When should you change your mattress

How long should you wait before retiring your mattress?

Most people spend around six to eight hours a day sleeping, that’s around a third of your life spent in bed. Your mattress isn’t immune to wear and tear. Eventually, you’ll get to a point where your mattress is no longer providing the support it should and starting to be uncomfortable. To the point where it’s no longer good for you to continue sleeping on it.

The springs have sprung

Most mattresses rely on metal springs of one sort or another to provide support to its slumberers and springs will start to lose their ‘springiness’ after a certain number of compressions. Mattresses sagging in the middle are a visual sign of springs losing their bounce and raised areas indicate that a spring is wearing through it’s cushioning. Chances are that you won’t need either of these visual cues though, you’ll almost certainly have noticed how uncomfortable your mattress feels. You may also have found yourself waking up with an aching neck or back, pointing to uneven support while sleeping.

Hygiene in decline

When you sleep, your normal bodily processes continue unabated. You still breathe, sweat and shed skin cells. Even with regular bedding changes and fastidious vacuuming in between swapping the sheets, your mattress will end up absorbing some of the moisture from your body and trapping dead cells. You can’t fit your mattress in your washing machine and as such, it will never be as clean as the day you first slept on it. An older mattress can contain skin cells, dust, dust mites, bacteria, mould and spores. A cocktail which may well be a nightmare for anyone with allergies and an uncomfortable truth for anyone else.

You feel every move your partner makes

A mattress that’s past its best will no longer provide the support it once did. If you find that your partner’s movements while asleep are increasingly annoying, it may be your mattress that’s to blame not your significant other. A worn out mattress is likely to make at least one of you uncomfortable, which results in more tossing and turning while asleep. The reduced support also means that the other partner is likely to notice this movement more than they would if the mattress was newer. It’s a double whammy and a sure sign that your mattress needs replacing.

How long since you last changed?

Wherever you look, you’ll find arbitrary timescales advising when you should change your mattress, this could be as little as five years, or as long as ten. In reality, though, a mattress should be changed when it needs changing. How long a mattress lasts is determined by a number of factors; the quality of manufacture, the materials used, the size of the sleeper and a range of other factors, so a time limit is only the roughest of rough guides. Chances are, if you’re asking the question about how long you should wait before changing, then you’re probably already noticing signs that your existing mattress is past it’s best and should probably consider retiring it.

If you need advice on which of our matchless mattress will best suit your needs, get in touch with us to discuss your requirements.