Sleep. Probably the least appreciated of our daily routines, yet toe-to-toe with eating, the most important activities. The quality of what you eat has a big and direct effect on your life overall, the same can be said for the quality of our sleep. What you're sleeping on, the mattress' quality can make or break how the rest of your day plays out. That said, you shouldn't take the feat of choosing a mattress lightly.

Related article: How to Choose the Right Mattress

What Is a Good Mattress

A lot of people are enduring mattresses that leave them with a stiff back, painful neck and a contorted body figure. Much of the undesirable conditions that rest on a good bed is supposed to relieve our bodies of. That said, a good mattress is one that affords you with good sleep throughout the course of a night, without any painful side effects in the morning.

Related article:Can memory foam mattress cause back pain?

How To Tell A Good vs A Bad Mattress

Because any fairly sized piece of foam can be lined with aesthetically appealing fabric, it is hard to tell by way of looking at which one is a good bed mattress. You'd have to consider the inside makeup before falling for a pretty coating.

Good Mattress Features:

Some of the considerations that differentiate sleeping on rocky ground to basically floating in thin air (the extremes)

Air & Heat Regulation

Sleeping for longer than five hours on the same spot, generally, means your body will be in contact with the mattress for long. The mattress should concede for your skin to perspire and 'breathe' effortlessly. Some beds feel warmer the longer your period of contact with the mattress, this makes it hard to sleep as long as required to have a refreshing rest.

A good mattress often has gel technology or some equally conductive material to keep your body temperature from heating the point you lay to uncomfortable levels.

Related article: What is a Gel Memory Foam Mattress?

Motion Absorption

Sleeping next to someone that moves about a lot during their sleep is a sure way to cut yours short due to the motion. A good bed will absorb such movements and keep you undistributed throughout the course of your sleep. A good example would be the memory foam of medium density.

A mattress that satisfies both the air circulation and motion absorption conditions would have what the bed industry terms the "Goldilocks" balance. Not too hot or too cold regardless of how long you sleep on it, and able to keep you asleep comfortably because all motion is isolated to its point of impact.

Bodily Scents

A topic that is the least pleasurable to discuss, but nonetheless we have to go over, our bodies emit smells constantly. More so when we're asleep. Being in contact with a mattress that is taking all the sweat and scents associated with it, for a long time can cause a bed to reek in a few weeks.

Luckily, some scientists have put some thought into this aspect of sleep as well. A good bed will have self-cleaning technology included in the fabric or as a layer of coconut infused foam. Such a pad would give the mattress all the benefits that come with coconut:

• A natural moisture removal system
• Protection from bad smelling germs as it repels them
• A good scent

A bed that comes with such sleep technologies is a sound investment. Buying additional pads to your bed setup can set you back a few hundred dollars. Without any skepticism, that would be a good move towards a night of better sleep, but there are considerations of your current bed that may not go hand in hand with the new layer. Replacing your mattress could be well the best route of action.

Good vs Best Mattresses

A good mattress will be the bare minimum when looking to get some good rest every night, a much better mattress is one that gives your body some therapy for the hard work of carrying you everywhere on a daily basis. Such a mattress, if you sleep on, regardless of how badly your posture has been bent on bad beds, will effect corrective action.

Depending on the area of application, you should look to buy a mattress having carried out some custom research. To explain a bit into this, maybe to make the research easier. Consider how different the sleep requirements of an elderly member of society and that of an active teen would be. Special care, more custom and thought out parameters come to mind when looking to preserve the (in comparison) fragile body profile of the former.

To start with, such a mattress will keep your spinal cord straight while you sleep. The support required to achieve this is such that the mattress depresses proportional to your body's shape. While a lot of pro-foam ads will claim this is only possible with memory foam, it is, in fact, possible with spring coil based beds as well.

Pocket Coil Mattresses

After a long time of sleeping on the networked spring mattresses that use to be the only option back in the days, some research unearthed how separating each coil from the network would benefit sleep. To start with, a more supportive bed based on your body's profile. This is the same as memory foam, only that it is based on pressure and not heat.

A Good Pocket Coil Mattress

By design, the pocket coil mattress is least susceptible to air flow related problems. However, several layers of comfortable topping are required in order to soften the contact between your body and the coils, which are tempered differently in order to provide three levels of responsiveness.

• Very soft,
• Medium,
• and firm

It is not a safe bet to assume that all pocket coil mattresses are of the same firmness. This is true for each mattress too. Different levels of firmness can be implemented across the frame of the mattress. If you've had some back surgery done, it is wise to check with a reputable chiropractor or your doctor for advice as to the kind of support your case requires. No two beds will serve you the same in this situation.

Memory Foam Mattresses

Based on the NASA developed solution for comfortable contact in space flight, the memory foam is the latest sleep technology that has been adopted for some of the best beds on the planet. They work on the premise that the area of contact between you and the mattress experiences some heat exchange. The mattress conforms to the shape of a heat source, to a depression that supports the weight firmly.

Compared to the pocket coil mattress technology, the memory foam size equivalence weighs significantly less with some mattresses coming in at just 500g, even less in low-density foams. Something nearly impossible to achieve with metallic springs coiled over 15cm high and spread over the surface area of a bed.

Some memory foam mattresses have a lifespan of up to a decade, which is a long time considering you'd be spending entire nights laying on them. To say that customers of these products will use them for that long would be too assumptive, however, this is possible where such a mattress is used in hotels or spare bedrooms where contact will guarantee not be on an every night basis.

Nonetheless, the same cannot be expected for spring coil mattresses regardless of how often they are used over the same decade. The recoil in the spring reduces with time, making the bed deform. If you've seen or been on such bed, a central depression would appear and once you lay onto it, moving out would take some effort.

Hybrid Mattresses

With so many good and seemingly bad things found in both types of mattresses, wouldn't it make sense to have one with the best from both ends? That's the thinking that brought about the invention of hybrid mattresses. Synthetic layers of memory foam lined on top of a rack of pocket spring coils. The free air motion that is inherent with spring coil, partnered with the hygienic self-cleaning effects infused in some gel-foam layers makes hybrid mattresses a step closer to the future of comfortable sleep.

Related article: Memory foam mattress vs coil mattress (price, durability, softness, maintenance, Heat Retention )

The Best Mattress For You

The reason why so many companies can co-exist in a market selling a product that has so long a user's lifespan is that the perfect mattress is a preference item. Some people prefer spring coil mattresses with their host of advantages, negotiating and overlooking all the advantages that are so easy to find with a single search online. How you choose the right mattress among all of British Columbia's providers boils down to your personal taste and most important's how comfortable you want to be sleeping for a long time coming.

Related article: Ultimate Buying Guide on Memory Foam Mattress