The one question I wanted answered, how good is the sex on a mattress this big.
Nobody talks of how foam mattresses change the dynamics of sex. Gone is the nice bounce back from the coils. Instead you get the firm motion deadening of the foam. Participants expecting to find that extra spring in their step find they have to provide their own bounce. I hope your muscles are up for it.
I personally don't having sex on a foam mattress. I think those seeking a foam mattress should consider keeping around a spare coiled sex bed. Call it your guest bed if so inclined. It will be there for you, providing that extra spring you may be missing from you foam mattress.
Before I ever had sex I used to research all kinds of things that might affect how the sex is, including the mattress. Now, married these last 15 years, I can say with confidence that the mattress is one of the least important factors. We're adaptable to just about any soft and spacious surface.
I’ve had the opposite experience as I wouldn’t have guessed beforehand how much the right environment would benefit us. Similar quantity of experience. It’s fun to make your home work better for you.
FWIW I have found latex beds to be the absolute sweet spot between foam and spring. You don’t sink into latex as deeply as foam, it’s much less pronounced (and much more comfortable, in my experience).
The bounce is also not QUITE spring levels but I’d say 85% which I find to be a reasonable compromise.
I’m with you on this 100%. Had a latex mattress for four years and loved it. Adopted a barely-used memory foam mattress from a friend when I moved out west and now I’m struggling with thoracic kyphosis and neck pain. I have a large frame and have been bodybuilding for almost a decade, so I really need a mattress that pushes back. Saving up for my next latex mattress but maybe I should build my own?
FWIW I went with a pure latex mattress. Nothing super fancy, I think around $700 out the door. I just made sure it was free of specific chemicals that I can’t remember offhand but research said might be important.
No need to buy layers and such I say go full latex.
Huh. My mattress made me sore until I resumed (after a decade hiatus) lifting weights. I used to use all sorts of weird pillow designs, a special one for my knees, another for my upper arm, etc. Then I just stopped needing that stuff.
I’d agree here. I found the surface rather easier to maneuver around. It’s like it improves agility. Yet it’s soft and doesn’t push back like coils do.
Foam I feel I just feel I sink into a divot and have to lift myself out before moving side to side. Which reduces agility. That feeling is compounded with another body.
Even when agility isn’t the main goal, it’s like you have to work twice as hard with foam and maybe 80% as hard with latex; as compared to coils.
This same sinking/floating type feelings also is the big contributor to why foam is feels so hot to me. It absorbs my heat then engulfs me in it.
> I personally don't having sex on a foam mattress
I'm sorry but you personally don't what on a foam mattress? You left out like the most important word of all of your comment. Don't mind, don't like, don't love, don't prefer?
One of the (many) things that led me to getting a referral about possibly having ADHD was noticing that my hackernews comments are absolutely riddled with missing words, missing sentences etc. On hacker news that isn't so bad, but when writing in a formal context it is pretty annoying looking like a moron for forgetting a preposition or whatever.
Recently, I even wrote "buy" instead of "by"! Crazy times
missing words or mistyping words is more symptomatic of dyslexia then ADHD isnt it? I have some form of dyslexia but i believe its a spectrum disorder and mine is workable so ive never considered medication for it
I don't think eliding words or automatically substituting homophones is a symptom of any disorder, just very common for 'good' typists - good in the sense you don't have to think about the mechanical action of typing or spelling, in the sense you've reducing[1] typing to a sub/unconscious activity.
It's just something occasionally goes wrong with the thought -> word pipeline buffering in the one case. I find the homophone substitution more interesting - I would never, ever make the mistake writing, or if I was paying attention to what I type (I find it happens even more commonly if I'm not paying attention to the window I'm typing on), at some level it seems that the unconscious word-to-keyboard process 'hears' and transcribes somewhat phonetically in a way totally disconnected from my conscious thought process. I find it fascinating I can 'visualize' the spelling of and think a word like, I don't know, 'bare', but my hands, as if completely independent, type out 'bear.'
Another piece is that, if someone talks to me while I am typing, sometimes words from our conversation creep into the text.
Interestingly, I find these mistakes are more common when I am taking stimulants (caffeine) than when I am not.
[1] This is another common mistake I've noticed. I am quite certain I thought 'reduced', but 'reducing' came out anyway. I think this is usually due to me changing the grammatical structure of the sentence midstream; I probably originally thought "you're reducing" instead of "you've reduced", but I typed faster than the thought completed. Maybe this says something about my intellectual capacity. :)
ive noticed all(?) of the things you describe here and i find it interesting to see them put into words like that. Curious that you notice that caffeine has an effect too. Something ive never considered before.
also, i tend to agree with your conclusion, i think what i described are normal human errors, not necessarily signs of dyslexia.
Apparently I'm going to find out next week. I've been meaning to start a blog (but not started, see the trend?) for a while, so that might be something to record and compare in a year's time.
I also find myself making these homophone errors or complete word omissions. It has only started happening since I turned 30. As you say, I seem to have zero awareness of them as they are occurring.
I think it is an advanced state of distraction that causes it, a brain unable to really care about anything until the next dopamine hit.
Even outside of that I don't see how people like foam and super soft mattresses. I find them extremely uncomfortable. Even just rolling over takes a significant amount of effort and they always give me horrible back pain which is something I otherwise never have.
Not all foam is created equal. If you find it hard to roll over, it's probably (in my experience) some fairly high component of memory foam. Latex, on the other hand, is fairly springy and very similar to the traditional beds I used to have, primarily Posturpedic.
There are a lot of foam bed options out there these days, so you have lots of choice. Unfortunately, the composition of them is often not really spoken about, you really have to dig to find them.
FYI: A "memory foam" mattress only tends to have a little memory foam in it.
Most mattresses tend to be a high density foam base (~5"), a lower density foam on top of that (2-3"), and the memory foam or whatnot on top of that (another 2-4"). The more expensive latex beds IIRC are all or mostly latex, but most of the <$1K mattresses are largely high density foam.
~10 years ago I had a memory foam mattress that was comfortable to sleep in, particularly once it had warmed up for a few hours and was easier to move in. I tend to move a lot when I sleep, rolling over regularly. But for sex it was fairly annoying.
I swapped it after a couple years for a new bed, I ended up doing a bunch of research and selected a Leesa, because it seemed to be one of the few that had a latex-like top layer. As I mentioned previously, finding the composition to compare mattresses was fairly hard, the vendors don't really seem to talk about it (circa 7 years ago). On top of that I put a 3" latex topper, because my wife wanted something softer.
The latex foam is not as soft as you're imagining it. It's pretty firm. The buckling gel buckles but it's form fitting. It's hard to describe accurately but it does not feel like memory foam. I used medium-hard foam and sleeping on that combo feels like something that is supportive but also happens to contour to your body correctly.
Just spent 3 nights sleeping on one in a hotel and it confirmed my tester impressions when mattress shopping that it would lead to a bad nights sleep. I'm sure there are maybe some wonderful to sleep on foam mattresses but they all seem spongy and hot to me and those are the last things I want in a mattress.
Keep in mind that memory foam and latex foam are very different from each other. Since I sleep "hot" I don't like memory foam at all, but Talalay latex suits me fine.
I’ve found it depends on the position mainly. The more you thrust vertically (cowgirl, etc), the less satisfying due to less bounce. On the other hand, foam is better for digging in for horizontal thrusting (doggy, missionary).
This is why about 65% say foam is worse for sex than springs, while ~35% say it’s the same or even better.
That said, I just prefer foam for sleeping. Much more comfortable and I wake up feeling more refreshed with no back pain. We keep a separate guest spring mattress bed for sex (and obviously guests). We bought it a year ago and our sex life has never been better but ymmv!
if we're talking about knees on the mattress, I'd say it's still worse... the more cushioning the more the blood flow is restricted, the faster you'll get weak and shaky knees. Just like a too cushioned bike saddle is bad for you crotch area.
This is certainly not as squishy as most foam mattresses, it's not memory foam, the materials are pretty bouncy. Plus the buckling gel allows you to have good on-the-fly form fitted gripping locations. So to keep this HN appropriate, I'll just say no complaints here!
I don't find this a problem on foam mattress that aren't overly plush. On the other hand, I find that spring mattresses will occasionally have an undesirable wavelength that isn't conducive to sex.
As an entirely subjective point - I went from fully sprung, to a Tempur (all foam) and both had benefits and both weren't 'right'
Currently have a 'Simba' (Just one of the UK's many internet mattress brands) which has coil+foam - https://simbasleep.com/products/mattress and think it gives the best of both worlds.
Sorry, I now realize this sounds like an advert - but I'm fascinated how 'online mattresses' have become 'a thing'
Previous online examples (say amazon with books) were just higlighting that online can provide the same item you could checkout offline, for less.
Mattresses should be an item you have to check out in person - but due to the outrageous markups, people will now happily buy sight-unseen online.
Not only that, but traditional mattress shops still use some of the highest pressure sales tactics I've experienced. It only takes once to make you never want to set foot in one again.
It's interesting how entire industries take on a personality. Like, there's plenty of competition or seems to be, and yet pretty much any mattress store you go into feels the same. And if I take my car to a body shop, pretty much any body shop, I almost feel like I need to call the police.
I actually recently bought a mattress at a local shop for my son, and it was one of the nicest shopping experiences I've had. He kept trying to guide me to the cheaper options because that's all a kid needs.
He also had a bunch of religious stuff around, so I think he felt it was part of his Christian mission to give people fair treatment. Either way, next time I need a mattress I will go there.
I was honestly concerned about whether I'd like the materials in person but I definitely passed out on it in various stages of construction to confirm I was going in the right direction.
Nowadays you probably have a friend or two who's ordered an online mattress you can try out.
I wonder if it's actually better to buy online. Firstly you get something you've researched, not something the salesman pressured you into buying by claiming it's the mattress they have at home as well. Secondly, most people end up buying too soft beds, because it feels nicer when laying down and testing for a minute or two compared to a firmer mattress. Avoid that online.
Really, though? I feel like part of the whole scam with online mattresses is that the review sites where people think they're conducting all this independent "research" are mostly in on the racket, getting freebies and kickbacks and taking payment for top recommendation spot, etc— Fast Company had a big expose on this a few years ago, but they're far from the only ones who have tried to blow the door off it:
I checked out a Temperpedic at a mattress store and liked it, but didn't like the $3-4K price tag. After checking on Amazon, I bought this one, figuring that for less than $300, if I hated it and bought the $3K mattress, an extra $300 isn't important:
My partner and I lost a good chunk of our clothes and lots of time to a cheap $300 mattress. The fiberglass in the firesock leaked, and the first symptom was a very itchy running t-shirt. It took us almost a week to figure out what was going on. The tiny fibers are essentially impossible to remove, and very hard to see unless you know what to look for.
I went and checked out mattresses at our local "Mattress Firm" chain of stores. They mostly had traditional mattresses like the "Simmons Beautyrest Achiever Firm" that I was replacing. I bought it in 2001 (please don't judge me) with a bonus check and felt pretty cool spending over a thousand dollars on a mattress after years of $50 futons.
I ended up taking a chance and went with an online purchase Leesa Hybrid [1] mattress that combines foam and pocket springs. I am mainly a side sleeper and the mattress feels really, really good. In fact, I think I might take a nap right now!
I really wasn't keen on the idea of buying a mattress without testing it, but then the more I thought about it the more I realised that spending a few minutes on it in a showroom is not even remotely indicative as to what a whole night would be like.
I caved and purchased a Nectar mattress (I'm also in the UK), mostly because you got a year's (!) money back guarantee. Best choice I ever made - it highlighted how poor my old mattress was and I never needed to use the guarantee.
My Simba pillow - essentially made from mattress offcuts - has collapsed quite a lot in around 6 months. It's fine for now but I worry about the future. On the other hand, the throw is lovely.
1. Stretch your arms out to their full wingspan and then have someone draw four straight lines around you to the smallest area possible. What shape do you get?
2. It is quite common for beds to be occupied by two people simultaneously.
Speaking of that, where do you get sheets for this thing? I don't see that mentioned in either article. I suppose they ought to be a bit easier to custom manufacture than the mattress itself.
I was wondering the same thing, it's in the original article:
> I ordered a custom-sized bamboo bed set from Advanced Bedding. Their website had a form where I could just fill in the dimensions so it seemed like it would be the only purchase that didn't involve any human interaction, but they called to confirm anyway as the numbers were "unusual."
Swirl it around with your hands (make sure you wear gloves, laundry detergent usually has bleach in it) and make sure at some point every part of the blanket goes under water. My tub is larger than most tubs (lip to lip is just under 6' long instead of 5' long) and it still can't completely fit in at once.
Drain tub
Repeat previous steps with cold water again but no soap this time to rinse it out
I can't imagine needing a bed like that for any other reason besides hosting giant orgies. I hope your ridiculous bed brings you many more years of enjoyment!
My wife and I sleep in a regular king, and it would be nice to have more room. I like spreading out at night, arms and legs everywhere. She doesn’t appreciate it.
I see folks here talking about different sheets and custom ordering.
I've had the luxury of owning real silk sheets. I can't go back from that experience. Do silk sheet manufacturers do custom orders? I love the idea of building an emporer sized bed from scratch like this but the sheets are a huge deal...
I am very interested in the buckling gel, and I have considered getting a mattress from Purple a few times. Is it a significant upgrade from memory foam?
It's somewhat subjective of course, but for me it's a huge upgrade.
Form-wise, memory foam will respond to your positions but I feel like it's very slow and I also feel like I'm slowly sinking downward forever when I sleep on memory foam. Buckling gel responds very quickly, latex does as well. Latex is more springy, makes for a good core and isn't too bad to sleep on directly itself either, but buckling gel really fills in gaps and is super supportive.
Temperature-wise, memory foam makes me very hot when I sleep and I dislike that. Latex is much cooler and buckling gel even cooler than that.
(Everything I said about latex applies to polyurethane, which I believe Purple uses for its core rather than latex)
I had a purple 2 king and it was very comfortable but the motion transfer was bad. I suggest getting something else of you have a partner and a couple of grand to spend
Speaking of king / emperors: aren't these term referring to different sizes depending on the country?
For what it's worth I have a "2m x 2m". That's very big for many european countries: it's actually a bit complicated to find mattresses / sheets for such size (typically you need to order them and wait a bit), while if you go with the more standard "180cm x 200cm" you've got sheets and mattresses on display in many shops.
> Speaking of king / emperors: aren't these term referring to different sizes depending on the country?
Even within the UK bed size section of Wikipedia they couldn't decide if an Emperor was 7'x7' (213x213) or 6'8"x6'6" (203x198), although most UK websites seem to use the 7x7 definition.
>find sheets
I had to order custom sheets online and when I eventually need to replace them I'll have to do it again. They called me to verify that my order was correct, and I assume they will the next time too lol
I love the internet for all of the random stuff you see. It's wild to see this post surface on HN - three years ago I was researching Purple brand beds and stumbled across OP's blog post about their build. The content ended up being what pushed my wife to "OK, fine" from "Not on your life." And we ended up giving the Purple a try. (It didn't work out, but still wild how this comes full circle)
I'd say the lack of price savings are mainly these three factors:
Material quality: Purple, which I roughly used as inspiration for my original mattress design, used polyurethane which is cheaper and lighter, but less durable, than the latex I used for the core of my mattress. I have no idea what they used now but that was the case at the time.
Economies of scale: They can keep making the same few shapes cheaper. I was unable to buy specific dimensions of buckling column gel so I had to buy several toppers to extract the material and I only used 49 square feet out of the 64 square feet (although I found other uses for some of the remaining gel), plus the toppers came with other cheap foam that I had little use for. It's really difficult to order buckling column gel directly.
The literal scale: My mattress is larger than most of the US mattress companies, more material = more money. I imagine an emperor sized mattress would be similarly or more expensive from Purple. I would've gotten slightly better ROI per size had I made my bed larger due to the aforementioned discarded buckling column gel. Plus I needed to get nonstandard custom sheets and a custom sized encasement.
A good quality mattress, where you spend 5-8 hours every day - is one of the areas where skimping is not worth while in my opinion. Same with computer chairs, or any other thing that impacts back and joint health over prolonged periods.
I’m under the impression that sleeping on rough ground actually produces the greatest long term health benefits. Much like how sitting in a plush chair isn’t all that healthy really.
In my experience, paying more for a mattress doesn't necessarily equal to more comfort and I have no aches sitting all day in a cheap height-adjustable captain chair on wheels if I make sure that the arm rests are at the same height as the keyboard tray.
It is astoundingly difficult to get collapsing gel sheets, and I imagine that it has something to do with Purple existing.
I looked into buying just the sheets or a topper after returning the one I trialed. I really enjoyed the feel of it, but not to the tune of $2000(!) for a twin(!!!).
So I ordered my toppers from intellibed but they no longer list their toppers on their website. I talked to a mattress enthusiast not long ago and you can still buy it from them over the phone, but keep in mind they only have that 4x4 buckling gel component in the middle so you need more than one if you wish to cover your bed with buckling gel.
In a different life I'd consider setting up a buckling column gel manufacturing station and just sell people custom sized buckling column gel sheets.
This looks like mostly the same thing except the grid itself was rotated 45° from what I had. I did look into alibaba shortly after I made my bed when I was discussing this with a friend. The limitations of alibaba I found at the time were:
1. The HxW dimensions didn't necessarily match anything I wanted well. I needed four toppers to make the original mattress and offhand it looks like I could probably make it with four gel sheets from alibaba but the cuts would be more complicated to lay out and attach.
2. The thickness was listed at 4cm vs the 2" thickness of the buckling gel from intellibed. 2" is about 5cm.
3. Despite the intellibed toppers coming with a useless amount of foam, it wasn't actually any cheaper per square inch to order the gel from alibaba at the time, not that either was especially cheap. Numbers may have changed by now.
Huh. Something must have changed in the last year or so. I could not for the life of me find a gel grid this large for purchase, going as far back as 2018. Neat, thanks.
It's really surprising to me that mattresses larger than a king/cal king are not more common. When I was single and sleeping on a full size mattress, that felt pretty good. Now that I have a partner and we upgraded to a king, I actually have LESS space since there are two of us sleeping in a bigger mattress. A king split between two people means that each person has the width of a twin size mattress. In my opinion, this is entirely inadequate and is a massive downgrade to me. A full size mattress is 54" wide, so for each person to get the equivalent of a full, you'd need a mattress that's 108" wide (Alaskan King size.)
In the Philippines, I don't think these will catch on even though in this culture it's common for large families to sleep together in the same bedroom. These beds are simply too big to fit in the typical Filipino bedroom.
Does someone have a good advice on getting a mattress in US bypassing the whole mattress-sale industry that sells a piece of memory foam wrapped in their advertising budget and “long sales cycle”?
I simply ordered a foam mattress from a foam mattress company.
Saved me all the hassle of figuring out what type of foam and cover etc. still only ten percent of the price of a fancy mattress from a mattress store and took ten minutes on amazon. I doubt it's that much more expensively than a comparable block of foam. (I think it has multiple layers, as well).
You can get a slab of latex from foamoarder, which is how I got my mattress core. Honestly that alone would make a solid mattress on its own, although you'd still want an encasement I imagine.
If you want something more specific, check out the mattress underground forums. Very helpful users there.
For everyone struggling to find the perfect mattress for you - foam vs memory foam vs latex foam vs cotton packed vs coil spring - I found great results with Sleepnumber mattresses.
My biggest regret of moving back home from the States was that I didn’t ship my sleepnumber mattress home because it cost so much.
Sleepnumber stores look (and probably are) gimmicky but man, the first couple of nights I slept on them, I didn’t know when my head hit the pillow and when morning came. I truly understood what “sleeping like the dead” means.
Now I’m planning to somehow insert a thin air mattress into my current latex foam mattress for extra back support.
I am mostly the same way but when I bought my first Sleepnumber, I was really struggling to sleep. Personally, I’m glad I made the switch to their mattresses though I’m back to a latex foam mattress now (after relocating) and so, I no longer know what a good night’s sleep feels like.
I did something similar to you, except I used progressively less dense layers of latex (also from foamorder.com). CalKing rather than anything larger, but I've considered larger and I've been thinking it's better to make an Emperor or Caesar size formed from two halves.
it's been 10 years btw since I build mine. There's a slight give in the densest lower layer but it's held up enough that I still only really need to replace the top layer to get it back up to snuff.
My question: how in the hell do you afford sheets that size? lol
Foamorder's max latex size is king or cal king but they were willing to glue a bunch of chunks together for me. I'm not sure what glue they used (presumably latex?) but it's held without issue. I cannot feel the dividing between the latex chunks under the buckling gel while in the bed.
>sheets
I ordered two sets of bamboo bedsheets from that Advanced Bedding and they've lasted me all this time without ripping or stretching or anything. I usually leave the comforter at the foot of the bed when I get up so that probably helped them air out. Can't remember how much they cost but you can run the numbers on their site.
Is there an authority on mattress size naming standards to whom I may offer a suggestion? Having just read Julian by Gore Vidal, I learned that a few centuries after Caesar and Augustus, the title of Caesar ranked below that of Augustus (well played, Gaius Octavius). I suggest King->Caesar->Augustus.
However if we want to get into semantics, the word King descends from the word Caesar. Perhaps replace King with Minister, and Queen with Representative?
You beat me to it. Only fresh in my mind because of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin discussions also on the front page right now (I'd grabbed a couple books off the shelf and was trying to read them, I've forgotten a lot in 15 years and didn't make it far).
I'd much prefer 2x3 fora 2m by 3m bed. Poetic names confuses me: Why is a twin different than a double but the exact same thing as a single? Call them by their size, done.
You could flip a California King (7' long 6' wide) sideways and call it that lol. It would be shorter than a Twin or a Full Sized mattress by a few inches.
I’m so disappointed with foam mattress, there’s no firmness that is satisfactory. I tried some hybrid beds are IKEA that were really dope and I’ve been thinking about changing mattress.
The encasement I used for the mattress has flame retardant properties.
Like barbegal mentioned, there are some safety requirements for selling a mattress. I don't recall exactly how you'd get approved, but I vaguely remember that it wasn't actually that hard to meet them and had the production quality of my mattress been a bit better I probably could have gotten the approval to sell it.
Nobody talks of how foam mattresses change the dynamics of sex. Gone is the nice bounce back from the coils. Instead you get the firm motion deadening of the foam. Participants expecting to find that extra spring in their step find they have to provide their own bounce. I hope your muscles are up for it.
I personally don't having sex on a foam mattress. I think those seeking a foam mattress should consider keeping around a spare coiled sex bed. Call it your guest bed if so inclined. It will be there for you, providing that extra spring you may be missing from you foam mattress.