Little mattress rant (i have a suggestion if you want to skip to the bottom)...

In Canada, no two different chain sells the same mattress. So Sleep Country might sell the Sealy xNight 3487 while MattressMart sells the Sealy Cloud 4.3. The specs are always slightly different. It makes comparison shopping impossible, it is clearly intentional, and I can't believe its legal.

In Hong Kong, within department stores, each brand is sold by its own sales staff. So when you get to the mattress floor, there's a billion sales people (which isn't unusual in HK) and they each have 3 or so mattress for you to try out...they don't know/wont' tell you anything about any other mattress. They aren't interested in helping you find the best mattress in the huge choice, they are interested in selling you one of their mattress.

Someone needs to break the Mattress Cartel and its diabolic ways!

As for suggestions, my last mattress was an all-latex mattress. It was more expensive, but I loved it. Unlike those foam mattress which are (a) hot and (b) feel like ur sinking, these feel a lot more like a normal mattress with a couple key points. The most important being that they are [supposedly] more dust-mite resistant and they last much longer..so in 4 years you don't start to feel a spring (because their is no springs!) and the thing still has its original shape, more or less.

edit:

Also worth pointing out that you can negotiate the hell out of this...especially if you go to a national chain. Their markup has got to be over 50%...The mattress I speak of was priced at something like $3800CAD and I think we got it down to $1650 with some extra covers or pillows or something....and I still felt like there was room to go.

I don't think expensive mattresses are worth the cost. I am from USA but spent 10 years in India sleeping on the ground with a blanket for cushioning. 1/3 of your time is sleeping, but 90% of the world sleeps on simple bedding. The mattress industry IMHO is a big fraud, like so many things in the USA. Selling non-necessities as if they are necessities. I have a $180 8" memory foam mattress from Walmart which I think is great.

It depends a lot on your sleep position. A lot of the more complicated foam/latex mattresses have different zones, so e.g. your protruding shoulder and hip bones can sink in deeper in the softer material at that position. Now, if you're not sleeping on your side, you might not need material with a huge difference in softness. Never mind your general body shape or weight (mattresses come in different degrees of hardness).

If you're a side sleeper, healthy and fit, don't toss about too much, buy a reasonably expensive foam mattress. In the tests I've seen, the mid-range/expensive IKEA mattresses usually get C to B- marks. Which is a lot better than the average... (And at least where I live they have a great return policy, so it's easy to get something and sleep on it for a month)

If it's not too expensive for your health plan, consulting a doctor might be a good idea. They usually know their stuff a lot better than your usual mattress salespeople.

Which reminds me: Do a bit of research before buying the more exotic systems. As with anything related to health (and especially back pain), this field is ripe with quacks and snakeoil.

I bought a tempur-pedic earlier this year and I have to say it's the best sleep I've ever had. I used to toss and turn during the night and I usually had back pain in the mornings, but not with the tempur-pedic. I get uninterrupted sleep and no morning back pain.

My previous mattresses were decent spring types and they were comfortable, but nothing compared to the tempur-pedic.

I have chronic back pain (torn muscles, annual lumbar tear, now bulging, etc). It worked great for several years, but, for some with back pain a more stiff matress (or a very light foam cover on the floor) seems to be the most beneficial. This is what I am transitioning too.

Also, Tempure Pedics (and most foams) tend to retain heat, person dependant, a lot. So much that I'll wake in hot-sweats and uncomfortable. I am now also seeking alternatives because 1) Tempur is too hot, 2) Tempur has become too soft for my needs.

A foam "cover" on the floor is working much better at the moment.

Also in the interim, for cooling down the foam, I have ordered: http://coolingmattress.com/ from Amazon to give that a whirl.

Tempurpedic. With that said let me add my story.

I'm a 30 year old male, and consider myself in good shape. We had a generic $600 mattress before we got our expensive tempurpedic and I had constant back pain after a few years of sleeping on it, often times I found myself waking up at 2-3AM to head down to our couch for the rest of the night because my back hurt so much. The nights I did make it through the night in the bed I could barely walk in the morning because my back was so far out of alignment.

In comes the Tempurpedic and pillows... After the first nights sleep on the new bed %90 of the pain was gone.. by the second night I felt like a new person, no pain to be found. Since then I have yet to have any back pain.

The tempurpedic's are expensive, but when you consider what most people spend on a car relative to what they spend on a bed they are nothing, and besides they improve quality of life far more then any car could. You only get one set of joints and muscles in your life, treat them right.

Though I dumped on a earlier comment above http://goo.gl/5GeaM on the Tempur Pedic, it did serve me very well the last 7 years when I first purchased it. Thats 7 years of brilliant sleep, and worth the money.

I got a relatively hard foam mattress after I realized that I needed better support for my back (I won't get into how I found that out).

As far as I can tell, it's the best mattress that I've ever slept on. It's hard enough so that it doesn't bend inwards when I put my weight on it, and that keeps my spine straight when I sleep sideways. I tried "memory foam" at the store, but it didn't really seem like it work for that purpose.

The foam mattress has to be hard enough so it supports you without "caving in" too much, yet sufficiently soft so that it doesn't hurt you. The ideal hardness (for me) falls somewhere in the spectrum between a Japanese tatami mat (too hard) and a big sponge (too soft).

How about no mattress: http://www.zafu.net/sleepergonomics.html

Nice article! Will try this.

You should try them out. When I bought myself one I lay for a couple of minutes on each of 4 models to see if it's comfy for me.

But don't buy too soft mattress. It could seem really cool at first time but your back will hurt like hell next morning. Beside it's more healthy to sleep on a hard mattress.

Anyway all of mattresses I saw are two sided. One side is little softer then other. Test the harder side at the store (it should be comfy for you) and if after several nights your back will hurt - flip to the soft side. You need to sleep a several nights on the mattress as your back needs a time to get used to it.

Warning though: laying on a mattress for a few minutes in a shop != sleeping well on it all night for months.

Tempurpedic all the way. We've had one for 8 years, and it's the only mattress my wife, who has a chronic back condition, sleeps well on.

Your choice of pillow is important as well, and Tempurpedic's pillow is also top notch. Also, a lot cheaper than the mattress, if you want to start there.

Ergonomics of Sleep: Sweet Dreams on a Hard Surface at www.zafu.net/sleepergonomics.html Profound experience and research debunking the bedding industry's sales gimmics. I am the author of the article. I designed a firm sleep surface with slatted platform frame and organic kapok/wool futon. Also contains infrar red calming effect. Trying to get back to simple and introduce the idea that the body benefits from resistance (in this case, something reletively firm like we had before modern bedding.) Also regulates body temp and respiration better than any other material I could find.

I think foam is the way to go. It's especially great if there are two people in the bed, since it doesn't bounce/move as much, so you don't disturb each other.

I sleep on this: http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Innovations-12-inch-Memory-Mattr...

Very happy with it. I don't believe there's anything special about a Tempur-Pedic to warrant the ridiculous price tag. Something like this mattress is much, much cheaper, and in my opinion just s good.

I just sleep on the floor. It's cheap and works just fine. I find that exercise helps the quality of my sleep more than anything else.

Ikea has pretty good guides about how to choose a mattress in their shops. (ie. it depends a lot on your body weight, etc.)

W hotel beds are sweet. When I found out you can buy them I was really excited, but then decided to pass on a $1000(ish) mattress...its a recession. My girlfriend told me ruelala was selling them yesterday for 7-800. I would seriously consider investigating these beds if you are in the market.

Buy a stiff spring mattress then put a thick memory foam topper on it. You won't notice the difference between it and the $3k+ Tempurpedic mattresses and you'll spend a lot less.

The Dux bed costs a fortune, and is worth every penny.

http://www.duxiana.com/

I have a VERY difficult time believing that a person owning a Dux bed gets better sleep than a farmer sleeping on some blankets in some corner of the world. Lets face it, if you have money, someone will figure out a way to take it from you and put a smile on your face. Another so called necessity.