The key component of the bed is the mattress. Finding a quality mattress is very important for a high quality sleep because on average we spend about a third of our lives in bed. Mattresses help ensure a restful sleep and are normally comprised of foam and fibers.
Looking through history, people migrated from sleeping on the ground to sleeping on simple man-made beds with mattresses in the Neolithic period. The first mattresses were made of leaves and grass, held together with animal skin. This was between 8,000 - 6,000 B.C. The first attempt for a waterbed was invented by the Persians in the 3,500 B.C, which was made of goatskins filled with water. During the Roman Empire, 200 B.C. people slept on mattresses filled with feathers. It wasn’t until the 1865 that the steel coils which now support the majority of mattresses were invented and patented.
Mattresses have enjoyed many advances in the past decades. Nowadays we can enjoy the comfort of air mattresses, foam mattresses and memory foam mattresses. The material used to construct the mattresses is latex foam and polyurethane foam. People looking for comfort and affordability go for futon mattresses and of course there are still those who enjoy the comfort of water mattresses.
The three most popular mattress brands in USA are Sealy, Simmons and Serta. The mattresses come in three standard sizes. Twin/Single (91 x 191 cm), Double/Full (137 x 191 cm), Queen (152 x 198 cm) and King (183 x 198 cm) size mattresses. There are also California King, California Queen and Olympic Queen sizes but this are not the standard, largely used sizes.
Getting a good night’s sleep depends on many different factors - comfort, stress level and room temperature. Also one of those factors is the mattress and is also the first building to a restful slumber. So if you are in the market for a new mattress, make sure you test each one in the store, laying down in the position in which you normally sleep. If you can, bring your pillow when you go shopping and try to replicate as much as you can the way you are sleeping so you can make sure you pick the right one. Mattresses on average are used seven to fifteen years so be careful what you end up with at the end.
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