What’s A Cooling Mattress (And What’s Not)
What’s a cooling mattress? It’s a mattress designed to keep you cool at night. It’s a mattress that has been designed and infused with technology to draw heat away from your body to keep it at an ideal sleeping temperature.
There are a number of different materials that can be used in a mattress to help you keep cool, and there are some mattress designs that are more cooling than others. I’ll take you through all the details so you get a strong understanding of what exactly makes a good cooling mattress (and what doesn’t).
To help you get your head around what’s a cooling mattress, this article covers:
- What Mattress Materials Are Cooling?
- What Type Of Mattress Is Best At Cooling? 3 Best Designs
- What’s NOT A Cooling Mattress?
What Mattress Materials Are Cooling?
Mattresses containing the following materials will work hard to keep you cool during the night:
Cover of a good cooling mattress:
You can expect to see a lot of breathable polyester knits in mattresses at all price points. Don’t be put off by the polyester, remember that many high tech, sweat wicking sports clothes are made from it.
Natural fibers that are known for their breathability and soft touch include:
- Bamboo
- Tencel
- High thread count cotton
- Wool (often used in high quality mattresses as a breathable and temperature regulating layer that also acts as the fire barrier just under the cover)
You can also buy mattresses that have cool-to-touch technology woven into the cover or top layer of the mattress. This stuff is amazing. I’ve tested it out across several brands and it does literally feel cold to the touch.
Comfort layers:
- Natural or organic latex (shown above): latex foam is well known for its breathability and ability to help you stay cool at night. It’s naturally derived from the sap of the rubber tree and is also the most durable mattress material.
- Gel infused memory foam: traditional memory foams have a bad reputation for sleeping hot. This is because without any cooling tech and too much contouring, memory foam can trap heat. Luckily, most memory foam mattresses are now infused with cooling gels. These gels absorb heat and transfer it away from the mattress to help you stay cool.
- Copper infused memory foam: another innovation to help keep memory foam cool, copper naturally draws body heat away and out.
- Open cell memory foam: this is a memory foam that basically has bigger air pockets incorporated into the foam.This helps it to be breathable. You’ll want to make sure this foam isn’t a very low density though, as this is what causes sagging.
Support layers:
Without a doubt, a mattress with a coil/spring support system in the core is going to sleep cooler than an all-foam mattress. Air naturally circulates better around and out of coils than it can through a foam base. Modern mattresses usually use a system of individually wrapped pocket coils, which are more durable and better at isolating motion than traditional innerspring units so don’t be put off by them.
That said, there are some all-foam mattresses with adaptations to the core to improve the cooling. These include things like convolutions (looks a bit like an egg crate) or adding grooves into the surface. These adaptations are both there to create somewhere for air to flow out of the mattress.
You can also get mattresses that are purely made from latex. Since latex is breathable and temperature regulating, a mattress that has latex in both the comfort layer and the support core will be cooling.
What Type Of Mattress Is Best At Cooling? 3 Best Designs
A mattress that is made from a combination of cooling supports, cooling comfort layers, and a breathable cover is going to be the best at keeping you cool and comfortable during the night. The
1. A hybrid mattress is going to do a great job of cooling. A hybrid mattress is a mattress that contains a pocket coil support system and has layers of foams in the comfort layer. You will find a variety of hybrids available: there are mattresses with coils and latex, mattresses with coils and gel memory foam, and mattresses with coils, latex, and gel memory foam. Amy of these combinations is a good cooling mattress.
2. As I mentioned above, an all foam mattress can also do a good job at cooling if it has been carefully designed. If it is a memory foam mattress with a polyfoam core, look for several layers of cooling foams at the top, and some sort of ventilation channel or convolutions in the base foam.
3. A full latex mattress will do an excellent job at keeping you cool thanks to its naturally breathable properties.
What’s NOT A Cooling Mattress?
Memory foam without any cooling technology is notorious for trapping heat. This is especially true if the memory foam is a slow responding foam. What this means is that while the memory foam does a good job of cradling pressure points and allowing you to sink in, it can trap heat. Avoid all foam mattresses that have deep layers of memory foam without any cooling.
Ready To Find Some Great Cooling Mattresses? Explore More Top Cooling Mattress Recommendations Here
