Signature Mattresses Quality and Value Guide

Why natural fillings

The human skin is not only a closed surface, but a breathing layer of our body, through pores and our body hair the temperature of our body is kept under control. From the surface of our skin the humidity will have to evaporate into the air around us. If this process is blocked by sleeping on a synthetic material we feel very uncomfortable. Natural fibres go well with our skin. The reason is that natural materials always have been part of the air-conditioning of a living thing. They are designed to transport the humidity and have evolved literally over millennia. With that kind of material development time in real world conditions it should come as no surprise that man has been unable to match what nature has created.

Cashmere

Cashmere is the coat or wool of the Kashmir goat. Kashmir goats are primarily raised in Mongolia, though there are many herds in India, China, Iran and Tibet. There is also recent adoption of the kashmir goat by American herders such is the demand for this high quality high price wool. The fibres are highly adaptable and are easily transformed into fine or thick yarns, and light to heavyweight fabrics. The high moisture content the hairs absorb allows fantastic insulation and breathing properties to change with the humidity in the air. The noticeable difference in wool in kashmir is just how soft the hair is giving a luxurious premium feel.

Cotton

The information below relates to the materials in our hand made Natural Organic and chemical free pocket sprung Mattress range.

Almost pure cellulose, cotton is the world's most widely used natural fibre. The main reasons for this are it's softness and breathability. Cotton absorbs moisture readily which makes cotton comfortable in hot weather.

The cotton used in our Heirloom signature mattress is certified and approved by

• Soil Association England
• International Association Natural textile Industry IVN, Germany
• Japan Organic Cotton Association

Certification based on EEC 2092/91 (copy available upon request)

• Parent plants produced without use of GMO's 'genetically modified organisms
• Composted manures instead of fertilisers
• Appropriate cotton field rotation
• Innovative weeding techniques instead of herbicides
• Protection of beneficial insects, natural enemies of pests rather than pesticides
• Biodegradeable soap to wash the cotton
• No biocides or fungicides
• Organic certification for every bale of cotton produced

Socially responsible manufacturing - contact us for detail standards meet key norms of the 'International Labour Organisation'

Horsehair

Horse hair is extremely resilient by nature and has brilliant breathing properties. Horse hair is a hollow fibre which transports moisture away from the body and providing a comfortable well regulated micro-climate. Horse-Tail-Hair is the strongest, and most coarse fibre with a very open core. Through the capillary action of the core and the scales on the surface it creates an excellent medium to remove moisture.

We use 100% tail horsehair (no pig hair mixed in they don't by law have to tell you)

• Curled and steamed for 2 hours at 140 deg Celcius.
• Contains no harmful chemicals
• No solvents used
• No Soaps

Lambs' Wool

Pure lambswool has a natural curl giving it a natural volume, wool can absorb twice the moisture that cotton can and also has a naturally high flame resistance which means no need for fire retardant chemicals, even it's behaviour when lit with direct flame is to choke flames preventing it spreading. It Has a regain figure of 18% this is the measure of it's ability to absorb and release moisture self so regulating temperature and moisture levels. 18% is one of the highest regain figures so it is used closest to the sleep surface.

Your skin is a breathing layer through pores and hair we regulate our temperature. The natural wool and other natural fibres in our Natural range of mattresses have always been part of natures air conditioning and so to use them in a mattress makes total sense. Also products made using pure new wool do not cause allergies and as it absorbs moisture within the hair, this prevents fungal growth that is the food stuff of bed mites - no food no mites.

Latex

Natural latex is a natural renewable material. 100% pure natural latex is inherently hypo-allergenic, anti-microbial and mite-resistant, making it perfect for allergy sufferers or anyone simply wanting to breathe fresh, clean air while they sleep. In addition, natural latex is breathable, keeping you cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Virtually no roll together - for those spring only purists out there its performance in this respect beats any spring unit regardless even of silly high spring counts. As a natural material it is also unaffected by body temperature it will neither soften or firm based on temperature changes it's consitency and quality of performance over long periods (20 years +) makes it an unrivalled mattress support and comfort layer.

For the rare latex allergic customer please note this is almost always related to latex used in the health and medical industry and clothing this is typically petro-chemical man made latex and whilst has similar properties is an entirely different material and is extremely unlikely to cause any allergic reaction. If you are in any doubt please consult your doctor. We only use pure natural latex in all of our mattresses.

Silk

For many centuries, silk has had a reputation as a luxurious soft fabric associated with wealth. In the Roman empire it carried a value on a parity with gold. The unique production process adds to the mystery and exclusiveness of the fabric. It takes 5500 silkworms to produce one kilogram of raw silk.

A very exclusive material but be aware that silk embroidery on a mattress cover to make a nice pattern is enough for a manufacturer to state Silk on the specification. This is a million miles away from a 250g pad so do take care to ask about the silk content in your searches.

The quality of materials is paramount and will not appear on a label or spec sheet, and how they are brought together is also as important if you expect your mattress to last and deliver the same quality feel year after year. Just an example, how many of you know what leading edge is? do you care? probably not but if you knew how it can vary in quality and how that makes a difference to the nights sleep year after year you would when you are parting with money. This could go on and on but we shall choose just the following as examples of why construction materials and techniques matter.

• Leading edge - This is the piping you find surrounding the edge of your mattress on our healthbeds mattresses it is the highest grade and quite thick it is also double over locked stitched. Compared to the other factory visits we have attended the Healthbeds piping took longer to go on and was by far the strongest. Its purpose is to hold all external surfaces together if the leading edge fails tears comes loose the tension in the cover goes and you may be considering a new mattress.
• Sidewall Strength - This is simply how stiff the sides of your mattress is and should be stiff enough to allow you to sleep next to the edge without it collapsing and giving you full use of the mattress sleep surface, so its important its good!It is achieved by a number of methods and sometimes not at all, relying upon the tension in the covers of the mattress. For a spring mattress the most common is the use of a V shaped spring imagine V shaped wire on its side with a coli at the base of the V each end of the spring is attached to the top and bottom of the spring unit giving additional strength at the edge. The problems with this method are as follows - The continued wear on the top of the V spring can mean they come of loosing sidewall support. These springs can press against the side upholstery and be unsightly. You can also get a clicking noise when you get on and off or if you sleep near the edge you are more likely to hear it which can be irritating. Our Healthbeds mattresses use two steel bands that surround the entire edge it avoids all of the problems that can occur with a V spring and means you get the same stiffness around the entire edge.
• Tufting -Tufting is a traditional method of securing the comfort layer in place and has been practised for hundreds of years it is simply a length of string shorter than the depth of the mattress creating a tension in the cover and keeping the fillings in place. The only problem is that they can come off this is because the string is thread through a felt pad often covered by a wool rosette and the felt pad can wear out. This means the string will pull through and tension is lost this then leads to fillings moving which can result in a lumpy mattress and areas where the comfort layer has moved away and you may feel springs. They can be seen on our healthbeds Wentworth mattress however our tufts are held in place not only by felt pad and rosette but also with a polyurethane ring and T piece which can not pass through it guarantees the tufts will do their job throughout the mattress life. These aspects and others of mattress construction and materials is the most ignored but is the detail we spent so long looking for in the supplier of our mattresses because this is where the quality is finally brought together. There is little point using the best quality of bedding materials if it isn't delivered in the best way and designed to last and perform.

You should expect 2-3 times longer life from a quality natural talalay latex mattress they will generally be more expensive than alternatives but will over fantastic value. Beyond this the luxurious consistent soft feel without pressure points offers a more traditional feel against memory foam. This means our Latex mattresses feel more like a 2000 thin gauge quality pocket sprung mattress (but better!) in that it has a similar resilience / spring feel so it is easy to move on. You will never feel like you have sunk into it, it also breathes much better than memory foam you can blow straight through it with little resistance. So for those of you that want the best sleeping material have tried and dont get on with memory foam but you want all the benefits without the downsides with a traditional feel then you can. These mattresses do cost more at around ﾣ1200 for a king size but you can expect at least twice the life and a level of comfort and support you wont get in a ﾣ600 mattress they are great value. And yes we sleep on the medium Posture Perfect and despite a 2 year long policy of changing our mattress every 3 mths trying the ones we have chosen to stock I am pleased to say this is the last we are changing until Jan 2030!Latex like memory foam commonly has aggregate added, normally melamine powder this means the manufacturer can make more for less of the expensive ingredient so there are key questions to ask when evaluating the quality of latex and there are different types.Firstly there are 2 methods of manufacture Dunlop and Talalay which is by far the superior and now the more commonly used latex in mattresses.The Talalay method produces the finest latex available how ever not all Talalay latex is the same you can have a blend of chemical (oil) based and natural or completely natural.The latex in our mattresses is manufactured by Latex International and is 100% natural. Manufacturing Latex.Natural latex is tapped from the tropical rubber tree. Natural latex, soaps and rubber curing agents are mixed in a temperature-controlled, stainless steel tank where it is measured for Ph, viscosity and temperature.Moulding.The compound mix is transferred to the pressroom where it is whipped into a frothy liquid form with the consistency Mr whippy ice cream; a robotic arm then injects the foamed liquid latex into an aluminium pin core mould. The pins create American latex's unique aerated cell structure. Automated robots distribute the mixture to ensure consistency and final density. The mould is sealed and a vacuum is created to remove air and ensure the latex completely fills the mould. The latex is then chilled at -20 ﾰ Fahrenheit. Freezing (unique to the Talalay process) prevents settling and ensures a consistent cell structure.CO2 is introduced to gel the latex, the mould is heated to 220 degrees Fahrenheit to cure the latex into its final state. Washing. Unlike other latex manufacturers, Latex International washes EVERY mattress core. The core is removed from the mould and onto on a belt that carries it through a five-stage fresh water rinsing, the only one of its kind in the industry. High quality natural Latex is by far one of the most luxurious materials used and has a silky feel and leaves no body impressions and creates no pressure points as a natural product it is a very environmentally conscious extremely resilient to wear and offers a consistency of performance no memory foam can compete with over time.Certified Healthy.Latex Internationalﾒs process does not use any solvents. It does NOT damage the ozone layer. They do not use scrubbers or external filtration as we do not emit harmful elements into the air. In fact, Latex Internationalﾒs Talalay latex is certified by Oeko-Tex (Europe's highest environmental consumer product standard) to be free of harmful substances or chemicals.

Wool has been the longest used bedding material no doubt going back to BC and with good reason wool has a natural ability to insulate regulate temperature absorb and release moisture which gives it a regain figure of 18%. Silks ability to absorb and release moisture is 12% but how many times have you seen mattress labels and descriptions boasting of the use of silk. Why when it is inferior? Often it is merely decorative ticking in the cover the only benefit is too feel if its under a non silk cover and a bed sheet there is little point to using silk. Wool is manufactured into woven pads which is in the comfort layer, it is graded by weight but also different breeds which carry individual properties that vary breathing and insulation characteristics when you have seen over 200 samples with technical spec labels for each you realise that there is a lot more to wool than you could have imagined. With wool the relevant information is how much is in the mattress typically you are just told the mattress contains wool on the label but a 1 foot wide 50g pad across the width is hardly worth paying for and typically once a natural material has wool in the specification the price jumps a minimum of ﾣ100.There are mattress manufacturers that place 2 x 1ft bands across the width of the mattress and can be as low as 80gram this is sufficient to state on a mattress label and specification that it includes 'The finest natural wool'. As far as we are concerned this is very misleading though perfectly legal, our Wentworth mattress uses a 300gram wool pad which took 3 years to source why so long? One of the cornerstones of every Healthbeds mattress is that it must be hypo-allergenic. For 3 years Healthbeds sourced hypo-allergenic wool samples each time having them tested to check the suppliers claims every time they failed until a New Zealand based supplier sent a sample which passed. It may seem strange that this should happen but natural materials are not naturally hypo-allergenic and the washing processes are technical and repeated many times its not easy to achieve and hence why so many suppliers failed.So ask the following - What is the weight of the wool used inside the mattress? Is it hypo-allergenic? Does it cover the entire sleep surface? Cashmere is used in the cover and gives the softest feel to the Wentworth mattress.

Please remember the gauge and number of springs dictate the firmness, how ever it is also the support and comfort layers that give the feel of a mattress. We could place you on a high spring count mattress and a low count with different support and comfort layer and you can easily guess the spring count wrongly. Please don't think more springs means higher quality. Remember it is quality of all materials that counts! We have been so conditioned to comparing spec lists with price that the quality aspect is pretty much ignored despite it being far more relevant. Manufacturers often play spec one-upmanship 2000 springs is as far as any manufacturer should go any more is princess and the pea. You won't be able to tell the difference and its for catering for the consumer habit of playing 'top trumps' when choosing a mattress and if you think you can that will have more to do with the support and comfort layers. Pocket springs are the only type we in our mattresses, providing individual support as each is separately contained in a cloth pocket and operate independently to give independent support. However the quality of each individual spring is what contributes to the quality of a mattress NOT HOW MANY THERE ARE!. So this begs the question how do you determine the quality of a spring?Many manufacturers import Chinese compressed spring units which are typically below the quality of an English manufactured spring. Also when you manufacture a spring for a mattress you want it to have the following qualities.1. Uniform tension in each spring across a whole spring unit ensuring uniform performance across the whole of your mattress.2. Our springs are high performance retaining tension over years of use (failure to do this results in a sagging mattress sometimes within a year) ensuring your mattress lasts as long as you would expect it to. For a pocket spring to do this it should be a high quality steel carbon nickel alloy preventing rusting and should follow the manufacturing technique explained below.3. Electrically charged and heated quality steel alloy wire during coiling ensures a constant tension with a consistent memory performance (same tension returning 100% to manufactured state). THIS MATTERS!This is what you can expect from a UK manufactured quality mattress pocket spring which is all that is used in our mattresses and you will appreciate even more years down the line when you will 'not' be considering replacing your mattress and your still getting a great nights sleep.Quick reminder! The higher the gauge the thinner the spring and generally the higher quality gauges sit between 14 to 18 your open coiled or bonnell springs fall below this gauge one of several reasons why they cost and deliver less.

We have been to 4 main foam converters to discover what mattress companies either don't want to tell retailers or the consumer in order for us to understand and choose the right mattress manufacturer when memory foam is included. What is it? (Polyurethane oil based foam) This could be a long explanation but as far as your concerned think of each cell as a soft rubber ball with a small hole in. When you place your weight on it you displace the air according to your body shape thats why you don't get pressure points that cause movement in your sleep resulting in lower quality sleep. With the absence of pressure points and the level of individual support memory foam gives thats why it is such a good material to use. Memory foam varies in quality like any other material and is susceptible to 'top trumps' spec comparison on labels and websites as much as any other material. The information pertaining to specification of memory foam provided by retailers usually covers only 'depth of foam' and 'density in KG per Cubic metre' which is a bit like being asked to guessthe ending of a book without the last 3 chapters. If you just get 'finest quality memory foam giving a pressure point free sleep experience' then you should move on! If a seller can't be bothered to understand their product intimately and share that knowledge they have no right to ask you to part with your hard earned! Staying with quality of materials how do you determine what is relevant to memory foam? 1. First off most foam converters in China the UK and elsewhere grade their memory foam, grading is largely related to 'purity'. The majority of memory foam supplied to mattress companies contains aggregate this means chalk dust and melamine powder. Depending on how much is added determines purity and quality, begs the question why is it added?? Aggregate is added to falsely increase density so if you read 80KG density on a spec list (and we consumers are cultured to always think more is better) means it should be better than 65KG density on another. However if the 80KG is achieved with aggregate as so often it is I would rather have the 65KG of pure foam. So 'why is it added' simply to sell with seemingly more appealing spec yet in truth leaving the consumer in the dark or conned if your of a more damming disposition. 2. Aggregate reduces individual cell wall strength and durability and the way it performs this means the foam breaks (it looks a bit like cellulite!) down quicker whilst it may recover its shape still you can get soft points normally around where your hips and shoulders are. And yes then youﾒre going to get aches as support disappears and you are considering another mattress. All manmade foams get softer with use but you don't want this accelerated.3. So now you know you should be asking the retailer if there is any aggregate in the memory foam in the mattresses they are selling if they don't know or state 'its the highest quality madam' then walk away because frankly thatﾒs estate agent speak for 'I don't know' 4. The measures! Depth, Density and ILD. Depth -