This site uses cookies – see our privacy policy. Ads & links in bold may give us a small payment from the seller, at no cost to the buyer. However, this never affects our views – if we like it, we recommend it.
Mattress shopping used to rely on you lying down in a showroom for 30 seconds and then standing up and saying ‘yes, that one feels about right’.
Nowadays there are loads of mattresses which offer a free trial of 100 nights or even a whole year, so you can really work out if it’s comfortable. Some have terms and conditions attached, so always check the small print.
This may be pointing out the obvious, but comfort is vital if you want to get good quality sleep. A study was carried out in 2002 by Park and Lee called ‘The Relationship between Sleep Quality and Mattress Types’ which took a scientific approach to this and tested out ‘whether sleep quality was different when subjects slept on a mattress suitable for the body shape or not’. They used a technique called polysomnography, which means they recorded sleep and monitored brain waves, eye and chin movements and heart activity.
The conclusion – perhaps unsurprisingly – was that ‘when subjects slept in comfortable beds…sleep efficiency and the percentage of deep sleep were higher’. Also, ‘the percentage of wake after sleep onset was lower when subjects slept in a comfortable bed’. (They also found that a comfortable bed also lead to higher ‘mean skin temperature’ although I’m still figuring out the significance of that).
Based on the impact on waking up and the amount of deep sleep, I would say that ‘making do’ with an uncomfortable bed isn’t ideal and that a home trial period may be a good solution.
We’ve picked out five award winning mattresses which offer a free trial. Prices are for double mattresses and are correct at the time of writing.
1. Nectar Sleep Mattress (medium/firm) – £749 – 365 night trial
As far as I can tell, Nectar Sleep offers the joint longest home trial of any mattress in the UK market (along with the more expensive DreamCloud mattress featured below).
You get a whole year to try it out and then it comes with a ‘forever’ warranty rather than the usual 5 or 10 years that come with most mattresses.
But is it any good, I hear you ask in a polite tone?
Well, as I write this the Nectar Sleep brand is scoring 4.4/5 from from more than 11,000 customers on TrustPilot, which is good. It’s also won several awards from experts including Ideal Home and Good Housekeeping.
The mattress is entirely foam, so it’s another one of those which are called a ‘bed in a box’. It arrives squashed up and then expands once you’ve carried it upstairs. It uses memory foam but has a ‘cooling cover’ on top, which is an effort to get away from the issue that some people have of finding memory foam too hot.
Of course, if that turns out to be a problem you can return it.
The elephant in the room with buying a mattress is the environmental impact, as it’s one of the bulkiest things that we all buy every few years. According to a study published in 2013, ‘A Life Cycle Assessment shows that the polyurethane foam mattress has a higher environmental impact than the pocket sprung mattress’.
The study goes on to claim that ‘for both products the main cause of environmental impact is the manufacturing process’ (The academic paper was called ‘Improving the environmental performance of bedding products by using life cycle assessment at the design stage’ by Lanoë, Simões et al)
In the case of the Nectar Sleep mattress, the company says that they ‘calculate the carbon footprint from our manufacturing process, find strategies to reduce this, and offset the remainder’. They work with an organisation called Climate Partner and are ‘certifiably climate neutral’.
That’s certainly not the case with every foam mattress on the market in the UK.
2. Simba Hybrid Mattress (medium/firm) – £999 – 200 night trial
The Simba Sleep mattress is what’s known as a hybrid mattress because it uses springs as well as foam. Recent awards include approval from Good Housekeeping and a 10/10 score from the Daily Mail.
If you aren’t swayed by the Daily Mail’s approval, have a look at the customer reviews. Simba Sleep as a brand averages 4.4/5 on TrustPilot whilst Amazon customers give it 4.3/5 at the time of writing.
The springs in the Simba Hybrid are mini ones which are sandwiched between layers of foam. It uses memory foam, but not on the top layer so it doesn’t have the sinking and hugging feeling that you probably associate with a memory foam mattress.
There’s some (fascinating) debate about how firm the Simba Hybrid mattress is, with some saying it is medium firmness whilst others saying it is more like medium-firm. We could settle this with an arm wrestle, but the official website say that the Simba Hybrid is medium-firm so let’s stick with that. Of course, if it’s not the right firmness for you, they’ll pick it up and give you a refund.
It also comes with a 10 year guarantee.
Read our full guide to the Simba Hybrid.
3. Inofia Memory Foam and Pocket Spring Mattress (medium) – £263 – 100 night trial
If you can cope with some dodgy grammar and spelling on the website (e.g. ‘Adapts to the each part of body for perfect level’) you might consider Inofia as a budget memory foam and pocket spring mattress with a 100 night trial. Reviews were a very impressive 4.6/5 from 1700+ reviews when I checked, putting it on a par with mattresses costing two or three times that.
Unlike some others on this list, the layer of memory foam is on the top with ‘adapt foam’ and springs lower down. Unfortunately, it doesn’t specify how many springs it has. The diagram says that they are individual pocket springs though, which is the superior option to an open coil mattress.
It’s also remarkably deep for the price at 27cm. There’s some disagreement over the firmness, but the official guidance puts it half way between firm and ‘plush’ which I assume is a synonym for ‘soft’. Of course, the advantage of a mattress with a free trial is that you can give it a go yourself and get your money back if you don’t like it.
4. DreamCloud Hybrid Mattress (medium/firm) – £1249 – 365 night trial
The DreamCloud mattress is what’s known as a hybrid mattress as it uses pocket springs and memory foam. It’s owned by the same company as Nectar Sleep, and it comes with the same 365 night trial as well as a ‘forever’ warranty (you should check the Ts and Cs of these things, of course).
It’s made in the UK and is at the more luxurious end of the mattress market (that’s marketing speak for ‘expensive’). It is much deeper than most mattresses at 29cm and it gets very good customer reviews. On TrustPilot, DreamCloud was scoring 4.4/5 from customers when we checked.
The idea of a hybrid mattress is that you get the familiar springy feeling which most of us are used to with pocket springs, along with the consistent support and comfort which is offered by foam. One of the foam layers is memory foam which has a hugging and sinking feeling to it. Some people find memory foam makes them feel warm, but mattresses like this one use ‘breathable memory foam’ to try to overcome this.
5. Emma Mattress (medium tension) – £649 – 200 night trial
There’s a fair amount of technical jargon associated with the Emma Mattress (‘progressive sinking technology’ and ‘point elastic’ are my favourites) but we’ve included it because it gets rave reviews from experts and appears on many guides you’ll find to the best mattresses. It’s also known as the Emma Original, just in case you’re getting confused.
Much like the Nectar Sleep mattress (see #1) the Emma Mattressis made from layers of foam in an attempt to give the right level of support. The memory foam layer (the one which has a bit of a sinking feeling) is sandwiched in between two other types of foam. The top layer is ‘breathable Airgocell foam’ to stop you getting too hot.
There’s a 10 year guarantee and a 200 night free trial.
Reviews for the Emma Mattress were averaging 4.5/5 on Amazon when we checked whilst the Emma brand overall scores 4.4/5 on TrustPilot as of 2022.
6. Herdy Sleep – (medium firmness) – £849 – 100 night trial
I struggled to find many pocket spring mattresses offering a free trial.
As a general rule they are something you see on offer from newer online only mattress makers who offer foam mattresses, rather than the more traditional companies.
Some exceptions:
- Highly rated pocket spring mattress brand Sleepeezee offer a 60 night sleep trial so you can swap it for another mattress from their range (check the terms and conditions). The brand scores 4.2/5 on TrustPilot at the time of writing.
- Soak & Sleep offer a 100 night trial on mattresses as long as you use a mattress protector.
- Button and Sprung offer a 100 night trial and has a fairly big range of pocket sprung mattresses from about £500.
- Posh pocket spring mattress manufacturer Feather & Black also does a trial, but you need to try it out in store first. They have mattresses by Harrison Spinks, which won a big award from the National Bed Federation a few years ago.
We picked out Herdy Sleep in the end as a pocket spring mattress with a 100 night trial. There are three layers of pocket springs, rather than the single layer which you might be used to. Pocket sprung mattresses offer a more familiar feel than foam mattresses and are what most of us are still sleeping on.
Reviews are positive (on Feefo and their own Facebook page). It’s won awards from Good Housekeeping and the Evening Standard as well as a couple of eco-friendly type awards.
It’s made as a partnership with Harrison Spinks which is one of the few mattress companies with something called a Manufacturing Guild Mark from the Furniture Makers’ Company. That’s an award given out to some British companies which pass ‘a rigorous, independently reviewed audit.’
