In partnership with 3Z.
The online mattress industry is competitive and innovative. Bedding companies are constantly rolling out new models with unique materials and designs to offer superior comfort and support.
With each new year, there are fresh offerings that cater to every type of sleeper. There are also excellent deals, as retailers launch new products and clear out old inventories.
In 2024, are new products taking the mattress industry by storm or are familiar favorites still the best of the best? It’s time to find out. At the Quality Edit, we’re constantly testing and reviewing new mattresses, and we’ve prepared our top picks for 2024.
Looking for general advice on mattress shopping? Confused about firmness ratings or terms like “hybrid mattress”? Scroll to the bottom of this article for tips on How to Choose the Right Mattress for Your Needs.
Best Mattress 2024: Our Top Picks
- Best Overall Mattress: Helix Midnight Luxe
- Best Cooling Mattress: Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe
- Best Mattress for Side Sleepers: Nolah Evolution
- Best Mattress for Back Pain: Bear Elite Hybrid
- Best Hybrid Mattress: Leesa Sapira Hybrid
- Best Mattress for Plus-Size Sleepers: Titan Plus
- Best Firm Mattress: Plank Firm
- Best Organic Mattress: Birch Luxe
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Best Overall Mattress
- Mattress Type: Hybrid
- Firmness: 5.5/10
- Trial Period: 100 nights
- Warranty: 15 years
Why We Love This Mattress
When a bedding brand presents a “luxe” version of a mattress, they’re indicating a high-end offering with advanced features and luxurious materials. Luxe mattresses are often bigger and better versions of existing designs. The Helix Midnight Luxe, for example, is an upgraded version of the original Helix Midnight, the brand’s top seller. The luxe version is thicker, slightly softer, and offers extra support for sleepers who tend to have a hard time getting comfy in most beds.
The Midnight Luxe is a whopping 13.5” tall, featuring a core of over 1,000 individually wrapped coils under three layers of responsive memory foam. The medium-firm feel provides an incredible blend of cushioning and support. This luxurious balance is only possible in a thick luxe mattress that’s perfectly engineered to distribute motion and weight. Zoned lumbar support provides extra firmness around the hips and a touch more cushioning around the head and shoulders area.
The Helix Midnight Luxe offers superior cooling, edge support, and motion transfer isolation. Regarding overall comfort, this mattress is simply as good as it gets—the perfect balance of support and comfort.
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Best Cooling Mattress
- Mattress Type: Hybrid
- Firmness: available in soft (3/10), medium (5/10), or firm (7/10)
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Warranty: 10 years
Why We Love This Mattress
For those of us who are “hot sleepers,” cooling is a top priority in a mattress. There are many causes of overheating during the night, from humidity to medication to sleeping with a partner who prefers a different room temperature. The best solution to this sleep-stealing concern is a mattress that permits airflow through its core and releases heat from its surface.
The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe is our top pick for cooling because it’s an incredibly cozy mattress with advanced temperature regulation features that really work. The extra-thick 8” coil core provides heavy-duty pressure relief and support. Open-cell technology enhances airflow through the core. Next, a gel-infused memory foam layer contains cooling fibers that wick away body heat. Finally, a GlacioTex cooling cover uses high thermal conductivity to literally pull heat away from your body and release it into the air.
If cooling is among your top concerns, start your mattress search with the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe. Plus, this 13.25” mattress is super comfy for all sleep styles, thanks to its availability in three firmness options: soft, medium, or firm.
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Best Mattress for Side Sleepers
- Mattress Type: Hybrid
- Firmness: available in plush soft (4.5/10), luxury firm (6.5/10), or firm (7.5/10)
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Lifetime Warranty
Why We Love This Mattress
While thin mattresses are suitable for some sleepers, thicker designs indicate higher quality, durability, and a more comfortable sleep surface. A thick construction makes a bed stronger and more supportive. This is especially helpful for couples, larger adults, and anyone who experiences aches and pains on thin mattresses.
The Nolah Evolution 15” is one of the tallest mattress designs you’ll come across, and that extra thickness is put to good use. An 8” coil core provides three separate support zones as well as tight, resilient edge support. Then, three separate foam layers, a heat escape gusset, and a cooling quilted Euro topper provide comfort and cooling.
We selected the Nolah Evolution 15” as 2024’s best mattress for side sleepers thanks to its zoned coil system that provides extra pressure relief around the hips. Nolah hits the perfect blend of comfort and support that helps side sleepers get comfy without that “stuck” feeling that sometimes occurs on soft mattresses.
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Best Mattress for Back Pain
- Mattress Type: hybrid
- Firmness: available in soft (5/10), medium (6/10), or firm (7/10)
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Lifetime Warranty
Why We Love This Mattress
The Bear Elite Hybrid is a strong, thick hybrid mattress with a five-zone coil core. This mattress is engineered to prevent back pain. Each support zone aligns with a pressure point region of the body. The highest-gauge coils align with the lumbar region to maintain a healthy spinal alignment.
Most mattresses aim for a blend of comfort and support, but few approach this goal as systematically as the Bear Elite Hybrid. Lying on this mattress, you detect gentle upward pressure around the hips and shoulders, refusing to let them sink in. Meanwhile, your legs, ribs, arms, and head feel gently cradled.
If you suffer from sleep-related pain in your lower back or hips, the Bear Elite Hybrid should be on your short list of mattresses to consider.
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Best Hybrid Mattress
- Mattress Type: Hybrid
- Firmness: 6.5/10
- Trial Period: 100 nights
- Warranty: 10 years
Why We Love This Mattress
Hybrid mattresses include a core of springs or coils along with thick layers of comfort foam. The Leesa Sapira Hybrid is a perfect example of why hybrid designs have become so popular: it’s more supportive than most pure foam mattresses, but much softer and cozier than traditional innerspring designs.
The Leesa Sapira Hybrid is ideal for sleepers who like a “not too soft, not too firm” feel. You’ll enjoy relaxing cushioning around the hips and shoulders, with none of the deep sinking or stickiness that makes it hard to move around on some memory foam mattresses.
This bed’s hybrid design is also great for temperature regulation, with high-airflow foam that maintains a cool-to-the-touch surface. The viscose and rayon-based cover provides additional cooling by wicking away heat and moisture. It’s also one of the most beautiful, touchable mattress covers that we’ve reviewed.
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Best Mattress for Plus-Size Sleepers
- Mattress Type: Hybrid
- Firmness: 9/10
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Warranty: 10 years
Why We Love This Mattress
Twenty-eight percent of Americans weigh over 200 lbs, but many mattresses aren’t designed to accommodate plus-sized bodies. Whether you’re extra curvy, tall and lean, or bulked up with muscle, your large body needs proper support for healthy sleep. When a plus-size sleeper uses a mattress that wasn’t built for them, the bed is likely to crater in the middle, sag around the edges, and provide unbalanced support that leads to hip and back pain.
Fortunately, a few leading brands have developed mattresses specifically for large bodies. The best of the best is the Titan Plus, designed to handle up to 1,000 pounds of body weight. This sturdy mattress includes a 100% steel coil core, dense pressure-relieving foam, and a quilted gel foam top that maintains a cool surface.
At 9/10 firmness, the Titan Plus is one of the stiffest mattresses on the market. This supportive feel prevents the sinking around the hips that plus-size sleepers experience on weaker beds.
Despite its impressive construction, the Titan Plus is surprisingly affordable, with a queen size priced under $1k.
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Best Firm Mattress
- Mattress Type: Foam
- Firmness: firm side (8/10) and extra firm side (10/10)
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Warranty: 10 years
Why We Love This Mattress
One of the most common complaints among customer reviews of mattresses is “not as firm as I hoped for.” Some sleepers, especially back and stomach sleepers, require extreme firmness. A super-firm bed stays level around the hips and keeps the spine in alignment, thus preventing pain in the lower back and hips.
If you find every other mattress to be too soft, the Plank Firm is your last hope (aside from sleeping on a wood floor). This flippable bed offers a firm side (8/10 firmness) and an extra firm side (10/10). The firm side offers a traditionally stiff sleep surface. On the extra firm side, you sleep directly on the dense core of support foam, with no extra layer of padding. This surface offers just a touch of softness and pressure relief with zero squishing or sinking.
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Best Organic Mattress
- Mattress Type: Latex hybrid
- Firmness: 6.5/10
- Trial Period: 120 nights
- Warranty: 25 years
Why We Love This Mattress
Do you know what’s inside your mattress? Many beds contain fiberglass and other harmful chemicals. That’s why clean, safe materials are one of the top benefits of shopping with a high-quality retailer. Leading mattress brands avoid toxic chemicals and earn certifications to verify the use of clean, safe, environmentally friendly materials.
Even among leading brands, there are major differences in materials. For example, even high-quality memory foams contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that emit off-gassing odors when the product is removed from its packaging.
If you’re insistent on the safest, cleanest, organic bedding materials, consider the Birch Luxe. This luxury mattress includes layers of natural latex, organic wool, and quilted organic cotton. The hybrid design features a core of up to 1,000 pocketed coils.
Birch earns every relevant certification to verify the quality and safety of materials. These include GREENGUARD Gold, eco-INSTITUT, and the use of Rainforest Alliance-certified latex.
Whether or not you prioritize organic materials, the Birch Luxe is a fabulously comfortable mattress for all sleep styles, thanks in large part to its thick layer of latex. Latex is a luxury material that offers the soothing pressure relief of foam along with resilient support to prevent sinkage and back pain.
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How to Choose the Right Mattress for Your Needs
Buying a mattress online can be a bit scary, especially if you’ve never thought carefully about what sort of mattress surface is best for your body and sleep style.
Fortunately, once you know a few key terms, it’s easy to understand mattress product description lingo. Here’s a quick primer on the must-know concepts for buying a mattress online: mattress type, firmness ratings, and sleep style.
Mattress Type: Hybrid, Latex, and Memory Foam Mattresses
Modern mattresses use all sorts of materials and constructions, but most designs fall into one of these four categories:
- Innerspring Mattress: a steel coil core topped with thin padding
- Foam Mattress: several layers of foam, including a high-density support layer and top layers of memory foam or other soft foam
- Hybrid Mattress: thick foam layers on top of a coil core
- Latex Mattress: latex foam instead of memory foam, often in a hybrid design with a coil core
These days, hybrid and all-foam mattresses are most common. Meanwhile, innerspring mattresses are going out of style and are rarely sold online.
Foam mattresses are often (but not always) softer and more pressure-relieving, while hybrid designs are often more supportive and offer superior motion isolation (movements on one side of the bed are less noticeable on the other side). Hybrids are also ideal for those who sleep hot because air can flow through the coil core. Memory foam mattresses tend to trap heat, but are sometimes infused with materials like gel or copper that help wick away warmth and moisture.
Meanwhile, latex is a breathable luxury material that’s soft like memory foam but slightly more stiff and bouncy.
Firmness Levels
Most online mattress companies use an unofficial 10-point firmness scale to describe their products. The mattress firmness scale works like this:
- 10/10 describes maximum firmness (“stiff as a board”)
- 6.5/10 is the industry standard for a medium-firm mattress
- 1/10 would indicate an extremely soft mattress that sinks deeply under body weight
Develop an estimate of your ideal firmness range and always check the firmness rating of any mattress that you consider purchasing.
Sleeping Positions and Body Type
Your preferred sleep position is an important consideration when choosing a mattress. The four sleep styles are:
- Back sleepers
- Stomach sleepers
- Side sleepers
- Combination sleepers (alternating positions throughout the night)
Back and stomach sleepers tend to require a firmer mattress that keeps the spine in alignment. Meanwhile, side sleepers and combination sleepers often prefer a softer mattress that cradles the pelvis.
Body type matters, too. Heavy-bodied sleepers generally require thicker, firmer mattresses that don’t compress deeply under pressure. Those with lighter body weights often enjoy the feel of a medium-soft foam mattress that doesn’t require heavy pressure to provide contouring around sensitive pressure points.
Find Your Best Night’s Sleep
A good bed is a worthy investment. If 2024 is the year you finally say goodbye to your withering, caved-in old mattress, then we wish you luck. We hope that this guide helps bring great sleep quality back to your bedroom.
