Need a new mattress (and whole new bed, actually), and wondered which retailer may be best for range of product, quality of product and value for money.
Obviously referring to the nationals here, e.g., Ikea, Dreams and so on.
Makes sense, I reckon, to get it from the same place I get the bed.

There have been half-hearted visits to some of the stores and websites, but quite often whilst playing the role of consumer, I just lose the will to live.
I must have an innate need to revert back to 'old-fashioned man', when I would go out and kill things, chop 'em up and fashion the bits into something more suitable for my requirements.

Any experienced viewpoints welcomed, thanks.

I went to a well known mattress retailer to scope out a new mattress. its been a while and mattress technology seems to have moved on and it was completely baffling. Anyway, found one i liked in said shop (pocket-sprung no less) but figured (because it was a big retailer like sleepeeze/slumberland) that there must be the same, cheaper, online. The salesman claimed that this mattress was made uniquely for this particular retailer but I found that hard to believe.

Had a peruse on t'interweb and found an identical spec mattress under a different name for 30% of the price in the shop. promptly bought it, arrived 3 weeks later and was exactly the same.

My advice? Have a test in a shop and figure out what you want. If you are willing to spend the time/effort shopping online then you can save a fair whack of money.

I am a bed and mattress retailer. And My advice is to go to a good local independant retailer and try some mattresses out and get advice from the retailer. The mattress is the most important part of the bed and is where your money should be spent. If you have seen a similar or the same mattress online, mention it to the retailer and he should match or better the price, I would. http://www.bed-post.co.uk

gents

thank you for your advice. Much appreciated.

Slowuphill: were I more local to you I'd be popping in for a chat, but it's not very convenient.

I'll wait until my holidays are over, then it'll be a few wee bouncy-bouncy tests around town.

cheers

We went through selecting a new mattress a couple of years ago. We found the best was John Lewis. Good staff, good range of products and competitive prices if not absolutely the cheapest. They have a good online shop as well

Bought as online from matteress man I think. Looked at reviews had a budget and got one delivered the next day for a fraction of the price in store. Sure it was £300 instead of £1200. Cracking matteress too.

had a look at both websites – thanks for the suggestion.

I might be wrong here, but it seems there's an industry standard in terms of sizing. However, compared to the example of a Swedish multinational brand, they are out on their own, meaning that if one were to buy a bed frame from them the only mattresses that would fit would also have to be from their stock, and vice versa. Is this correct?

Ikea beds are pretty much known for slightly off sizing yes.

I'm in the same quandry at the moment. Trying to find out what's a decent brand and whether it's worth an extra £150 for the next model up or not is very hard work. So much so that I've given up trying and we're still sleeping on two singles pushed together! All the bed sales people try to sell you a pocket spring, memory foam mattress (sure enough thats what we were looking at anyway) but then comparing one to another between shops is nigh on impossible, and the inability to return the mattress means you could buy one for £1000 and find in 3 weeks the initial comfort feeling actually gives you a bad back, or you can't get it up the stairs. HATE shopping at the best of times, but for a bed it's the worst. Try one mattress in one shop, go to another and you forget what the first felt like. GrRRRRR

Currently looking at a highgrove grace (1500 IIRC) or a per dormire all-foam cashmere in superking, but sold at two different shops and for very different prices. Highgrove are sold by one company, perdormire are a completely different foreign company that virtually no shops I've spoken to have heard of so no idea on their warranty status or quality.

🙁

But the local independants are FAR cheaper than the big chains.

Highgrove mattresses can be bought on the web. I bought an Affinity about two months ago for about £330 and so far I am very impressed. 2000 springs and traditional fillings – seems well made. Much better than the memory foam mattress we had before. I get up in the morning with no back pain now.

If you get a double sided one, don't forget to rotate and turn it to extend its life. It should last a lot longer than a single-sided one.

Was gonna suggest John Lewis too, at least as a start point for comparison – we actually wound up buying ours from a competing department store down 'ere in surrey during the end-of-summerish sales (IIRC)…it *was* a bit on the expensive side, but pretty damn good. (VI-Spring, fwiw..)

John Lewis are good at everything they do as a rule, but often stuff is made as a slightly different model so their price match rules can be worked around.

You can haggle at Sleepmasters…

More spam revival. Would it be possible to block new users from reviving months old threads?

First of all in answer to nickjb. People search forums for advice. So it may not be any help to the person who started the thread a year ago, for for anyone else who needs similar advice, then newer posts can be a great help.

Now on to the main question: Someone said that there is a lot of new technology in beds. Well this is partly true if you consider things like memory foam. However most of the so called new technology is actually just a load of sales gimmicks, or ways to make construction cheaper.

I could go on for pages and pages, but instead it would be easier for people to go to this mattress advice site (it doesn’t contain any links, and isn’t trying to sell anything): http://www.mattressadvice.co.uk