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6 tips for buying the best pocket spring mattress

Most people shopping for a good quality mattress buy a pocket spring one. Sure, memory foam and other types of mattress are popular, but most of us stick to what we know.

But that decision still needs narrowing down from a vast number of pocket spring mattresses on the market. You've got two options:

Pick one from our recommended list
Learn how to spot a quality mattress and then search one out for yourself.

Here are my six tips for buying the best pocket spring mattress you can afford:

"I'm not coming out until you buy a new mattress"

1. (Some of) the best mattresses have won awards

OK, awards don't mean everything. After all, Mrs Brown's Boys was voted the best sitcom of the 21st century (apologies if you're a fan...).

However, if you're interested then the pocket spring mattress manufacturers which have won at the National Bed Federation's annual industry awards in recent years have included:

Vispring - their J Marshall No 4 mattress (£1089 in double, medium tension) was the winner in 2019 whilst the Vispring Plymouth Supreme 1200 (£899, medium tension) is a more affordable option.

Posh brand Vispring won a big award in 2019 for this mattress

Hypnos won best manufacturer in 2014 and were runners up in 2013 and 2018. Popular models with customers include The Hypnos Superb (£899, firm) and The Hypnos Swinton (£799, medium tension)

The Hypnos Superb is a popular mattress from an award winning brand

Harrison Spinks won best manufacturer in 2015 and 2018. They make the John Lewis & Partners Natural Collection. Models with good reviews and specifications include the Egyptian Cotton 5900 model (£950, medium or firm). Harrison Spinks also make the Herdy Sleep mattress (£849, medium/firm).

John Lewis Natural Collection Egyptian Cotton 5900 mattress

Harrison Spinks is an award winner who makes mattresses for John Lewis & Partners

Other recent winners include Millbrook which was named best small manufacturer in 2018 and Steinhoff Bedding Group which was runner up in 2016. They are makers of Myer’s, Relyon and Slumberland.

Another option if you're swayed by awards is to look at overall customer reviews for brands which specialise in pocket sprung mattresses. TrustPilot is the best website I've found for this sort of information, as most brands have hundreds of reviews. High scoring pocket sprung mattress brands include:

Sleepeezee scores 4.4/5 from customers and is a mid-priced mattress brand, despite having a Royal Warrant (they supply Prince Charles' household). Sleepeezee mattresses which are popular with customers and which offer good value include the low-priced Backcare Deluxe (£259, firm tension), mid-priced Wool Supreme 2400 (£539, medium tension) and the top-of-the-range Mayfair 3200 (£839, medium).

The Sleepeezee Mayfair was runner up in the 'Bed of the Year 2019' category at the main industry awards

Silentnight scores 4.2/5 from customers. They're a huge brand which sells a range of types of beds, including plenty of mid-priced pocket sprung mattresses. Popular pocket sprung Silentnight models include the award-winning Sofia 1200 (£419, medium/firm) and the London Stratus (£479, medium).

The Silentnight London Stratus is a popular pocket sprung mattress with a layer of memory foam for comfort

(For the TrustPilot reviews, we looked at the brand's overall 'Trust Score' and searched in September 2020. We didn't include some brands which just had a tiny number of reviews and we didn't include brands which sell dozens of other things, such as IKEA, as it wouldn't tell us a lot about their mattresses. We couldn't find reviews for some well known pocket spring brands, such as Vispring and Somnus).

Another option is to look at independent tests which are carried out on pocket spring mattresses. Award winners/those which scored very well include:

Silentnight 1200 Classic Pocket Deluxe (£419 medium/firm pocket spring mattress from the biggest name in the UK mattress market. Also called 'Sofia'. This one also gets strong customer reviews.)

Which Best Buy Silentnight 1200 mattress

Silentnight is UK's biggest mattress brand - and this model is an award winner

Sealy Teramo 1400 (£639 pocket spring mattress, soft/medium mattress so it's better for lighter people. Also called Nostromo)

Sealy's Teramo also goes by the name of Nostromo. It's another mid-priced winner.

Yet another option is to look for a mattress maker with a 'Manufacturing Guild Mark' which is an award handed out by the Furniture Makers Company. According to the blurb, it is 'awarded to British manufacturers that have demonstrated incredible standards across all areas of the business by successfully passing a rigorous, independently reviewed audit'. Awardees include:

Harrison Spinks which makes the John Lewis & Partners Natural Collection (as mentioned earlier) and the Herdy Sleep mattress.
Relyon, which is a long established mid-priced pocket spring mattress brand (about £300 - £1000 for a double)

One final option for Royalists is to go for a mattress brand which has been awarded a Royal Warrant, meaning that they're used by royal households. The two main ones are:

Sleepeezee (mid-priced brand, 4.4/5 on TrustPilot and suppliers to Prince Charles)
Hypnos (mostly luxury priced, 3.3/5 on TrustPilot and suppliers to The Queen)

2. The best mattresses are (usually) the most expensive ones

Well, derrrrr...

Bear with me and let me explain what I mean.

Everyone loves to feel they are getting a bargain, but broadly speaking you get what you pay for with a mattress. Sure, there are discount codes and the like, but don't get sucked in by the big red sale sticker in the shop offering 70% off.

Don't get me wrong, a retailer like Furniture Village or John Lewis & Partners will sometimes 20% - 30% off a good quality mattress in a sale, but there are other bed retailers who seem to always have a massive sale on, which makes me suspicious.

In summary, a bed reduced from £2000 to £700 will most likely be a very similar quality to one which costs £700 elsewhere.

We all love a bargain, but the RRP doesn't mean much

3. The best mattresses have at least 1000 springs

Very cheap pocket spring mattresses try to get away with 600 springs. From the many guides I've read online, the consensus seems to be that if you can afford an upgrade to at least 1000 springs then you'll feel the benefit.

If you don't weigh a lot then 1000 should provide plenty of support, but if your idea of a balanced diet is a pie in each hand then you will probably want something closer to 2000 springs.

You will see mattresses offering silly numbers of springs (some go over 10,000) but the advantages diminish simply because of how many springs will fit on one layer of a mattress. This high specification mattress from John Lewis & Partners has 11400 springs, but most of them are very small springs to provide a bit of extra support rather than full size pocket springs.

4. (Most of) the best mattresses are hand tufted

Take a look at the top of a mattress and it will either by quilted (completely flat) or hand tufted (bumpy with buttons holding it all in place).

The very best quality pocket spring mattresses are nearly always hand tufted.

Now, before I get angry emails from quilted mattress sellers, it's worth saying that there are many high quality quilted mattresses and we recommended several in our guide to 10 of the best mattresses on the market.

My point though is that brands like Hypnos (the Royal Family's mattress maker), and Vispring make mostly hand tufted mattresses and they all offer mattresses which cost more than my first car.

I've also read compelling arguments of why hand tufted mattresses are better and more stable, but I won't bore you with excessive detail.

On the down side, bear in mind that hand tufted mattresses need turning regularly whilst many quilted mattresses are no turn. Not turning your mattress is convenient (I need two weeks of physio every time I turn our huge mattress) but most people say that a mattress that you flip over will flipping well last longer.

A no turn mattress may be a necessity of having a high quality comfort topper on the mattress...or it may just be a way of using cheaper materials on the bottom half of the mattress.

5. The best mattresses have hand side stitching

Honestly, my attempts to turn mattress seller jargon into something in plain English had me scratching my head many times. I won't bore you with the details, but the summary is that something called 'Hand Side Stitching' is a sign of quality, whereas 'Machine Side Stitching' isn't so good.

It's to do with how much support your bed offers at the edges and there are two ways to work out what a particular mattress offers.

The first option is to visit your local bed shop and start sitting on the sides of all their pocket spring mattresses. Cheap mattresses bulge out at the side whilst the best mattresses won't. (I can't help feeling you might get thrown out of Dreams if you turn up with a tape measure and start measure the size of their bulges, but hey...)

The second option for spotting Hand Side Stitching is to look for it in the descriptions online, which is certainly less effort (although many websites don't seem to declare it which doesn't help). John Lewis & Partners is a shining example of a retailer which clearly describes how their mattresses are made.

As a general rule, if a company doesn't say that a mattress is Hand Side Stitched then it probably isn't, as it is something you would shout about. In the same way that you might assume that your local greasy kebab takeaway probably isn't selling organic, free range meat, unless it makes a point of saying it is.

6. The best mattresses have a woven cover

Here's another question which baffled me: Which is the best material for a mattress cover? I read so many guides about Belgian damask whatevers and woven fabric thingyamajigs and I was still confused.

Here's the summary to save you the dull journey I went on:

Don't buy a bed with a stitch bond cover. They are rough and unpleasant and are the kind of thing you'd see on a children's mattress at your local tip.

Beyond that, most natural woven fabrics seem to be fine - such as cotton or damask. There's also a huge range of mattress covers with silly names which sound like they were thought up by throwing scientific names into a hat and pulling out a handful. It's hard to sift the genuine scientific developments from the pseudo-science waffle on this one, so I would be cautious about buying a mattress just because it had a long name.