If you need help choosing a great mattress, you could do worse than start your research online. There’s been an explosion of consumer mattress review sites in recent years where you will find hundreds of reviews written by real people who have been using the mattresses they write about for many months or years. If you choose this route you will get to shortcut the process of schlepping from store to store in order to narrow your search down to just a few models. Mattresses are not cheap, so this is an essential stage in your search if you are to get your decision right first time.

Please make sure you don’t make any hasty decisions though based solely on the reviews you read – it is important that you try out each mattress extensively before you decide to buy. You and your sleeping partner need to spend quite some time lying on a mattress to check that it is comfortable. In fact, you should do far more than just lie still on the mattress, bounce around on it, stretch out to the fullest extent, in short, put it through its paces. Probably the most important aspect you need to check is that when one partner rolls over on the mattress, that the other partner doesn’t notice their movements too much. If they do, there’s a good chance they will be disturbed regularly when they are asleep.

When you’ve made your decision, it’s time to work out a deal with the store. Knowing the online price of the mattress you want puts you at an advantage at this stage. If the in-store price is hundreds of dollars more than you can buy it for online, there has to be some room for negotiation. Personally I prefer to buy high-priced items from a physical store rather than online, because if there ever is a problem, the service I’ll get will always be much better – I don’t always get the best price this way, but I am much more reassured that I have the best deal for me.