Confused about what a word means? Don’t be! My glossary of mattress-related terms debunks the jargon:
Pocket sprung mattress
Otherwise known as a spring or pocket spring mattress, these were up to recently the de rigeur mattress type that everyone owned. They have large metal spring in them.
There are some positives and negatives to pocket sprung mattresses, read more here.
Memory foam / foam mattress
Until recently, the only memory foam mattresses you could buy were made by Tempur.
However that changed a couple of years ago, and the market was flooded with new memory foam mattresses promising the world!
Memory foam is basically a special type of foam that ‘hugs’ the body contours and stays shaped for anything between a few minutes to a few days!
Hybrid mattress
A “hybrid” is basically a combined type of mattress that combines the above: a combination of pocket spring and memory foam.
Although, some ‘hybrid’ mattresses don’t actually contain springs now, but alternative materials. For example, the Simba Hybrid does not contain any springs, but a layer of different PU and foam materials.
Read all about hybrid mattresses and if you should buy one, here.
Mattress-in-a-box
As the name suggests, this means that the mattress comes folded up, with the air vacuumed out, and is easy to transport… in a nice stylish box. Once you take off the packaging, the memory foam material will inflate over the course of a couple of hours. The term “mattress-in-a-box company” usually refers to the new, trendy mattress companies like Nectar, Leesa and so on.
