The quality of your sleep dictates the quality of your day. But it’s not as simple as upgrading your mattress. First, you must understand how you sleep and find a mattress that compliments that sleep style. Read on to learn about sleep styles, mattress types, and sleep quality.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Mattress
Spend any amount of time at a mattress store and you’ll likely be confronted with a list of confusing specifications and strange terminology. Fortunately, you came here first! Before you invest your hard-earned dollars on a mattress, make sure you understand the most common terms. Don’t worry, it really isn’t as complex as it sounds.
Firmness Level
Firmness is subjective, which makes judging the firmness of a mattress more difficult than it may seem.1 Generally, the firmness level of a mattress refers to how much support a mattress provides the person lying on it. It’s all but impossible to translate that feeling with words, but that doesn’t stop the mattress industry from trying.
Mattress manufacturers use the terms soft, medium-firm, and firm, to communicate a unit’s firmness level. Which firmness level is ideal for you is often dedicated to your particular sleep style. But more on that later.
Mattress Material
Another key mattress factor is the mattress material. Modern mattresses are composed of a variety of different materials, including memory foam, latex, innerspring, and hybrid. These materials are designed to customize the sleep experience, by providing more or less firmness, or by modifying the way the surface regulates body heat.
Motion Isolation
Another factor to consider is motion isolation. If you share the mattress with another person, and one of you is a light sleeper, consider investing in a mattress that’s formulated to minimize the transfer of motion between the sides.
Durability and Longevity
Finally, you’ll likely want your mattress to last you a long time. Most mattress buyers expect their mattress to last anywhere between 7 and 10 years.2 How long a mattress lasts depends on the materials, the composition, and how it’s used. To determine the life expectancy of your mattress, research the top brands, and read as many reviews as you possibly can.
Understanding Different Sleep Styles
Everyone is different. As such, everyone sleeps differently. Medical history, physiology, genetics, and a whole range of other factors combine to create your unique sleep style. And, though everyone’s favorite sleeping position can vary slightly, for the purpose of this article we’ll break it down into the following four categories: side sleepers, back sleepers, stomach sleepers, and combination sleepers.3
Side Sleepers
Unless you’re one of them, you may be surprised to discover that side sleepers make up the majority. Why is side sleeping so popular? Well, for starters, it’s the best way to sleep.4 Sleeping on the side is linked to a variety of positive health outcomes including increased blood flow and reduced snoring.
It’s not without its drawbacks though. Stay on one side for too long and you run the risk of shoulder, neck, and hip pain. Sleeping on one arm for too long can cut off circulation and cause numbness too.
As far as mattresses are concerned, side sleepers require medium-soft to medium mattresses that are designed to relieve the pressure on the shoulders and hips that come from sleeping on the side. Additionally, side sleepers would do well to support their hips by sleeping with a pillow between their knees.
Back Sleepers
Sleeping on your back is self explanatory. These sleepers prefer to lie face up with their arms by their side or folded across their abdomen. Though there are those who claim that sleeping on their back is better for their skin, and can help alleviate pain in their back thanks to the even distribution of their weight. But it’s not without its drawbacks.
Sleeping on your back can exacerbate breathing problems and worsen snoring. Improper back and leg support may even make lower back pain worse. There are ways around that though. Sleeping with a pillow under your knees can alleviate lower back pressure.
Again, everyone is different, but back sleepers generally prefer a firmer mattress that’s designed to provide the spine with more support. Still, you don’t want to just purchase any old extra-firm mattress. Instead, visit a local mattress store and test a few out.5
Stomach Sleepers
Stomach sleepers get a lot of hate from the scientific community. They say it promotes improper alignment, which can lead to tension in the spine and neck in both the short and long term. Still, millions of people prefer sleeping on their stomach. If you happen to be one of those people, you’d do well to invest in a mattress that mitigates the negative effects of stomach sleeping.
There are indeed a few things that a stomach sleeper can do to improve their sleep and offset the drawbacks of stomach sleeping. Choosing a low-profile pillow can help, as can choosing a mattress that’s firm enough to support the spine while also soft enough to cushion the chest, hips, and knees.6
Combination Sleepers
Everyone has tossed and turned enough to understand the value of being a combination sleeper. Combination sleepers rotate between any or all of the aforementioned sleep styles. It’s perfectly natural and, despite what you may think, doesn’t make mattress shopping that much more difficult.
If you consider yourself a combination sleeper, it’s best to consider a mattress and a pillow that is designed to cater to multiple sleep styles. To do this, you’ll likely need to allocate some extra time to shopping around and testing a variety of different mattress styles.
It’s all but impossible to recommend a mattress style to a combination sleeper without a better understanding of their specific needs. Fortunately, most mattress retailers employ skilled sleep experts trained to help you find the perfect fit.
Sweet Dreams
Few investments are as consequential as investing in the quality of your sleep. A deep, restful night feeds your effectiveness in everything that you do throughout the day, from relationships, to work, to hobbies. All the more reason to dive in and learn about yourself, your sleep habits, and the vast array of techniques and tools designed to help you sleep better.
Invest some of your time and a little bit of your money into a new mattress today, and watch as the benefits ripple throughout the rest of your day. Use what you learned here to upgrade your lumpy old mattress to something that’s designed to support the unique way in which you sleep. Whether you sleep on your back, your side, your stomach, or a combination of all three, the right mattress is out there waiting for you.