Mattress Materials
Coils/Springs
Memory Foam
Memory foam mattresses have become very popular in the last 10 years as a serious option to a traditional coil spring mattress. Memory foam is the common term for visco-elastic polyurethane foam, a product developed by NASA in the 1970s. A memory…
Air
Air mattresses are a very good choice if you are looking for the cheapest mattress option for guests or if you are tight on space and want to store your mattress during the day. One other advantage of an air mattress is that you can control the…
Latex
Latex mattresses have become popular recently as an alternative to memory foam mattresses especially in Europe. Latex mattresses recover faster from indentations and dont conform as well as memory foam mattresses and they are not as warm to the skin…
Natural/Organic

The most popular mattress material is still the traditional coil spring mattress.  These mattresses are made with a pattern of heavy metal springs that provide the support for the mattress.  It is possible to cover coil spring mattresses with a variety of materials to adjust the firmness and feel of the mattress.  You can find a high quality coil spring mattress at a very good price in all sizes and firmness levels.  There are many factors that go into determining the quality of a coil mattress and you should not just go by the number of coil springs.  In fact the amount of metal in the core of the mattress is a much better judge and you can have fewer heavier coil springs that provide a better mattress foundation than a lot of light weight coils. 

There are some very good alternative mattress materials to consider as well including memory foam, latex, and air.  See our review of Memory Foam Mattresses here.  Some people sleep much better on Memory Foam mattresses but you have to test them to know for sure.  Latex can be very good for people with allergies unless of course you have a latex allergy.  See our review of Latex mattresses here.  Air mattresses are a very good choice if you are looking for the cheapest mattress option for guests or if you are tight on space and want to store your mattress during the day.  See our review of air mattresses here.  One other advantage of an air mattress is that you can control the firmness of your mattress so you can tune to your desired firmness by simply adding more air into the mattress.  The negatives for air mattresses are that they may not offer the full comfort of some of the other mattress types and they will probably not last nearly as long as a traditional coil spring or memory foam mattress because they have moving parts and the potential for leaks.  Some people also want to buy natural/organix mattresses but this is nearly impossible in practice.  Almost all mattresses are treated with chemiclas so that they can meet the fire resistance standards required by law.