Mattress Troubleshooting
Avoid the Two Most Common Mattress Issues

In thousands of owner reviews on GoodBed, the most common durability complaints about mattresses are sagging and body impressions.

Although these are two different problems, consumers sometimes confuse them. Figuring out which problem you have leads to alleviating them.

Solving Sagging in the Center  

When we talk about a mattress sagging, we're talking about the whole mattress sinking down in the middle. This is most likely to happen with queen size and larger beds.

In this case, it's usually a foundation issue rather than a problem with the mattress. For today's heavy mattresses, you need a bed frame that has support in the center of the bed, generally a bar down the middle of the frame that has at least one (and preferably more than one) leg supporting it from the floor. This will support the center of your mattress and alleviate sagging.

Above is an example of a metal frame. Other supportive foundations include box foundations (made of a framed box of wood), slatted frames, platform beds, etc. Basically, what you DON'T want is that type of older metal frame that has only four rails along the sides but no support in the center.

Preventing Body Impressions

Mattresses are meant to spring right back into shape once you get out of bed. But over time, mattresses can begin to hold the shape of your body, usually in the hip area since that's most people's heaviest part. The mattress padding and top layers compress but fail to spring back to shape, creating permanent body impressions. Some call them dents, sinkholes, craters, or just holes. You'll know it when you feel it -- you'll feel your body rolling towards the low spot in the mattress.

This is a problem that definitely should not happen in the first 30 days of owning a mattress, and if it does, it could be a sign that there is a flaw in the mattress. But within the first year, it's not outside the norm for certain types of mattresses with a lot of padding (and particularly if the padding material is of a lower quality) to develop body impressions. 

The way to combat body impressions is to be diligent about rotating your mattress. No-flip mattresses are typically the ones with padding on one side, and so those cannot be flipped. But they can be rotated a half-turn every 3 months in the first year and every 6 months after that. Because partners are often of different weights and because the upper body weighs less than the lower body, rotating your mattress regularly will stave off the development of impressions that form when the weight of the body compacts those layers of padding in the same exact spot over time. 

If you're reading this and it's too late -- your mattress has already developed body impressions that don't go away even if you rotate the bed, you might be able to make a warranty claim if the indentations are deep enough. See our Warranty Guide.