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How to Buy a Mattress
Buying a bed is like no other
purchase. Choose your bed and dealer wisely, and you’ll be happy
and comfortable for years to come. Make a poor choice, and you’ll
regret it nightly. Shopping for a mattress seems to be a difficult and
unpleasant task for many people. We thought it would be helpful to
offer a few thoughts to help make the experience a favorable one.
Obviously, the opinions expressed on this page are strictly those of Long’s.
Quality – A Little Education
is helpful:
It’s helpful to know how
the finest beds are made. Then, find one that suits your needs and
offers as many fine features as possible, within your budget. There
is comfort and quality in every price range. The trick is to find it.
Even though technology has
done much to improve our lives, it hasn’t done much for the mattress industry,
other than to improve production and contain costs. The truly finest
ones are still made by hand, from natural fibers, from the bottom of the
product to the top. The base of a good night’s sleep is what the
mattress is resting upon. So, let’s start with box springs.
Box-Springs:
The finest ones consist
of thick, circular coils, mounted on a sturdy wooden base. Then each
coil is tied to the other, by hand, in eight places. This allows
the box spring to truly be a ‘shock absorber’ for the mattress, and to
help the mattress conform to the body of each sleeper. They provide
weight-balanced support no matter where one sleeps in the bed. Also, when
two are sharing a bed, it helps to eliminate the ‘bounce’ factor, i.e.,
when one person moves the other bounces from the shock waves. Hand Tied
Box Springs (Divans) with double rows of springs and solid timber construction,
can be found on Relyon beds. Eight- way hand tied box springs can
be found in Aireloom Hand-Crafted and Long’s All Natural
models.
Other manufacturers tend
to use Torsion Bar foundations in their higher priced models. In
our opinion, torsion bar foundations cannot offer the same, gentle contouring
that a hand made one can. However, this type seems to be the appropriate
choice of the beginning and middle price levels, and many do provide some
degree of body contouring.
Mattresses – Coils Don’t
Always Count:
There is no one feature
that makes one mattress different or better than the other. The entire
product – materials, amount of materials, construction process and tailoring
methods – has to be taken into account.
The core of a mattress, and
what actually provides most of the support, is the steel innerspring unit.
It doesn’t matter how many coils it has. The overall poundage of
steel and its configuration impress us as being far more important.
Better quality lines of bedding should have more steel at the core, and
it should be configured in a way to provide weight-balanced support for
each sleeper and be able to contour to the curve of the sleeper’s body.
Then the innerspring unit, and the rest of the padding materials, can fill
in the small of the back and the back of the knees. This allows the
muscles to relax, as they don’t have to work overtime to keep the spine
straight. The result is a more restful, and peaceful night’s sleep.
“Counting coils” seems to have
become, in our opinion, a somewhat unreliable indicator of quality. According
to industry “buzz,” sales people who knew little about the product they
were selling, started talking about the number of coils in a mattress.
It sounded good, and a sales person didn’t have to have in-depth knowledge
of a product to sell it. Consumers thought it sounded authoritative,
and, word traveled fast. Englander illustrates this point better
than we can, with a very useful chart, comparing its products with some
national “S” brands:
Innerspring Units:
In our opinion, the finest
mattresses have innerspring units that require more time, effort and materials
to make, and seem to give a feeling of being totally supported and luxuriously
comfortable. We feel that, even though commercial innerspring units
provide adequate support, a Relyon Pocketed Spring unit, a fine Aireloom
innerspring unit, or Aireloom heavy weight Encased Coil unit, offers a
more restful night’s sleep.
Relyon and Aireloom Hand-Crafted use the
finest innerspring units in their beds. Each type of innerspring
unit gives each bed a unique and different feel. A fine quality unit features
plenty of steel in the coils, and each row of coils provides absolute weight-balanced
support for each sleeper, anywhere in the bed.
Heavyweight encased coil
units provide a feeling of substantial support and gentle contouring, all
at the same time. Relyon units are unsurpassed. Aireloom, for Long’s uses this type of unit in some models. These units contain twice as much steel as any other bed, and, again, contour gently at the same time. Each coil is covered in fabric, and the coils are even hand-tied
together to provide even more luxury, conformity, and durability.
Edges:
Extra reinforcement around
the perimeter of the mattress adds durability, longevity and comfort to
a mattress. A proper edge allows increases the sleeping surface from
one edge of the mattress to the other, and keeps the edge stable and free
from collapsing when someone sits on the edge of the bed. We feel
the finest edge is a bordering block of cotton, hand-sewn on the outside
for stability. These edges have withstood the test of time.
Many years later, the edge is still stable and has not collapsed.
Relyon and Aireloom Hand-Crafted feature hand-sewn
cotton sidewalls, shown below:
If a hand-sewn edge is not
feasible for a manufacturer, metal reinforced edges are a reliable choice.
Therapedic’s patented Tri-Tech edge adds an extra bar and springs of stability
around the entire perimeter of the mattress.
Englander uses an extra-heavy
border rod around the entire perimeter of the mattress, and adds extra
support in the center of the coils at the edges of the mattress.
Other manufacturer’s use
molded foams. It is our feeling that even though they provide a degree
of stability, they don’t have the flexibility to ‘give’ with the mattress
when someone tries to sleep on the edge.
Padding Materials:
We feel natural fibers are
still (even though costly for a manufacturer to use), the best filling
materials for a mattress. Fewer chemicals are used in their processing,
and natural fibers have a proven track record of being cooler in the summer
and warmer in the winter. The topping on the natural fibers, for
soft comfort, is often served best by Natural Latex foam rubber – the only
one from the rubber tree plant. Others tend to be made from petroleum
distillates. Our thought is that synthetic foams should be sparingly
used, if at all, as a comfort layer on the top. Our Relyon, Aireloom Hand-Crafted, and Long’s All Natural are upholstered in primarily
natural fibers. Englander adds cotton as well – at all levels of the line.
Tufts – the key stitch:
A fine, traditional, finishing
touch is hand-tufting throughout the mattress. Tufts are a stitch
that goes entire through the mattress to help keep the filling materials
in place for the life of the product, and to ensure proper support and
luxury. Relyon, Aireloom for Long’s, and Long’s All Natural are all hand-tufted. Tufts don’t seem to appear
in other major manufacturer’s pricier beds.
Final Assembly and Crafting – All of the fine components should be assembled and crafted into the finished
product – with an extra touch of care. Relyon, Aireloom, and Long’s All Natural are assembled in this way. Our finest
models are hand crafted; other maker’s “finest” are just assembled. In
the middle levels, Englander even wraps the filling layers around the edge
of the innerspring unit, for a touch of extra luxury.
Now that you have an idea
of what makes a fine quality bed, get ready to shop. Wear comfortable clothes
so you can feel different comfort levels.
When you start shopping:
-
Determine your comfort level.
Lie on different beds to see what type of comfort (firm, plush, pillow-top)
appeals to you. There should be a selection of all comfort levels
at every price level.
-
Ask how it’s made; ask to see
models (or buns). Ask what makes one bed more expensive than the
other. Is there more true quality to justify the additional cost
or just more profit for the manufacturer. Expect knowledgeable answers.
-
Ask about delivery procedure
and service; ask about the store’s right to substitute another make or
model without your knowledge or consent. Obviously substitutes never
happen at Long’s.
-
Ask about comfort guarantees.
What happens to beds that a customer has tried for a week, two weeks, a
month or two months? It’s against most local health codes to ever
deliver a bed as new that was returned by another customer. Ask lots
of questions, and be sure you’re satisfied with the answers. It’s not a
problem at Long’s. We respect our customers and only deliver factory
fresh products, in factory sealed packing. The bed is not unwrapped
until it reaches the customer’s home.
-
Is it a true sale price or marked
up to be marked down?
-
If the price suddenly drops,
as you get ready to walk, ask “which way out?”
-
Ask about model names. Many
major manufacturers give the same bed different names for every store.
Makes comparison-shopping difficult, and some sales people tend to make
‘mistakes’ when asked about the names and quality levels of their beds.
A manufacturer like Aireloom does make different models. Each model
name represents a completely different bed. Each model bed has only
one name. If that model and name aren’t in another store, they don’t
have it. Period.
-
Ask about warranty issues.
Some manufacturers will offer a 10-year warranty on a bed designed to last
4 or 5 years. In the entire industry, warranties cover defects that
occur at the time of manufacture. If a spring pops out of the mattress
that’s a defect. If the mattress starts to sag and lose its comfort
after 10 years, that’s “normal wear and tear.” In the event there
is a problem, will the retailer handle it for you? Or are you on
your own to fight with a distant company? At Long’s, we’ll take care
of it for you.
-
Beware of commission-driven
sales people. Does the sales person truly care about your satisfaction,
comfort, budget, and particular needs, or does he/she just care about the
extra commission they’ll receive for selling a particular product or model?
At Long’s, we’re a team. No one works on commission.
Or, shop at Long’s.
We’ve done all the work for you. We try to have the best of the industry,
at any given time. It’s only at Long’s if it meets our quality and value
standards. We’ll answer all of your questions, to the best
of our ability, to help you choose the right mattress for you; deliver
exactly what you’ve chosen in a timely, efficient manner, and take care
of any problems that might arise in the process. The difference is: We
Care. Period. We know that a happy customer is our best recommendation. |
