Nothing screams interesting article than a foam explanation, right!? Well, we wouldn't be stating it unless we felt it was beneficial to our customers. We always strive to be the most enjoyable, educational, shopping experience you can possibly have. Often times, we find ourselves as more of a consultant rather than a sales person. We are ok with that! In fact, we focus more on that and sales just seem to happen when the customer feels confident in the information and product. Imagine that!
One of the most common things we find ourselves talking about is FOAM. It's not about the cooling nature of this mattress, or the coil count of that mattress. It always circles back to foam. We always tell the customer forget all the other stuff that other sales people will tell you about coil counts, because every manufacturer will put as many as the mattress can hold and it be comfortable and suitable for their warranty. The concern should be on the comfort material. That is where body impressions happen. It's the single, most common, complaint in the mattress industry from our perspective. Who likes spending $2,000 on a mattress to turn into a giant hole a couple years later, right?!
That is why we spend so much effort educating on finding out what types of foam is in the mattress providing you with that cushion. At Ensley Fairfield Mattress Co., we do our best to stay away from convoluted foam or "egg crate foam". It will almost always be used in budget/economy lines of mattresses ($599 or under), just because it is the most economical way of building up plush comfort. However, we always see it creeping into the higher end lines in being the primary comfort layer. It's not necessarily to have a small layer helping with other premium foams or full sheet of foams for comfort, but if it is all your mattress has, you shouldn't be paying a lot for said mattress.
Here is where we get a little technical with it. Convoluted foam is just a way a flat sheet of foam is cut. It allows manufacturers and retailers to take a single say 3" sheet of foam and make two 3" of convoluted foam sheets. That's right, it's almost like black magic! You might be asking "how can you take a 3" sheet and ultimately get 6" of foam out of it? Well, it's all in the cutting. Convoluted foam has a lot of air space (the main source of body impressions) around 50% of air space to be exact. The top portion of the foam is also not as dense because the foam reduces in thickness all the way to the top, creating a softer "plush" type of feel and less support. The bottom half is still around the same density/thickness (around 1-1/2" in the case of a 3" foam). This might be sounding a little tricky, but stay with us it really matters to your overall mattress.
When you cut a sheet of foam into a "convoluted sheet" and flip it so that the second layer sits on top, now you have a "6 inch comfort foam top". It sounds good and gives a lot of great marketing opportunities, and you are likely paying for the "6 inches", but you aren't getting that. In fact you are getting half of what you are paying for. In all likelihood you will loose about 50% of that original "lift" in just a matter of months depending on your body size and the use of the mattress, thus creating "body impressions" and extreme discomfort.
Like we mentioned before, this is almost a necessary evil in lower end mattresses, but even then if it is used sparingly with proper quilting on the top, you can get by with it. We tend to stay away from it in all of our Heritage Series mattresses. Some of our line produced mattresses will contain small layers of it, but we try and limit it to a particular cut of convoluted to minimize any compression or we make sure it is supported by full sheets of foam or premium foams like latex.
Convoluted foam is best bought as a topper that can be replaced in about a year after it has served it's purpose and lost it's original loft. Something you can dispose of regularly. In our Heritage Series mattresses we use full, uncut, sheets of foam stacked on each other to give more of a consistent life and comfort and it helps lessen the chance of body impressions. We choose to pick different densities of full sheets of foam to build up plush layers in smaller increments to help be supportive for much longer.
Like mentioned before, sales people will often times show you all of the flashy things the mattress features that are usually unimportant or ineffective. It might be to distract you for future issues in a mattress or it just might be because of the lack of generational knowledge that we possess. Sometimes convoluted "egg crate" foam will be sold to give you more "air flow". Once it is compressed (laying on the mattress) there isn't any air moving through it. Rest assured that if you have a lot of air space or super low density foam in your mattress YOU WILL have body impressions prematurely.
In either case, we believe an educated consumer will always make the right decision and it's rarely about price. Customers will pay for products when they are confident they know what they are buying and know that their investment and rest is protected.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us anytime at family@efmattress.com or come into our showroom and you can actually put your hands on the materials to get a first hand experience.
That is why we spend so much effort educating on finding out what types of foam is in the mattress providing you with that cushion. At Ensley Fairfield Mattress Co., we do our best to stay away from convoluted foam or "egg crate foam". It will almost always be used in budget/economy lines of mattresses ($599 or under), just because it is the most economical way of building up plush comfort. However, we always see it creeping into the higher end lines in being the primary comfort layer. It's not necessarily to have a small layer helping with other premium foams or full sheet of foams for comfort, but if it is all your mattress has, you shouldn't be paying a lot for said mattress.
When you cut a sheet of foam into a "convoluted sheet" and flip it so that the second layer sits on top, now you have a "6 inch comfort foam top". It sounds good and gives a lot of great marketing opportunities, and you are likely paying for the "6 inches", but you aren't getting that. In fact you are getting half of what you are paying for. In all likelihood you will loose about 50% of that original "lift" in just a matter of months depending on your body size and the use of the mattress, thus creating "body impressions" and extreme discomfort.Like we mentioned before, this is almost a necessary evil in lower end mattresses, but even then if it is used sparingly with proper quilting on the top, you can get by with it. We tend to stay away from it in all of our Heritage Series mattresses. Some of our line produced mattresses will contain small layers of it, but we try and limit it to a particular cut of convoluted to minimize any compression or we make sure it is supported by full sheets of foam or premium foams like latex.
Like mentioned before, sales people will often times show you all of the flashy things the mattress features that are usually unimportant or ineffective. It might be to distract you for future issues in a mattress or it just might be because of the lack of generational knowledge that we possess. Sometimes convoluted "egg crate" foam will be sold to give you more "air flow". Once it is compressed (laying on the mattress) there isn't any air moving through it. Rest assured that if you have a lot of air space or super low density foam in your mattress YOU WILL have body impressions prematurely.
In either case, we believe an educated consumer will always make the right decision and it's rarely about price. Customers will pay for products when they are confident they know what they are buying and know that their investment and rest is protected.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us anytime at family@efmattress.com or come into our showroom and you can actually put your hands on the materials to get a first hand experience.
Comments
Post a Comment