A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World
Updated on Mar. 07, 2025
Whether you lie on your back, side or stomach, these are the best mattress picks that are top quality and provide the foundation for a sound night's sleep.
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We spend one-third of our lives sleeping, so what we sleep on matters—cool sheets, supportive pillows, soft comforters, warm blankets and, of course, mattresses themselves. As we’ve all experienced at some point, the best mattress can mean the difference between feeling refreshed in the morning and waking up with aches and pains.
But how do you know which mattress to buy? To make an educated decision, we asked experts to explain the science behind sleep and how your mattress affects it. Then, we tried over 20 mattresses at a variety of price points to determine which stand up to real-world testing—and are worth the investment.
This innerspring mattress comes in two heights and three firmness levels, allowing you to find the version that perfectly meets your needs.
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This Saatva Classic mattress option combines responsive innerspring and plush layers to deliver a supportive yet luxurious sleep. And while our experts agree that innerspring mattresses don’t last as long as foam or latex mattresses, Lewis believes that Saatva is the exception. “Innerspring mattresses tend to wear out faster because coils lose tension over time,” he explains. “While an innerspring bed with sturdy coils (such as the luxury brand Saatva) may last up to 10 years.”
Although “luxury firm” is the most popular comfort level of this classic (five to seven out of 10), stomach sleepers are all about “firm” (eight out of 10), which feels like you’re lying on top of the mattress rather than sinking in.
“Over the course of the first few nights, I woke up well-rested and pain-free. As a side sleeper, my neck and shoulders are the biggest culprits of my sleep problems. Saatva is an absolute dream for how firm, yet cozy, the mattress is,” says tester Madi Koetting in her detailed Saatva mattress review. “After a few weeks, my Saatva mattress became slightly plusher by the night. This was a pleasant surprise, considering how firm it was the first few nights.”
In addition to being comfortable and expert-approved, we should point out that this is more of a traditional mattress than a bed in a box. That’s why Saatva offers free white glove delivery and in-room setup. According to Koetting, who loves the convenience of boxed beds, having this mattress delivered and set up on her existing bed frame was an extra-sweet treat.
Made from entirely organic materials, this mattress has a firm feel that's ideal for back and stomach sleepers.
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Needle-tufted by hand, this 100% certified organic mattress is naturally cushioning and cooling, so it’s soft and luxurious, as well as eco-friendly. Although it’s dream-worthy by itself, the attached European-style pillow top (which costs extra but is totally worth it) adds 2 inches of GOLS organic-certified latex rubber foam, creating a 13-inch-thick oasis for side sleepers.
Better yet, our experts agree that latex mattresses are the most durable. “Latex mattresses tend to last the longest due to their resilience,” says Sosha Lewis, a Certified Sleep Science Coach at Mattress Clarity.
There’s one thing we know for sure: This hybrid mattress proves sustainability and comfort can go perfectly hand in hand, which is why it earned the top spot on our list of the best nontoxic mattresses.
“Vacations aside, I’ve slept on the Avocado Green mattress for an entire year, and I’m thrilled to report that I’m just as happy with it now as I was on the first night,” says tester Megan Wood in her Avocado Green mattress review. “And I sleep better knowing my loved ones aren’t inhaling fire retardants throughout the night.”
That’s right. Every Avocado mattress is screened against 6,500 known and suspected harmful chemicals, so you can sleep soundly knowing that it’s completely free from potentially toxic foams, chemical fire retardants and off-gassing materials.
This affordable mattress will keep you cool, dry and supported while you snooze.
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Self-proclaimed human furnace and tester Emily Way referred to the Bear Pro hybrid mattress as the Goldilocks of mattresses after sleeping on it for over 240 hours. It offers a level of comfort, support and cooling properties that are just right for all types of sleepers. Better yet, it’s nontoxic and has an affordable price tag.
“I received my Bear Pro right at the end of summer into early fall, meaning that I’ve tried it in a range of temperatures. Even on sweltering nights, I have yet to wake up drenched in sweat—a big win for me,” Way raves in her full Bear mattress review. “The cooling gel layer and air-infused coils really do a great job of moving heat out and away from my body at night.” Those cooling properties are courtesy of a layer of cooling gel memory foam, which sits under the mattress’s breathable quilt cover.
Underneath the cooling gel memory foam is a layer of dynamic foam and a number of full, individually encased coils for additional support. This cooling mattress is only offered in a medium-firm feel, though Way argues it’s closer to firm. Admittedly, she wasn’t thrilled with the firmness level at first. However, one night on the Bear Pro Hybrid mattress was enough to change her mind.
“I’m a side and stomach sleeper, while my husband is a back and side sleeper. This normally means that at least one of us is unhappy with the firmness of our mattress,” she explains. “With our old mattress, both of us frequently woke up with back and hip pain. However, the Bear mattress surprised us. It’s supportive, thanks to the coils and firmness, yet also offers enough ‘give’ to cradle the body. It’s actually much, much more comfortable than any other ‘firm’ mattress I’ve tried in the past. Now, I’m a true believer in the importance of a little firmness on a mattress for side sleepers!” And if you’re certain you wouldn’t sleep comfortably on a firmer mattress, you can opt for the pillow-top upgrade.
Additionally, investing in one of the best mattress toppers is also a great way to change the feel of your mattress.
This mattress is made from durable memory foam and is both supportive and budget-friendly.
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Shopping for a mattress is intimidating, especially when you’re on a budget. After all, you don’t want to spend a few hundred (or thousand!) dollars and still feel like you’re sleeping on the ground.
Megan Mowery tested this Zinus Green Tea memory foam mattress which is loaded with cooling gel and green tea-infused layers to help sweep you into dreamland. It’s soft enough to sink into but firm enough to offer adequate support, regardless of whether you sleep on your back, side or stomach. Best of all, it’s the most affordable mattress on our list.
“No matter which position I’m sleeping in, I feel supported and comfortable,” says Mowery in her Zinus mattress review. Even after a year, “the Zinus mattress is still just as comfy to sink into at the end of the day.” It earns its place as one of the best bed-in-a-box mattresses you can buy online (and for a great price).
That said, Mowery points out that this mattress may not be cool enough for hot sleepers. If you’re a hot sleeper, you may want to pair this pick with cooling bed sheets.
This mattress has a medium feel and enhanced lumbar support, making it the ideal choice for side sleepers.
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If you have a larger budget, the Helix Midnight Elite is a smart choice for all types of sleepers. It has a medium firmness level, a 16-inch profile and is made up of five high-density foam layers, which cradle your hips and shoulders in side sleeping positions. It also has two micro coil layers, which promise a restorative sleep experience by providing cushioning comfort and reducing back pressure, and a 2-inch plush quilted pillow top that features built-in cooling technology.
We sent the Helix Midnight Elite to tester Katie Bandurski, who has been sleeping on it for over two years now. The mattress arrived at her door in two separate boxes. One box contained the base, and the other contained a comfort insert that zips into the mattress. In short, there is some assembly required with this mattress. According to Bandurski, if you aren’t happy with the firmness level of your mattress, you can test out a different insert rather than replace the entire thing.
Though Bandurski found the mattress to be too firm for her liking on the first night, it was broken in and aligned with its advertised medium firmness within a month. And two years later, she is as happy as ever with her purchase. “I’m still very happy with the firmness,” she says in her full Midnight Elite mattress review. “It’s not too soft nor too hard, and I can’t say I’ve noticed a major difference from when we first got it.” Best of all, this mattress leaves Bandurski feeling well-rested and has alleviated her neck pain. Moreover, she no longer tosses and turns or wakes up every night.
And if supreme comfort and support isn’t enough to convince you that this is one of the best mattresses on the market, it is made with Oeko-Tex- and CertiPur-US-certified fabrics and foam, aka the mattress contains no heavy metals or harmful chemicals. Now, that’s enough to give anyone the sweetest dreams.
A cooling cover with a plush Euro topper along with three layers of foam atop 8 inches of coils provide maximum comfort and support.
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The Nolah Evolution 15 was a dream come true for our tester, a side sleeper who has a tendency to toss and turn. Bandurski opted for the luxury firm mattress. “As a side sleeper, I’m already putting a lot of pressure on my shoulders and hips. Without proper support, I’m at risk of misalignment and—aches and pains,” she explains her full Nolah mattress review.
Luckily for Bandurski, this 15-inch mattress happens to be designed especially for side sleepers. It boasts an impressive seven layers: an organic cotton and ArcticTex cover that keeps you cool while you sleep, a 2-inch cooling quilted euro topper, 4 inches of foam, 8 inches of support coils and reinforced edge support coils and a 1-inch stabilizing foam foundation—all wrapped in full-height border fabric.
According to Bandurski, the luxury firm support offers the Goldilocks of firmness—not too soft, not too hard. Her husband, who alternates between sleeping on his side and his back, also found the Nolah mattress extremely comfortable. She points out that there is a substantial weight difference between her and her husband, and was impressed by how well the mattress accommodated both of their body types. “I never thought I’d find a mattress that compares to my beloved Helix Midnight Elite, but the Nolah comes pretty close—for a fraction of the price,” she raves.
This smart bed will completely transform the way you sleep.
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Unlike traditional mattresses, the Eight Sleep mattress system offers everything you need to create the ultimate smart mattress system. Tester Daria Smith spent several months sleeping on the Eight Sleep Pod 3 cover and hub and a five-layer queen-size mattress.
The 11-inch mattress has a medium firmness and features a 1-inch airflow top layer, 1-inch cooling gel layer, 1-inch tranquility transition foam, 4-inch FlexSpring technology core and a 4-inch durable base. The Pod 3 cover zips around the mattress and has an active grid containing sensors that remove heat from your bed. The hub, which resembles an old desktop PC and connects to the cover via a double tube, contains a quad-core central processing unit (CPU). Chilled or heated water flows from the hub through the mattress cover to regulate the pod’s temperature. The hub also connects to the Eight Sleep phone app.
After the initial setup, it took Smith some time to get used to the Eight Sleep mattress system. While she was impressed by the fact that she and her partner were able to sleep in the same bed at different temperatures, she didn’t love the medium-firm feel.
“I had difficulty falling asleep on the first night, as I’m used to a soft, cushiony mattress that I ‘sink’ into,” she writes in her Eight Sleep mattress review. “Over time, I’ve adjusted to the mattress, and my sleep score has drastically improved from the first night. However, I wish the Eight Sleep mattress were softer.”
Once she got comfy, Smith was impressed by Eight Sleep’s Autopilot service. Once it learned her sleep habits, it was able to recommend temperatures for different sleep phases and automatically change the mattress system temperature based on her body temperature and room temperature. She was also able to set vibration and thermal alarms, which she preferred over her phone’s alarm. The only catch? “The Autopilot subscription is required and expensive,” writes Smith.
Another thing you may want to consider is the fact that this system requires regular maintenance. This involves filling the pod with water and 3% hydrogen peroxide every two to three months. “If you don’t keep up with maintenance, the hub may stop working or grow bacteria in the pod’s water tubes,” Smith explains. “I wish Eight Sleep stated this more explicitly on its website.”
If you're looking to invest in a well-made mattress, this Saatva option was built to last and provides comfort along the way.
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Cooling memory foam, two firmness options and high quality materials make the Saatva Contour5 our top memory foam mattress pick. This Saatva mattress is constructed with seven layers of memory foam including high-density memory foam and a plush foam core, which help with pressure relief on common pain points, like the shoulders and hips. It also features a breathable, organic cotton cover and is treated with a plant-based antimicrobial solution to stop the growth of mold, bacteria and mildew.
Once we established that this mattress is well-made, we had to determine whether or not it was actually comfortable. We sent a king-size, firm mattress to tester Shannon Ullman, a combination back and side sleeper who shares a bed with her husband and cat.
“This mattress didn’t strike me as a memory foam mattress at first. I was used to the bed-in-a-box memory foam mattress I was currently using, which was super soft and looked like a marshmallow,” she writes in her full Saatva Countour5 review. “In fact, I chose the firm option because my former mattress was way too soft and didn’t provide enough responsiveness when I switched from side to side or side to back.”
Ullman says she felt more supported and cradled by the Saatva Contour5 than she did with her old memory foam mattress. She was especially pleased by its responsiveness and the fact that it helped eliminate the muscle pain she had been experiencing. “I developed a muscle pull in my chest/sternum area. I believe it formed because I had to use all my muscles to toss my body from one side to the other during sleep,” she explains. “After two weeks of sleeping on the Saatva Contour5, the muscle pain in my chest went away (after two years!) I credit the responsiveness of the Saatva to helping me change sleeping positions without stressing my muscles.”
The only thing you may want to consider is the fact that Ullman did not find this mattress to be particularly cooling. “I keep my home temperature at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and I already sleep with linen sheets, which are known to keep body temperatures down. Those various factors may explain why I didn’t particularly notice that I slept cooler with this mattress,” she writes. “I’m not saying that the Saatva Contour5 isn’t cooling, as it was designed to be with its adaptive cooling technology, but I just might be a different kind of sleeper.”
Memory foam and innerspring coils make this a true hybrid mattress.
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The WinkBed mattress features a euro-pillow top with a gel-infused foam layer on top of individually wrapped pocketed coils, making it a true hybrid mattress. It also features patented cooling technology and a eucalyptus-derived Tencel cover that’s cooler than linen and more absorbent than cotton, so you can rest assured you won’t wake up drenched in sweat. WinkBed mattresses are available in four firmness levels and six different sizes. The best part? They start at just $849, which makes them a more affordable option.
“At the end of the day, I can confidently say that the WinkBed mattress has been nothing short of a game-changer in my life. Considering how indecisive I was regarding mattress styles, I thought I would never find the right fit,” says our tester, Dylan Fischer, in his full WinkBed mattress review. “However, the luxury firm has been the perfect in-between option and exactly what I was looking for.”
During testing, Fischer found that the luxury firm option he ordered was ideal for back and stomach sleepers. But he advises side sleepers to consider the softer option. “A big selling point of the mattress is the inclusion of individually wrapped coils, a system that pushes back against greater pressure areas while plying in areas of less pressure,” he explains.
Given the fact that Fischer is the type of sleeper who is constantly shifting from one position to another at night, he ultimately found that this hybrid mattress applies just the right amount of pressure to support his back while still giving it some room to breathe.
Because it’s such an important purchase—not to mention a big investment—buying a mattress can be intimidating. Should you choose a boxed, nontoxic, cooling, memory foam, organic or even a hybrid mattress? The complicated decision is why many of us keep our mattresses past their prime, even though experts recommend replacing them after six or seven years.
So, how do you choose the most efficient sleep setup? “The most important features for a mattress will vary depending on personal preferences and body types,” says Lewis. “However, in general, you will want to pay attention to comfort, support, and material quality. A mattress should keep the spine in a neutral position, match personal comfort needs, and hold up over time.”
Caffrey agrees. “Support, firmness, cooling, and durability matter most. A mattress should keep the spine aligned, match personal comfort preferences, and stay cool enough for uninterrupted sleep,” he shares.
While the type and size of mattress you choose is going depend on your personal preferences, lifestyle and budget, both Lewis and Caffrey agree you should avoid mattresses made with low-density foam, cheap coils and poor edge support. Cheaply made mattresses are likely to break down quickly and lose support. They may also develop uncomfortable sagging or pressure points.
While no mattress is perfect for everyone, specific constructions generally work better for certain types of sleepers.
Getting good quality sleep is essential to overall health and can greatly impact our moods and energy levels throughout the day. To find the best mattresses, we searched for models that provide comfort and support in equal measure and sought options that cater to various sleeping positions. We factored in important criteria like options for firmness, range of sizes and types of materials like memory foam and coils. We considered various customer reviews and then considered additional factors like price, warranty and risk-free sleep trials. Overall, we found that investing in a good quality mattress is worthwhile and makes all the difference in helping you achieve restful sleep.
When it comes to cleaning a mattress, soap and water doesn’t cut it. In fact, you should skip water altogether to avoid mold. Instead, use a vacuum and stain removers as part of your regular maintenance routine. In between cleanings, invest in a solid mattress protector.
The best time is early spring or during a major holiday, like Sleep Week, Memorial Day or Black Friday.
A good rule of thumb is to order a replacement every six to ten years. When you’re ready to move on, recycle the mattress and re-evaluate your sleeping needs to find the best fit.
Warranties vary from company to company, so check the specific website for details. In general, warranties usually cover manufacturing defects or premature sagging. They don’t typically cover normal wear and tear or comfort issues, though most companies have sleep trials to test before you commit.
Our product testers have decades of experience researching and reviewing sleep gear. To date, our team has evaluated mattress toppers, sheets, blankets, comforters, bed cooling systems, and, of course, mattresses. Each mattress featured in this piece was tested in a home environment for at least a month, and many have been long-term tested for over a year. Our goal is to help readers find a mattress that meets their sleep needs and provides excellent value.
We also consulted two sleep experts to aid us in our search for the best mattress. Dan Caffrey, a Certified Sleep Science Coach at Sleepopolis and Sosha Lewis, a Certified Sleep Science Coach at Mattress Clarity shared their expertise on what to look for in a mattress as well as what you should avoid.
Nina Derwin is a commerce updates editor for Reader’s Digest, Taste of Home and Family Handyman. She has experience researching and reviewing various items to help shoppers find the best products on the market. She researched and updated this piece.
