Revitalising a mattress with a topper

This heading may be slightly misleading because you cannot turn an old and lumpy mattress into a new and bouncy one. However, mattress toppers can improve mattresses and change the way that they feel. Here is what a topper “is” and “can do”.

Firstly, a topper is placed over the top of a mattress – hence its name. It can be held in place by straps or elastic corner bands and its position is secured when the cover sheet is placed over it.

Toppers can be made of all kinds of fillers and this is where their advantages come to the fore.

Most people buy fairly cheap beds that use springs, normally open coil springs where each spring reacts with its adjacent counterparts.

Adding a topper to a mattress like this can add an additional bedding performance material to the bed.

Many toppers use one of the memory foam materials as a filler, with their slow recovery springyness and unique trait of shaping around whoever is sleeping on them.

The outcome of this is that a spring based bed can be transformed into something more like a multi material bed composed of both springs and memory foam. Beds like this cost a lot of money and the use of a topper can make this transformation very cheap indeed.

The reason why you would do this is not to make your mattress last longer, but to give it the qualities of a superior bed, but at a fraction of the price.

Toppers are not only filled with memory foam. They may have fillers of feathers and down, regular foam or organic materials like wool. This opens up a lot of choice and it means that you can really customise the way that your mattress feels.

Back support chair

In the UK at least, the reverse side of the rear page of many magazines like TV guides are covered with advertisements for what are described as “back care” chairs.

Like the term “orthopedic chair”, “back care chair” can mean a number of diverse and vague things, but what it is really suggesting is a seating system that offers the best type of support to the back. For this reason these back-care chairs are often straight backed with a high seat, good supportive arms and bolster either side of the backrest.

This kind of design is comfortable, it reduces stresses and strains on the back and the higher height of the seat makes them easy to sit into or stand up from.

Most back care chairs have visible legs. This is primarily because of the slightly higher seat height. By having open legs (and not a completely solid base) the chair looks lighter and its extra height is disguised.

Variations on back supportive seating

Most of these chairs look pretty similar, but some will have recliner features. These may see a padded leg rest project out from beneath the seat, or a “full recline” where the backrest tilts too. When this is the case there as subtle levers hidden in the arms or on the outside of the chair’s main body.



The riser recliner chair is the other popular option. This type of seat is motorized and tilts the padded seat forward in an angled way that helps someone stand up or sit down. This kind of chair is great for those who find standing and sitting hard, but they are comfortable into the bargain. Chairs of this design can be called lift and tilt chairs and this page http://www.riseandrecline.co.uk will tell you more about them. This site has pictures and descriptions of how these aids work and may be useful to the elderly or those who have trouble getting around.

The final type of back chair is the high backed model which is normally an aspect of all back-care chairs. The high back gives superior support to the upper back, neck and head and can help avoid a stiff neck if someone falls asleep whilst in a seated position. If offers greater purchase when getting up or sitting down and, in reality, is a good feature of any and all chairs, be they designed for health or comfort.