Time to buy your child their first proper mattress?
Here are our top tips on how to ensure restful, sweet dreams for all the family … With lots of different options on the market, it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming knowing where to start your research.
This blog will take you through the considerations you might wish to think about in order to buy your child’s first mattress.
Firstly, a little sleep theory. Have you ever noticed how your child often ends up in a completely different part of the bed to where you first left them?
Believe it or not, despite how long it may take a child to learn how to sleep in the first place, children do actually sleep for longer than adults, and they’re also more active in their sleep too. This means that they wriggle and move around a lot during the night.
With all this tossing and turning, they’ll need a responsive mattress that will put up with these periods of hyperactivity during their sleep cycles.
We also know that our children are constantly growing and changing shape, so it makes sense that they will require a mattress that continuously supports this constant growth.
With all of this growth and movement in their sleep and with the knowledge of how important good quality sleep is for children, it’s worth considering the life-cycle of a mattress because it needs to be a properly supporting platform and ultimately a vehicle for prolonged, high quality sleep.
Investing in a high quality mattress will offer the reassurance that your child’s mattress will offer the same level of support on day one as it will five years down the line. In other words, when it comes to mattresses, you really do get what you pay for.
So what could be considered a high quality child’s mattress?
Forgive us as we get a little bit ‘techy’ here… Whilst we do have various mattress options, we only create mattresses with spring interiors. This is because the mechanical action of a spring is the same on day one as years down the line; you get consistent responsiveness whenever there is movement, day in day out. We avoid foam because foam starts to decay at a cellular level over time, which can affect the performance of the mattress and a decrease in the support it can offer over a shorter timeline.
The health of the mattress is also important. By this, we mean considering its Breathability (good airflow and with no moisture retention. – Important for avoiding mould build up) and how good the mattress is at regulating temperature.
How firm should a child’s mattress be?
To offer enough support, much like Goldilocks, we believe that a child’s mattress should be of medium support. – Too soft and it won’t offer enough support, too hard and they might not want to sleep on it (disastrous!) So somewhere in between is the optimum firmness.
How thick should a child’s mattress be?
It is also worth noting that how thick the mattress is, is not reflective of the quality of materials inside it. In fact, if you are buying a high bed (high sleeper, mid sleeper or bunk bed) you will need a high quality top bed mattress to go on it for safety reasons. This is slightly thinner than one of our standard mattresses (it needs to be 15cm or less), but is filled with the same lovely inners as the rest; so no scrimping on quality!
What mattress options do you offer?
We believe that there are only a few options of mattress needed when it comes to children’s sleep, which is why we’ve only designed three of them (which our lovely friends around the corner in deepest Wiltshire, make for us in their mattress-making workshop).
Open Coil: With traditional high tensile steel springs, sandwiched between a wool/cotton felt layer, and topped with comfort upholstery and a 100% cotton twill cover, this is a reliable, great quality sprung mattress offering oodles of support.
Pocket Sprung: Comprising lots and lots (over 600 in fact) of smaller springs, each sewn into individual pockets and, it is argued, being more responsive because the smaller springs pick up smaller movements. Again, the springs are sandwiched between a wool/cotton felt layer and topped with comfort upholster and a 100% cotton twill cover. - The perfect basis for happy dreaming.
Natural premium single bed mattress A brand new mattress on the block. – This is an all-natural, luxury British wool mattress topped with a natural, soft, damask fabric. The anti-allergenic properties of wool make this a great option for those with allergies as well as optimum air flow and natural temperature regulation. This superior mattress boasts a spring count of a whopping 1000 individual springs; what the most blissful dreams are made of.
Read more about our three mattresses here.
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