The time to buy a bed

With the holiday season now over the next couple of months tend to be one of the boom periods when it comes to buying or replacing furniture and household goods.

By November, people are thinking about Christmas, but September and October tend to see increases in the sales of sofas, chairs, tables and of course beds, mattresses and other items of bedding.

For this reason prices are often down, the manufacturers and retailers “up” their advertising and promotion, and importantly there are many good deals to be had.

Right now memory foam is the big seller. There are a number of reasons for this that range from its fashionable popularity to some very cheap prices, but these should be reasons to make you think twice rather than to buy impulsively.

Visco elastic memory foam has a number of very valuable sleeping properties, however these properties are rarely found on the budget mattresses that you see in clearance sales. A good memory foam mattress will cost you hundreds of dollars or pounds Stirling, so don’t be fooled by a $99 or £99 price tag. A mattress of that quality will not be true memory foam.

If want a memory foam mattress. Look for something that gives you a foam density and check out the manufacturer and even the country of origin. The quality of memory foams varies massively and in the world of bedding you usually get what you pay for. In other words, if you buy cheap you will end up with a low quality sub-standard product that will quickly lose its ability to recover and its lifespan will be limited.

Also, don’t assume that memory foam is best, this is a fallacy. Some people like the unusual feel of memory foam, but others (like me) hate it.

Spring based mattresses have been around for a long time and there are many good reasons for this. They recover well, have long trouble free life spans and importantly they have a tried and tested existence. This means that they are well developed, available in all forms and price ranges from the budget to the executive and they remain the overall best seller in the bed industry.

When it comes to buying a new bed the best advice is to research before you buy. Look at the different types of mattress and bed frame that fall within your budget. Then evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. If you can test any out then do so, but don’t just lie on a bed for 2 minutes, this will tell you nothing. You need to spend at least 30 minutes on a bed to get any idea of its suitability and even this amount of time will only give you the most obvious of guides (e.g. if the bed is too hard or soft).