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I remember this discussion from a few months ago--you may want to search the site for that thread. I would go with the regular mattress for the reasons you describe. A nice featherbed provides the comfort you're looking for, and can be fluffed and cleaned when necessary. The really important thing, as far as durability is concerned, is that whatever you get, make sure you can flip it. Manufacturers have been marketing "no-flip" mattresses, like that's a good thing, but what it means is they can scrimp on the materials (by not putting cushioning on both sides) then sell it at a premium because they're giving you a benefit (Never has to be flipped!). When you buy a no-flip mattress, you're reducing its longevity by half. Some mfgs make double-sided pillowtops; I'm not sure these would be within your budget however.

OK, so the reason I remember this thread is because it is the exact same question from the exact same questioner. What gives? also, I have to say that for the second time I was the first to respond, and I basically said the exact same thing in June.

Four years on a top-of-the-line Sealy, and no hints of lumps. (If I had to do it over again, I'd go memory foam, though.)

BTW, mine is advertised as "no flip" and has a pillotop on BOTH sides, anyhow. I think it was about $1000 on very heavy discount for a queen.

I bought a 3000 Sealy no-flip 7 years ago. After 3 years I felt like it got a little lopsided. My level said I was crazy, but there's something a little uncomfortable about it as time goes by. I have a cabin in the woods and in that I bough an IKEA Forsbo Foam mattress (at 600 their highest priced mattress) and a Tuvebo topper for 249. It is the most comfortable mattress I've ever had, on par with the Heavenly bed. FWIW.

I have a Simmons Bootyrest and yes it has depressions from where my partner and I sleep. We've had it for 2 years.

Also, they put a velour cover on it, and as you know, velour only smooths one way. So our fitted sheet creeps accross the bed every night, and every night before bed we have to pull it back. Simmons doesn't cover the cover in their warantee so we're stuck with it.

i've had a sealy pillow top for a 3 years and have not noticed lumping. i paid about 1000 for mine.

my partner bought one with a pillow top that unzips (at a discount from a department store) but that one suffered from some lumpiness after he laundered the pillow top and put it back on. i'd stay away from any that allow you to unzip the pillow top.

if i had to do it over again, though, i would go for a good mattress then put a feather bed over it.

We've had a pillowtop mattress for three years now and so far, no lumps!

A Bootyrest pillowtop yes. And it did feel heavenly in the store. It's a good mattress. But next time I'm going with Pure Rest(http://www.purerest.com/mattresspage.htm.

I've had the Westin Heavenly Bed for just over a year, and yes, depressions formed pretty quickly. It is not double-sided but we tried flipping it anyway - the other side was quite firm, which made me happy as I like firmer beds. Anyway, it helped work out the depressions on the pillow-top side, however if you're not willing to switch from soft to firm every so often, I wouldn't recommend it. Also, it's expensive.

i can't tell you about pillowtops but i can vote for the firm mattress with featherbed option. i've used this combo for years and it's great on a number of levels: i can remove the featherbed & have it cleaned, i can replace featherbed without having to replace the mattress and if it gets too hot for a featherbed (i actually find that surprisingly, the featherbed wicks away moisture & keeps me cool) i can remove it. It's like sleeping in a cloud! i LOVE my featherbed. i did try a memory foam topper and it made me sweat.

My husband and I have a white lotus futon mattress on a platform bed, topped by a featherbed from overstock.com.

The queen mattress (all cotton) from White Lotus is $375, and the featherbed was maybe $50 - though a quick peek at overstock shows a range everywhere from $50 to $200, so it depends on your budget.

We bought this whole setup 2 years ago, and still love it. We flip the futon once a month, and fluff the feather bed once a week when we change the sheets. The feather bed is drycleaner friendly, though a bit spendy - but it cuts down on dustmites and the like since you can clean it!

Every three months we drag the whole setup outside into the sun for air freshening and we've been very happy with it all.

I bought a kingsdown queen sized pillowtop about 5 years ago and it is the best purchase my husband and I ever made. It has the pillowtop on both sides so it can be flipped and turned around.

I can't comment on pillow top mattresses but I can say that feather beds will make nearly impossible for you to get out of bed in the morning because you will be SO comfortable. We got one for our basic futon and our bed has become an energy vampire. As soon as you lay down on it you want to go to sleep. Best 50 bucks I ever spent at Target. :)

If you can handle the "boro park" mentality ,try Taubus furniture & bedding, 3921 14th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11218 718-871-7900. Two years ago, we bought a good quality sealy king (including mattress + box spring + delivery) in the $875ish range.

We bought the top of the line Sealy Pillowtop 6 months ago and it is amazing. We purchased it from Rockaway Bedding in Chelsea on 6th Avenue and they were very, very helpful. We looked at everything: hard mattresses, memory foam, all of them and decided, with the help of the store owner, on the pillowtop. He seemed to think that the technology had advanced enough to keep this mattress in good shape for 15 years.

I have a select comfort and a featherbed. Perfect! I have the featherbed laundered as needed and the adjustable air mattress is really very comfortable. Buy the most basic select comfort for about $450 or so (with shipping to your door) and add the featherbed. You can adjust the firmness and so can your partner. I recommend this bed to anyone that is considering a new mattress.

hi everyone! i believe maxwell double-posted this by accident, but i can give you the update on what we did:

we ended up doing just the mattress (not box spring) of the heavenly bed equivalent, which was not cheap but not super pricey either. we're using it with a platform bed.

so far i am not especially happy with it. i can feel the depressions forming already. plus it's too soft for me as a back sleeper and i find that the firmer edge coils (which are supposed to be a selling point) cause me to feel tilted on the bed since i'm not heavy enough to depress them much. maybe we'll try flipping as dorie suggested. but all in all it was not the smartest purchase ever. i can't justify getting rid of it after less than a year since it was not cheap, but if things keep going downhill... oh well. it galls me a little when i think about it, honestly.

anyway, next time it's a firm mattress or a latex mattress for us!

My $1100 Spring Air pillow top is going on 4 years and there is a big VALLEY in the middle. So annoying. I've been finding firmer more comfortable lately so I might try Dorie's "flip-it-anyway" trick.

I am AMAZED by how nice and comfy Ikea mattresses are when I flop on them in the store. My next one will be a $349 Ikea mattress, for sure.

I have a pillow top mattress and I've been sleeping on it nearly nightly for just under one year. I've noticed "my" depression in the bed. Right where my butt and hips rest every night, there's a depression in the pillow top.

I've moved over to sleeping on the other side of the bed, which feels totally weird to me!! Hee hee hee! You know how it is, when you have 'side' and changing your routine feels like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet.

Anyway, yes, some pillow tops get lumpy. Go with a Sealy, I'm seeing good feedback here. ;D

I have a Sealy Posturpedic pillow top, about 2 years old and yes indeed...there is a noticeable valley where I sleep.

According to the Sealy site, the warranty applies to indentations of 1 1/2" or more. That's a pretty big indent.

I don't think I'll buy another pillow top, a shame because I loved it the first few weeks.

Even though Jessica has already made her decision, I thought I'd share my experience. I have had a Serta Perfect Night double pillowtop mattress (has a pillowtop on each side to allow for flipping) for less than 3 years, which retails for around $1200 for mattress and box springs combo. It is incredibly soft/comfortable and showed no signs of caving in while it was just being used by me (slight frame). However, once my boyfriend moved in a few months ago, a valley formed very quickly under his weight. I'm going to start flipping it really frequently and hope that does the trick...

I have the top-quality line Ikea mattress (about 4 years now) and it stinks! Major sagging in the middle and it has become very uncomfortable and caused a lot of back pain. Needless to say, I will be replacing it very soon.

My question to all the feather bed lovers out there, is do you put it under your fitted sheet? If not, how do you keep it from moving around and bunching up under you, etc.?

meva, we put the featherbed under our fitted sheet, but it does shift a bit anyway. I think if it really bothered us, we'd try to remedy the shifting with a non-skid rug pad between the mattress and the featherbed.

FWIW, my friends have bought IKEA mattresses before, and I have only heard 100% negative feedback on them. They feel nice at the store, but don't stand up over time (what a pun..).

Hi. I didnt bother readding everyones post here so I dont know if anyone has said anything. but I have a pillow top and it is quilted. I have been sleeping on it for 5 years now, and have not had anny bunching problems.
You must flip your mattress everytim you change your sheets. About once a week. There are 4 positions for your mattress. This will greatly enhance the life of your mattress
Michael
P.S. A box is very inportant to giving strenght to your mattress. If you get a queen or king make sure that it has atleast a fifth leg in the middle or wou WILL get sag.

Good luck

There are lots of issues in this thread that apply to me...from pillowtops to memory foam to featherbeds. I will give you my opinions :-)

I had a Perfect Night Gatsby pillowtop in a Queen size. I really loved it except that when we were both on it, it tended to read us as one person and dip a bit. When I slept in it alone, it was fabulous. I weigh a little over 200 lbs and so even my weight did not make the pillow top lumpy or depressed even after 10 years. Then I had a housefire and the bed was destroyed. I replaced it with a queen size top of the line Simmons Beautyrest bowling ball bed yada yada. This one is like a torture bed. I have been a side sleeper, yet on this bed, the pocket coils push up hard on my hips and rib cage. The coils are so strong that they are pushing my hip up and out of alignment! The store actually told me to jump on the bed to soften it up!! They told me they would let me pick another model, but I already bought their fanciest most plush bed.

In the hope of making it better, I purchased a fluffy fiber bed to place on the top. Sadly, the fiber bed is good and fluffy, but I can still feel those coils pushing me out of alignment. For this reason, I would warn against a very firm bed with a feather bed topper unless you like firm anyway.

I would also warn anyone off memory foam. Not only goes it offgass a particularly noxious odor, but it becomes hard in cold weather. It also restricts movement to the point where I believe elderly people may become prone to bedsores. I have heard stories about people having to actually sit up before they can turn on a memory foam bed. After I tried the Simmons memory foam pillowtop beds I have to agree that they suck a person in and make it difficult to turn or even get up out of the bed.

The best bed I ever had was a foam mattress from Ikea. I bet a latex foam bed would be similar and I think Kingsdown and Simmons make one. I really fear that latex foam does not have much longevity though. I am using a latex foam pillow and it seems as though it might begin to crumble. Bad news for my current bed that uses latex foam.

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In general:
1. Don't buy a pillow-top type. You are buying a thing you could put on your self via feather bed/duvet. Those pillow tops compress and ruin an otherwise good mattress.
2. Go for a non-flip one.
3. In general, goto the bed shop and say: "show me your most firm, most solid, hotel type matress, cheap." Buy that one. Get a feather bed, or whatever, a nice wool liner etc. An you will have the nicest longest lasting matress at the best price, comfortable as per you liking.

I am looking to purchase a Spring Air Pillowtop mattress and I'm looking at several different models. Although all pillowtops are soft on the surface, I'm looking to compare mattress firmness as I don't want an extremely firm mattress with a pillowtop, rather a medium firmness one with a pillowtop. if anyone knows of any website compareing the fimnesses of Spring Air Pillowtops, please email me that information

Thank You

Norman Rackison