The bed of your dreams ... or a king sized rip-off ?
A new breed of high-tech mattress costing up to £18,000 promises the perfect night’s sleep. So will one be . . .
HIgh-eNd hotels have increasingly been reporting mattress theft — a surprising, not to mention bulky target, you might think, were it not for the fact that some are now as much a status symbol as sports cars and designer clothes.
Think luxury bedding means four posters and silk sheets? Think again. A new breed of high-tech luxury mattresses offer everything from temperature control to sleep trackers and specialist medical support. Costing as much as £18,000, they’re certainly not a steal . . .
ASTRONAUT COOL
Octasmart Hybrid Deluxe King Size Mattress, Dormeo, £749, argos.co.uk
NOT all smart mattresses need an app (or a second mortgage). dormeo’s triple-layered octasmart deluxe Mattress claims to keep users three degrees cooler for a ‘deeper, longer sleep’ thanks to the airflow ventilation system built into its memory foam — a type of polyurethane material developed in the 70s as a padding for astronauts’ seats to help NASA space travel.
Memory foam slowly assumes the shape of its user to provide comfort, but can feel hot to lie on, hence the need for ventilation. Like most on the market, the octasmart is a hybrid mattress — it contains both foam and springs. ‘We know from market research a hybrid is the most popular type of product in the UK,’ says Simon Williams of The Sleep Council, an independent advisory organisation.
CHOOSE FIRM OR SOFT
Sleep Number 360 i10 Smart Bed, king size, £3,911, sleepnumber.com
The Sleep Number 360 i10 Smart Bed doesn’t just allow couples different mattress firmness — you can also change the firmness of your own side from one night to the next, thanks to a pump to inflate or deflate the mattress according to the ‘sleep number’ setting you control via a phone app.
It also senses your movements and adjusts the firmness accordingly. Sensors deliver a personalised sleep report on the quality of your shut-eye on your smartphone screen every morning, which has pros and cons, says Williams: ‘There is a thought that the more people start tracking their sleep the more they start worrying about their sleep.’
TAILORED LUXURY
The Ultimate Collection Cashmere Pocket Spring Zip Link Mattress, king size, £14,000, johnlewis.com
AT £14,000 for a king size — £18,000 for an emperor — the John Lewis Ultimate Collection Cashmere Pocket Spring Zip Link Mattress is not for those who lie awake worrying about money.
The bed contains a whopping 32,000 pocket springs, considerably more than the average bed containing around 1,000 pocket springs. The cashmere — ethically sourced from Angora goats — helps regulate body temperature, while the zip link attaching the mattress in the middle stops irritating clashes with your partner.
The beauty is that if you have a couple with a large difference in weight and shape, each almost has their own individual bed.
HEATED BY WATER
Mattress Bed, The Pod by Eight Sleep, from £1,496, eightsleep.com
NOT so much mattress as a plumbing masterpiece, the quadruple-layered foam mattress on The Pod is heated by water fed from a pump into an ‘active grid’ of pipes inside.
The temperature, controlled on your smartphone via Bluetooth, allows you and your partner to take charge of your own side’s heating between 13c and 46c — so no more scrapping over the duvet.
Clever enough to assess the best temperature for the bed based on your body temperature as you sleep, the mattress also contains a ‘thermal alarm’ that wakes you by cooling you down in the morning.
It comes with an app that connects to your phone to monitor your sleep phases to see how much shut-eye you’re getting, as well as options to connect the mattress to lights and a coffee maker.
EWE WILL BE AMAZED!
Magnificence Mattress, king size, £10,375.00, andsotobed.co.uk
BRITISH company Vispring — whose beds were used for the firstclass cabins in the Titanic and now grace London’s Savoy suites — uses Shetland Isle wool in its mattresses. The animals roam free and feed only on seaweed and other grasses, causing them to develop very heavy coats. (At least four fleecesworth are used in an average Vispring mattress). horsetail and cashmere are also used.
Two layers of steel springs are arranged for maximum support and the sides of the mattress are hand-sewn to negate the need for harsh metal rods at the edge.
SLEEP LIKE ROYALTY
2000T king size mattress, £16,000, hastens.com
SWEDISH company hastens (supplier to the Swedish royal family) breeds horses to fill its mattresses with horsehair — as horsehair is hollow (unlike human hair), it acts as a tiny tube to wick moisture from the body naturally. The salesman we spoke to also told us the 2000T king size mattress has 38 layers.
Its trademark blue-and-white check mattresses are quilted in a diamond pattern to cushion the body’s movements in bed.
Alternatively, the firm’s built-toorder Vividus bed, with a slowgrown pine frame, box spring base and steel springs — is a budgetbusting £100,000.
GET IN THE ZONE
The Shine Advanced, king size, £1,999, mammothcomfort.com
The designers at Mammoth spent ten years perfecting a mattress in conjunction with the British osteopathic Association.
The Mammoth Shine Advanced contains a ‘seven-point support system’ using foam to make the head and neck, shoulders, body, posterior and hips, knees and feet areas firmer to reduce aches and pains. This kind of support is called ‘zoning’.
Is it worth the extra expense? ‘It certainly provides targeted support,’ Williams says, But, he adds, the widely held assumption that firm mattresses are good for bad backs is ‘not necessarily true’, adding ‘it’s about individual support to keep the spine in correct alignment.’
POWERED BY CRYSTALS
IGEL Pegasus Mattress Steel, king size, £1,049.99, bensonsforbeds.co.uk
The igel Pegasus contains ‘phase change crystals’ that claim to absorb excess heat when you’re too hot and release stored heat when you’re too cold. But how?
When the gel particles react to body heat they turn to liquid, getting cooler. The Pegasus crystals are clustered around areas of body pressure, and in addition to memory foam, the mattress contains 1,800 pocket springs for additional support.