When difficulty sleeping becomes a regular occurrence and affects your everyday life, it's time to investigate what is causing it.
Even the best sleepers can have trouble falling and staying asleep. Common causes include stress, depression, anxiety, age-related sleep changes, poor sleep habits, pain, medications, and underlying health issues like diabetes.
However, an uncomfortable mattress could also be to blame.
An uncomfortable mattress can affect your sleep by not providing adequate support. You may find yourself tossing and turning, waking up in the middle of the night with aches and pains, or not feeling refreshed after 8 hours of sleep.
Here are five ways your mattress might be ruining your sleep:
Inadequate support for your sleeping position or body weight
Your mattress must adequately support your body weight and preferred sleep position. The heavier you are, the firmer your mattress should be, although side sleepers also need a soft top surface to squash into.
Too firm a mattress can cause pressure points or cause pain in your shoulders, hips, and back, while too soft of a mattress can cause your spine to sink into the mattress, resulting in back pain and poor overall body alignment.
Poor motion isolation means your partner disturbs you.
Motion isolation in a mattress is the ability of the mattress to absorb and reduce the transfer of movement between two sleepers sharing the same bed.
If a mattress has poor motion isolation, even the slightest movement of one person moving around or getting up will disturb the other.
This can be very disruptive and can disrupt sleep patterns. Poor motion isolation can also cause discomfort due to the feeling of floating or rolling on the mattress.
It is vital for couples or roommates sharing beds to invest in a mattress with sound motion isolation for optimal sleep.
Check out the best mattresses for motion isolation for ideas.
Trapped allergens are giving you cold-like symptoms
Dust mites, pet dander, and other allergens can get trapped in the fibres of your mattress, causing irritation and reducing the quality of your sleep.
One remedy for this is to purchase a mattress with unique allergen-resistant fabrics and treatments. For example, Silentnight mattresses like the Moscow Memory 1,200 and Geltex 1000 Desire have an anti-allergy coating called Purotex.
Poor breathability and temperature regulation
Mattresses with low breathability trap heat, resulting in a hot and uncomfortable mattress, and they also trap moisture, leading to a damp sleeping surface.
You should look for a mattress with a vented outer border and cooling materials such as memory gel and graphene memory foam, which provide incredible comfort and help regulate your body temperature to ensure restful, uninterrupted sleep.
Check out our advice on a cooler sleep for more ideas.
Your mattress is past its best due to old age and wear and tear
Most mattresses are designed to last up to ten years. Over time, all mattresses lose shape and develop lumps and dips.
If your mattress is over eight years old, replace it to get a better night's sleep, especially if it is an open coil or pure foam mattress.
Remember - the materials in mattresses have a shelf life, which can be a chemical shelf life (where the materials break down on their own) or a mechanical shelf life (where materials break down with use, such as broken springs).
Summing up
A quality mattress is the foundation of a great sleep experience. If your mattress is not providing the comfort, support, and temperature regulation you need, it could be to blame for your disrupted sleep patterns.
We recommend sleeping on a different mattress for a few nights and seeing if it makes a difference. If you sleep better in another bed, chances are your mattress is to blame, and you should consider upgrading.
Read our complete mattress buyer's guide for more advice.