The Actually Comfy Air Mattress Alternative My Guests Love Me For (They Sleep So Well!)

When my husband and I moved to San Francisco five years ago, we knew we’d have a lot of houseguests in our future. Though we’ve built a great community in the Bay Area — yes, we’ve made friends as adults! — we still have friends and family in places like New York, Chicago, and London. Needless to say, we find ourselves hosting often, and we fully embrace it.

We outfitted one of our spare rooms with a trundle bed, which can accommodate up to two guests, but we were missing a way to host any extra overnight guests. Since we’re hosting four people this Thanksgiving — my parents, my sister, and her boyfriend — we needed a quick solution to that problem. 

An air mattress is one idea, but in my experience, many tend to deflate a bit overnight. Everyone has different sleeping preferences, but I personally can’t stand air mattresses, so why would I make my nearest and dearest sleep on one? 

Serrendiptiously, just as we were looking for an answer, two of our friends were looking to offload their Milliard Tri-Folding Memory Foam Mattress. Not only did we snap up this air mattress alternative so fast, but it also has quickly become our best hosting hack. 

Think of the Milliard Tri-Folding Memory Foam Mattress as a small space’s answer to a guest bed. At first glance, it looks just like another mattress. Milliard sells two memory foam thicknesses — a four-inch and a six-inch — so you’ll get that body-conforming softness without it feeling saggy. We inherited our tri-fold mattress from our friends, but the setup seems similar to your direct-to-consumer bed: It arrives in a box and will self-inflate when removed from its shrink-wrap packaging.

The twist: This mattress is actually made of three smaller slabs of memory foam, so it can fold up to a third of its size when not in use. There’s also a machine-washable cover with a soft top and mesh sides, to offer some extra comfort to an already-cozy situation.

If we have more visitors than our guest room can hold, we put the tri-fold mattress in our living room so everyone can have their own space. When everyone’s gone and it’s just the two of us, we fold it up and stow it in a closet. Yes, unlike your typical bed-in-a-box, it’s lightweight enough for one person to carry. 

OK, fine, I’ll admit it: Sometimes we don’t put it back in our closet. Truth be told, the tri-fold mattress is so comfortable that my husband and I will leave it in our living room for a cozy movie night setup. (That alone makes our four-inch, full-size mattress worth its $170 price tag.) In fact, we both recently fell asleep for hours while watching a movie. Instead of waking up on a semi-deflated air mattress, we felt comfortable, rested, and right at home. And isn’t that how everyone wants their guests to feel?