Where choosing a bed is largely a matter of aesthetics, your choice of mattress can make the difference between years of blissful sleep or countless nights of tossing and turning. Inferior mattresses provide poor support for your back, inadequate cooling due to poor airflow, excessive transfer of your partner's movement and lumpiness due to early deterioration. A cheap mattress usually ends up looking like a very poor investment indeed. However, a good quality mattress should keep you sleeping comfortably for many years. Your mattress definitely isn’t the place to cut corners.

Buying a mattress online

You can browse through mattress brochures and listen to sales people, but in the end it’s best to kick off your shoes and lie down on a mattress before you buy it. If you're half of a bed-sharing couple, you should probably consider bringing along your partner as well, as a mattress can respond differently to two people, especially if one partner is considerably heavier than the other.

While testing out a mattress in person at our northwest London showroom would be ideal, we realise that some people simply live too far away for a visit. If that is the case with you, please feel free to order your mattress online using our easy-to-use Mattress section on the navigation bar at the top of screen. In order to help you choose, every mattress we sell is designated as one of three firmness ratings: Medium-firm, Firm and Extra-firm.

Knowing your options

There are three main types of mattress: Open Coil, Pocket-Sprung and Visco-Elastic (Memory Foam).

Open Coil sprung (Orthopaedic) mattresses are the most "regular" type of proper mattress. The firmer variety are more commonly known as Orthopaedic mattresses. They contain springs of about 3inch diameter, clipped together top and bottom, enclosed within a metal rod framework. This unit supports your weight. Layers of padding then cover the top and bottom of the unit so the springs cannot be felt. The precise material used does have some bearing on how firm or soft the mattress feels. The wire used in the spring is usually either 12.5 gauge found in very firm mattresses, or 13.5 gauge, which gives a softer feel.

Pocket-Sprung mattresses are generally a step up from open coil due to the method of their construction. They contain around three times as many springs as the open coil mattress. Each of these springs encased in its own cloth bag. The springs move up and down independently of each other, giving excellent support to your body contours. The whole thing is then covered with layers of padding to cushion you from feeling the springs.

Visco-Elastic is the most exciting development in mattress technology for decades. Made from ‘memory foam’, which was originally developed for NASA to reduce the effects of G-forces on astronauts, a visco-elastic mattress reacts to your body's temperature and moulds itself to your shape. Weight is distributed evenly, relieving pressure and providing exceptional comfort and support. Understandably, visco-elastic mattresses have become more and more popular in recent years.

If you'd like to know more, click here to read our special feature about Fantastic Visco Elastic.

Click here to look at our range of mattresses.