Best Mattress for Seniors

We all understand the importance of a good night’s sleep. But as we age, natural changes in our sleep cycle and the increasing prevalence of chronic health conditions can make getting a restful night of sleep more difficult.

Your mattress matters. The right bed—one that suits the unique needs of seniors—can mean the difference between a full 8 to 9 hours of sleep or a restless night of uncomfortable tossing and turning.

We’ve picked our top 7 best mattresses for seniors and outlined what makes these beds the best choice for adults over the age of 65. We also highlight the challenges seniors face when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep and take a look at the most important mattress purchase considerations for seniors.

How to Choose a Mattress for Seniors

What to Look for in a Mattress

Buying a new mattress represents a significant purchase for most adults. This is especially true for seniors who are more likely to experience recurring aches and pains in their backs and joints. The right mattress can make getting into and out of bed easier, promote spinal alignment, and relieve painful pressure points in sensitive areas.

Unfortunately, mattress companies often use confusing industry jargon in their marketing materials. This can make finding the right mattress harder than it needs to be. Let’s take a look at what really matters when choosing a mattress.

• Price: As with any large purchase, price is an important consideration, especially for seniors who are often living on fixed incomes.
• Quality Materials: The quality of the materials used to make your mattress will determine both its comfort and longevity. A mattress made with high-quality materials will offer superior durability and provide better performance.
• Firmness Level: When choosing a mattress one of the most important considerations is the firmness level. The firmness level tells you how hard or soft a bed will feel. We score firmness on a scale from 1 to 10. Your preferred firmness level will depend on your weight as well as your sleep position. Generally, a medium to medium firm mattress will provide an optimal level of support for the majority of seniors.
• Pressure Relief: This refers to the ability of a mattress to reduce tension and impact when bearing weight. A mattress with significant pressure relief can cushion and accommodate pressure points and promote proper spinal alignment. Seniors, in particular, often require a mattress with excellent pressure relief to help reduce pressure points in key areas like the hips and shoulders and help alleviate back and joint pain.
• Edge Support: This is an important yet often overlooked feature. A mattress with excellent edge support will be able to hold your body weight even at its perimeter as opposed to sinking at the edges. Edge support increases the usable area of the mattress and also makes getting up from your bed easier for aging adults who may have reduced mobility.
  Contouring: This refers to the ability of a mattress to mold or contour to your form when under the weight of your body. Contouring contributes to overall comfort as well as pressure relief.
• Temperature Regulation: Different types of mattress materials will absorb and retain your body heat to varying degrees. Poor temperature regulation can cause uncomfortable overheating during the night. Several mattress attributes including materials, thickness, and airflow can affect temperature regulation. Seniors tend to prefer mattresses that absorb less body heat and sleep relatively cool.
• Ease of Movement: This refers to how easy it is to move around on a mattress. Mattresses with more resilience or bounce provide greater ease of movement which can be advantageous for seniors with limited mobility. However, bouncy mattresses will also transfer more motion and may be disruptive to couples sleeping together.
• Mattress Type: Mattresses are placed into different categories corresponding to their materials and construction. Most mattresses on the market fit into one of five types: hybrid, innerspring, latex, airbed, and foam. Each mattress type has its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages. We’ll discuss the different types of mattresses in more detail in the next section.

What Type of Mattress is Best for Seniors?

Each mattress type—defined by its internal construction and materials—has its own advantages and disadvantages. While some mattress types may overall offer features that are better for seniors, there can be variation within each category depending on the brand and specific model. Some types also have a greater range of diversity than others. That’s why it’s important to understand the characteristics of each type of mattress and carefully consider which will best suit your needs.

Hybrid

Definition: Hybrid mattresses contain an innerspring support core made with pocketed coils and a substantial comfort system made with another material such as foam or latex.
Best of Both Worlds: Hybrids aim to combine mattress materials to capture the benefits of foam/latex as well as traditional metal coils while minimizing each material’s potential disadvantages. That means hybrid mattresses offer a great combination of features for seniors—they’re responsive with excellent airflow while providing a quiet sleep experience and contouring that relieves pressure points.

Innerspring

Definition: Innerspring mattresses represent the oldest type in the mattress industry. They are composed of a core of metal coils and an outer covering layer. While the outer layer may be made of foam, latex, cotton, or polyester, it usually does little to change the feel of the mattress. Innerspring mattresses tend to be highly resilient or bouncy.
Low Price Point: As innerspring mattresses have waned in popularity, they tend to represent the most inexpensive, entry-level model offered by mattress retailers. Unfortunately, since the completely coiled construction makes innersprings difficult to compress and ship cheaply, most online retailers do not offer traditional innerspring mattress models.

Latex

Definition: Latex mattresses are constructed entirely with latex. Most online retailers use natural latex made from rubber trees. However, you may also come across mattresses made with synthetic or blended latex.
Cool, Responsive, and Contouring: Latex mattresses provide moderate contouring—they conform to the shape of your body and alleviate painful pressure points without letting you sink too deeply into the mattress surface. Unlike foam mattresses, latex tends to sleep cool and provide greater durability. All of these features make latex a great choice for seniors.

Airbed

Definition: Airbeds, not to be confused with temporary air mattresses, are constructed with a support core that contains an air-filled chamber. The sleeper can add or remove air with a remote or smartphone app to adjust the firmness level. The comfort and transitional layers of an airbed mattress can be made from different materials including memory foam and latex.
Customizable Sleep Experience: The main advantage of an airbed is its level of adjustability. This is particularly beneficial for seniors who may need to adjust their bed’s firmness as joint aches come and go. Most airbeds come with two air chambers on each side so that couples can adjust each side of the bed separately. Additional chambers along the length of the bed in some models allow you to adjust the firmness for different parts of the body.

Foam

Definition: Foam mattresses are constructed entirely out of foam. Different types of foam are typically layered to create an upper comfort layer and a more dense, lower support core. Memory foam is one of the most common materials used in foam mattresses. Polyurethane foam (polyfoam) is another popular material. Latex is sometimes used among the layers, but foam mattresses will not contain coils.
Superior Contouring: All-foam mattresses are the best choice when it comes to contouring, the ability to hug the shape of your body. This is an especially important feature for seniors as it promotes pressure relief in major joint regions such as the hips and shoulders. However, all-foam mattresses tend to have less than ideal temperature regulation.

How Does Age Affect Sleep?

When choosing the best mattress for seniors, it’s important to consider how age affects sleep. A common belief is that our sleep needs decline as we age. While it’s true that the amount of time we need to sleep each night declines from infancy onwards, this trend levels off once we reach adulthood.

That means seniors still need around eight hours of sleep for optimal health. However, the process of aging introduces some unique challenges that can make it more difficult to get the right amount of sleep each night. So how exactly does age affect sleep?

While the amount of sleep we need stays the same during adulthood, our sleep patterns change as we age. Age-related changes in sleep patterns include:

• Advanced sleep timing: older adults tend to experience an advance of sleep schedule to earlier hours, meaning they feel tired earlier in the evening and wake up earlier in the morning.
• Increased number of nightly awakenings: As we age, we tend to wake up more frequently and have a more difficult time falling back asleep, causing an increase in time spent awake during the night.
• Shortened nightly sleep duration: As a result of more time spent awake during the night, older adults tend to sleep less each night.
• Decreased slow wave sleep: More time spent awake during the night also causes older adults to spend less time in the phases of deep, slow wave sleep.
• Increased frequency of daytime naps: To catch up on lost sleep during the night, older adults increase the time they spend napping during the day. But, unfortunately, napping late in the day can also disrupt your sleep schedule and reduce your ability to sleep through the night.

In addition to the natural changes in sleep patterns, seniors are also more likely to suffer from health conditions that disturb restful sleep.

• Arthritis: This chronic condition can cause stiffness, swelling, and pain in the joints.
• Sleep apnea: Older adults are more likely to suffer from sleep apnea, a sleep disorder in which breathing stops and starts throughout the night and affects the quality of sleep.
• Neurological and cognitive conditions: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other forms of dementia have been linked to higher rates of insomnia, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders.
• Diabetes and prostate problems: These and other conditions that seniors commonly experience can lead to frequent nighttime urination, thereby interrupting regular sleep.

Seniors face more hurdles when it comes to getting a full night of restful sleep. But good sleep habits can help balance the disturbances that come with age. This includes the mattress you choose.

The right mattress can make a difference. By carefully choosing a mattress that meets the unique needs of aging adults, you can create a better sleep environment that helps you get the rest you need each night.

Last Things to Consider with a Mattress for Seniors

Now let’s take a look at a few final items that are also important to consider as a senior buying a new mattress. Here we’ll cover how firmness, budget, and warranties should inform your mattress purchase.

Which Mattress Firmness is Best for Seniors?

As is typically the case, the best level of mattress firmness will depend on the sleeper’s weight, sleep position, as well as personal preferences. However, seniors are more likely to experience chronic aches and pains in the back, hips, and major joints. As a result, older adults may want to stay away from overly firm mattresses which can create painful pressure points for already tender joints. Medium soft, medium, and medium firm mattresses that offer moderate contouring are likely to be the best choices for seniors.

How Can I Get Relief On a Budget?

Seniors are often on a fixed income and the potential price tag of a new, high-quality mattress can seem daunting. Fortunately, with increased competition from online mattress retailers, it’s become much easier to find a mattress that fits the unique needs of seniors and their budgets. All of the mattresses we’ve reviewed for seniors can be purchased online and we included several budget-friendly models.

How Much of an Investment Do I Need to Make?

Although mattress prices are rather straightforward these days, buying a new mattress is still a significant purchase. The mattresses on our list of best mattresses for seniors range from $1199 to $4099 for a queen size mattress.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that mattresses are a long term purchase, typically lasting a minimum of 6 years. Moreover, sleep is an integral component of a healthy lifestyle. Weighing how closely a mattress does or does not meet your specific needs as a sleeper should be as important of a consideration in buying a mattress as its price.

Mattress Warranty and Other Policies

One way to protect your investment is to make sure your mattress purchase is covered with a sleep trial and a warranty. Sleep trials give you time to test out a new mattress first hand for a variable period of typically 90 days or more. If you’re not satisfied with your purchase, you can return the mattress within the trial period for a full refund.
Warranties protect you from manufacturing defects. While you still need to take care of your mattress, a warranty may allow you to receive a partial refund or receive a replacement mattress if yours begins to fall apart prematurely. All of the mattresses on our list of best mattresses for seniors come equipped with a sleep trial and warranty coverage.