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A good bed is of course a bed that helps you to sleep soundly and to wake up feeling refreshed and restored. Ultimately, this will tend to come down to the quality of the mattress – where a firm, yet malleable material is generally preferable in order to provide soft comfort combined with support for joints and spine. Thus many people will focus on this element – choosing between memory foam mattresses that conform to body shape, versus the sprung variety that use springs throughout inner pockets in order to hold up the body at numerous points.

What often gets overlooked is the temperature of the mattress – and its ability or otherwise to keep the body at the optimal temperature throughout the night. Forgetting this crucial aspect is a huge mistake however, seeing as it actually plays a very key role in keeping you comfortable and helping you to sleep.

A cooling mattress solves many of these problems by helping to cool the body back down, and to better circulate fresh air. The heat caused by your body as it cycles through its metabolic rates is able to escape and dissipate, and you therefore are not forced to endure stifling temperatures that force you awake.
This cooling is achieved by selecting the right mattress material, which will also define just how comfortable your sleeping arrangement is as well. This is the key: don’t focus on one aspect of your mattress, but rather think about all the different factors that contribute to a great night’s sleep or a poor one. Some of the most popular mattress materials include:

This is a firm material that is able to adapt and take on the shape of the person lying on it. Over time, indentations appear that outline the body of the person who has been sleeping on the mattress. This allows an evenly distributed support throughout the body, keeping the back properly supported and the arms aloft.
This is not typically a highly breathable material, but increasing developments in the technology are helping to improve this aspect of the material. Read our best memory foam mattress guide for more details

Latex foam is a similar type of material to memory foam. The difference is that this is made from latex, whereas conventional memory foam is made from something called viscoelastic. Latex foam mattresses aren’t typically quite as supportive as memory foam but they are superior in terms of durability.

As a general rule, latex mattresses tend to be cooler than memory foam. That’s because the cellular structure is more breathable. BUT keep in mind that due to many innovations and variations in the manufacturing process, it is nearly impossible to compare two mattresses on a like-for-like basis. Most will involve some trick to help them sleep cooler.

Coils and springs will typically sleep very cool. These work – as the name implies – by using coils and springs. These can either be distributed evenly throughout the mattress in order to support the body at various points, or they can be packaged into isolated ‘pockets’ (called pocket-sprung mattresses).

Coil and spring mattresses tend to be slightly less supportive than memory or latex form mattresses, but have more of a pronounced ‘spring’ to them. They also tend to be more breathable, thanks to the fact that air can easily filter around the springs and pass through the upper fabric. Note that you can get hybrid mattresses that combine the use of both methods.

Bamboo is a highly versatile material and also a very natural and toxin-free one. This material is popular for its hypoallergenic properties, but also for its softness and breathability. It’s also highly durable, but can be very expensive.

Advanced poly foams are made from multiple different hybrid materials in their manufacturing. This means you might be getting a combination of latex and visco-elastic, or it means you might be getting polyurethane mixed with these materials.

Of course the properties of these mattresses depend very much on the materials used and in what ratios. This also depends on what the primary objectives of the manufacturer were – in some cases where breathability has been the focus, this can of course result in a particularly breathable end product.

Gel foam mattresses use memory foam that is combined with gel. This gel can often help to keep the body cooler – in fact this is often the precise goal of the gel, as is the case with gel cooling beads.
While all these materials can vary greatly then depending on the manufacturing and the design, the general rule of thumb is that the conventional viscoelastic memory foam mattress is going to be among the hottest and retain a lot of heat. Choosing latex or bamboo, or combining the foam with springs, or with other gels and poly materials, can help to alleviate this while still retaining the comfort and support.
And this might just be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to a superior night’s sleep!