How hot you sleep: If you’re a sweaty sleeper, consider a latex or hybrid mattress. Both offer more airflow than memory foam, which tends to trap heat. That said, cooling features can help, too; some memory foam mattresses use gel infusions or phase-change fabrics that are designed to pull heat away from the body.
Bed sharing: If you or your sleeping partner toss and turn, proper motion isolation should be at the top of your wish list. Memory foam absorbs movement well, so sleeping partners won’t disturb each other. Pocketed coils have a bit more bounce without wiggling the entire mattress. Innerspring, on the other hand, tends to be the bounciest of the bunch. And then there’s firmness: If you and your partner disagree on this crucial mattress characteristic, a split or adjustable mattress may work best.
Hybrid
Traditional coil mattresses have evolved into hybrids, which is what you will likely encounter on today’s mattress market (aside from latex and foam options). Hybrid mattresses are highly customizable, allowing you to pick and choose what you want in your bed, whether that’s a combination of foam and coils, latex and coils, or even a mix of the three. Many mattress reviews will use the phrase “best of both worlds” to describe hybrids, as this mattress lets you sample the design aspects of the materials involved. You can get the pressure relief you need from memory foam or latex on top, but ample support from the coil core (not to mention the aforementioned responsiveness from coil inclusion).
Speaking of coils and harking back to traditional mattress design, the type of coil used in hybrid mattresses matters too, as it improves upon the design of the Bonnell coil. The keywords to look for are “pocketed coils” or “individually wrapped coils,” which make up the main support mechanism of a mattress. Instead of being interconnected, each coil stays in its own lane (pocket, really) and will compress uninhibited by the other coils around it. In other words, where there is more weight, the bed will feel firmer.
This is especially applicable for areas where body weight is centralized when you’re lying down, particularly around the hips and shoulders. Pocketed coils are also meant to outperform traditional ones in the motion isolation arena, meaning that when you move around, the individual coil takes the heat motion-wise and stops the bed from reenacting a small earthquake. With the interconnectivity of traditional coils, it doesn’t take much for the feeling of movement to travel along the entire surface of the bed.
Fun fact: You do not need a box spring with a hybrid mattress. This is a recurring question I see, and pocketed coils in hybrids eliminate the need for one. Box springs were designed to give more support and elevate performance to traditional coil beds, which would align certain sections of coils to yield more support. Nowadays, you may actually void your warranty if you use a box spring with a hybrid mattress—be sure to check that fine print.
Our favorite hybrid we’ve tested is the Helix Midnight Luxe, which happens to be our top overall pick in our Best Mattresses guide. It also utilizes pressure-relieving foams and pocketed coils to provide targeted lumbar support.
Helix Sleep
Midnight Luxe with ErgoAlign
Another awesome hybrid mattress, the Nolah Evolution, seamlessly puts together some superb memory foam and pocketed coils, both of which counteract tension buildup for pressure points. I love it as an option for side sleepers for this reason, but it also works for back and stomach sleepers. The coils also make it easy to move around on, which is helpful for co-sleepers.
Innerspring
This is as much a history lesson as a type of mattress you want to shop for. “Traditional” innerspring mattresses are the firm-feeling beds you probably have early memories of, given that the makeup is just innerspring coils wrapped in a cover. It’s just as squeaky as you probably remember, too, as the coil type used involves connecting every coil so they work as one unit.
These are Bonnell coils, and they connect both laterally and vertically. When you lie down, and your weight is pressed into the mattress, all those coils act as “one for all and all for one” and simultaneously compress. It’s not going to work wonders for pressure relief like modern hybrids will, but it is highly responsive, which means it’ll pop back into its original shape as you move around. So if you’re a sleeper who moves around between sleeping positions, coils are a good feature to have, so you’re getting near-instantaneous support.