6 tips for buying the best pocket spring mattress

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

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 awards from the National Bed Federation in recent years have included:

Hypnos (best manufacturer 2014, runner up in 2013)
Harrison Spinks (best manufacturer in 2015 - they make the John Lewis Natural Collection)
Steinhoff Bedding Group (runners up in 2016 - makers of Myer’s, Relyon and Slumberland)

Other winners, such as Kaymed (2016) specialise in memory foam rather pocket spring mattresses.

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

Hyde and Sleep Pocket Sprung Hybrid Plus (£600-700 medium/firm mattress, rave reviews, 100 night 'comfort exchange' so you can swap it if you don't like it. Owned by Dreams.)
Silentnight Classic 1200 pocket deluxe (£400 medium/firm pocket spring mattress from the biggest name in the UK mattress market. Also called 'Sofia'. Strong customer reviews.)
Sealy Teramo 1400 (£850 pocket spring mattress, soft mattress so better for lighter people. Also called Nostromo.)

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

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

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 will often offer 20% - 30% off a good quality mattress and I would personally wait for 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.

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 very good quality mattress from John Lewis has 8000 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), Vispring and Burgess Beds 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 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.