know that the way any given person will experience the comfort attributes of a mattress is 100% subjective and will vary widely depending on personal preferences. Thus, any reviewer who gives a mattress high marks because they found it to be "comfortable" is a fake expert, no matter how many mattresses they've tried.

How can I determine my comfort preferences?

These questions will help you select a bed that meets the comfort preferences of you and your partner.

Did you enjoy the level of comfort provided by your current mattress when it was new?

Studies have shown that it can be hard for people to adjust to vastly different levels of comfort than they have experienced in the past. This is true even if you are switching bed types to an innerspring mattress

In what position(s) do you and your partner most frequently sleep?

Side sleepers (the majority of people) often prefer more cushioning, since their weight is being supported by a smaller surface area of their body, creating more "pressure points." Stomach sleepers, on the other hand, tend to prefer a harder feeling mattress. Back sleepers generally fall somewhere in the middle, but have the widest range of personal preferences. Back sleepers that prefer a more upright sleeping position may also want to consider an adjustable bed.

Do you like how much (or how little) you sink into the bed?

Some people like how it feels to sleep “in” the bed, which can feel comfy and cozy, while others prefer to sleep “on” the bed, which can feel cooler and make it easier to reposition yourself.  How far you sink into a bed is a function of the amount of cushioning the mattress has and the type of cushioning materials.  It will also vary based on your weight, body shape, and to some degree your sleep position.  Many mattress lines offer different choices in terms of how much you sink into the bed.

How responsive is the mattress is to your movements?

Along with the question of how much you like to “sink in” to a mattress is the question of how quickly the mattress regains its shape as you move around on it. Memory foam (think of that hand print that stays in the foam after the hand is removed) is a slow-response material that allows you to gently melt into the bed. But when you want to move, that hole you created doesn’t go away instantly, which you may or may not find comfortable.