Independent buying guides
For anyone replacing a bed who has to decide on firmness, size and budget at once. Each guide answers one question, cites standards and manufacturer figures with check dates, and shows the arithmetic in the cost-per-night calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Firmness is a surface feel and support is what keeps your spine level. The difference decides the mattress, and the two are routinely sold as one thing.
Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Divide the price by the nights you will sleep on it. A $900 queen kept 8 years is about 31 cents a night, and the sheets and pillows around it cost more.
Photo: Alan Stanton · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Measuring and planning
Mattress size is the easy measurement. Door swing, stair turns, slat gaps and walking space around the bed are the ones that send a delivery back.
Photo: W.carter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
1
Photo: Anush Markosyan · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Measure once, order once.
1
Photo: Chien Mi Wong · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What things are made of, and how long that lasts.
0
Photo: Thomas Quine · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
1
Photo: Alan Stanton · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Putting pieces together without buying twice.
0
Photo: Arturo Michelena · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Keeping it usable for years instead of months.
0
Photo: W.carter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Checks whether a piece fits the space, including the walkway you need to leave around it.
remaining space = room dimension - item dimension - walkway x sides; delivery check compares the largest item dimension against the narrowest door or stair width
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Spreads purchase price, consumables and repairs over the years you expect to keep it.
cost per year = (purchase price - expected resale value + consumables per year x years + expected repairs) / years
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
This site earns money from advertising and, where disclosed, from affiliate links. That does not change the order of a comparison or the conclusion of a guide.
Some links on this site can earn us a commission. That does not change which product a guide recommends, and it adds nothing to your price. Advertising is not enabled on this site yet. When it is, ads will be labelled and kept visually separate from the guides.