As our modern lives become busier and more complex, many of us are looking for new and better ways to achieve a restful night’s sleep. In response, bed manufacturers are trying to meet those needs with innovative technologies and advanced materials. But how effective are they, and what role can upcoming mattress technology play in getting a good night’s sleep?

The experts at Dreamwool Beds are here to help you understand the future of sleep technology in 2026 and what innovations are likely to help you sleep a bit easier.

Smart Bedrooms

Technology’s presence in the bedroom is increasing with the advent of smart beds and bedding. Smart mattresses are equipped with sensors that can adjust their firmness based on the sleeper’s preferences and movements, and smart pillows can help track sleep patterns and provide embedded speakers for sound therapy.

AI and Sleep Tracking Devices

Wearable sleep-tracking devices have been on the market for a while now, but these are seeing a big boost in capability with the integration of Artificial Intelligence. AI algorithms can effectively identify patterns and anomalies, helping to predict sleep behaviours and, in theory, prevent disordered sleeping patterns from becoming serious.

Luxury Sleep Innovations

Many manufacturers are looking to push their products further into the luxury market in 2026, but savvy shoppers should be wary of claims such as synthetic mattress materials that have the same properties as natural materials. For the most luxurious night’s sleep, natural is always best, and most of those materials and crafting methods are already well established. 

Instead, you should look for refinements of the high-end materials and processes already present in the luxury market, such as pocket springs that are even finer and pocket spring units that are more sustainably produced.

Streamlined Mattress Profiles

We expect luxury mattresses to become less deep as material processing continues to evolve. In the case of our all-natural Merino wool, we’re exploring ways to further compress our comfort layers, ensuring that you still get the same volume of plush Merino and the same optimum comfort, but with a sleeker mattress that takes up less space in your bedroom. This is the opposite of what you tend to see on the high street, with some manufacturers effectively puffing mattresses up to look as deep as possible, giving the illusion of added comfort, but with layers that will settle quickly and can cause discomfort for the customer.

Adjustable Bases

Adjustable and mechanical bases are likely to become more mainstream in the luxury market in 2026. These can provide great added comfort and accessibility for those who benefit from a range of reclining positions, and we expect to see more of them as our population ages.

Separate Bedrooms

This is the biggest trend in bedrooms that is not talked about. There’s no shame in supporting your relationship by sleeping apart if that helps you both get a better night’s rest, and we expect to see more partners moving to separate bedrooms in 2026 and beyond.

Eco-Friendly Mattress Trends

You’re likely to see more certifications and sustainability claims in 2026, as customers push manufacturers to employ better environmental practices. Again, it’s worth investigating any such claims to understand exactly what they mean.

“Recyclable” Mattresses

A mattress claiming to be recyclable may be exaggerating its environmental credentials. Yes, many individual materials can be recycled, but New Zealand does not yet have a facility to do this for whole mattresses. We lack the population volume to make that specific recycling capability viable, meaning that every mattress in New Zealand ultimately ends up in landfill, at least for now. The most eco-friendly choice you can make is a mattress that will stand the test of time for many years.

Organic Mattresses

We’re already seeing some manufacturers push toward organic mattresses, which can be a great indicator of quality and traceability. That said, we find that the organic label can be limiting when it comes to comfort. If you use organic cotton only, you will be less comfortable than if you also use a small amount of polyester in the fabric to provide stretch.

At Dreamwool Beds we choose to prioritise natural, carefully selected, local materials. Ultimately, we believe that comfort is of the utmost importance, and we’re not willing to sacrifice it for the sake of an organic label.

The Future of Sleep

Could waterbeds make a comeback in 2026? Or perhaps we’ll start sleeping on air pockets or gels?

While emerging technologies have great potential to improve our lives, the truth is that these have not yet been honed enough to really promise you a better night’s sleep. Indeed, most studies indicate that technology is prohibitive in the bedroom; a lot of sleepers will find that constant tracking and monitoring of their sleep behaviours increases anxiety and actually makes it harder to sleep. 

Ultimately, our advice is to get the right mattress and sleeping environment, and the rest will look after itself. For the best night’s sleep in 2026 and beyond, book a consultation at Dreamwool today.

There’s a lot of creative marketing – often in the form of greenwashing – around our consumer products these days; mattresses are no exception. It can be tricky to know exactly what sustainability measures are really helping our natural environment, and what claims just sound great in a catchy slogan. 

As a true champion of sustainability, the expert team at Dreamwool Beds is here to tell you how to make the most eco-friendly mattress choice by prioritising local and responsibly sourced materials, and how an all-natural mattress can help you achieve the greatest sleep of a lifetime.

Red Flags

Some red flags are easy to spot when choosing sustainable bedding materials. Here are a few to look out for:

Substandard Materials

Lower-quality materials such as foam are likely to wear out sooner – meaning they create excess waste – and are less likely to be biodegradable at the end of their lifespan.

Overseas Production

While some overseas materials are inevitable in most New Zealand manufacturing, your mattress supplier should be using high-quality local materials such as New Zealand Merino wool wherever possible. By sourcing locally, they can reduce their transport requirements and the overall carbon footprint of your mattress.

Foam

Simply put, there is no such thing as sustainable foam. If your mattress has been made with foam, that foam has been made from petrochemicals. These materials are made by refining petroleum, a process that exacerbates the climate crisis by emitting carbon and releasing toxins and pollution into the environment.

Sustainable, Natural Materials

If you want a truly sustainable mattress, the only way to achieve this is by starting with the finest natural materials. Dreamwool’s premium Merino wool growers excel in their commitment to responsible and renewable production, animal welfare, and sustainability. By working closely with our local providers in the South Island high country, we are able to ensure transparency, traceability, and the highest possible sustainability credentials.

Best Organic Mattress?

If someone is trying to sell you a fully organic mattress, you should definitely ask to see the details behind that claim. While you may find mattresses with some organic materials inside, often these are not 100% organic. The key is to look for non-toxic mattress brands with products made with natural, local, sustainably produced materials.

Natural Latex vs Memory Foam

While they can feel similar, natural latex and memory foam are very different materials, especially when it comes to their eco-friendliness. Natural latex is sustainable and renewable, whereas memory foam is manmade from chemicals.

In terms of feel, natural latex responds immediately as you move, and memory foam has a slower recovery style of movement. Unlike natural latex, traditional memory foam is not breathable; this is due to its closed-cell structure. This means that, under heat and weight, memory foam compresses and locks in warmth. Natural latex retains its structure better, ensuring a breathable and temperature-neutral sleep environment.

Longevity Matters

Ultimately, the most sustainable choice you can make is to use what you already have, rather than creating more demand for new products. One of the best ways to do this throughout your life is to invest in high-quality, well-made products that are built to last, rather than buying lower-quality alternatives again and again, only to send them to landfill. A Dreamwool mattress will provide you with optimum comfort and support for two or even three times as long as a synthetic or poorly made alternative!

How to Choose a Green Mattress

When selecting your mattress, look for all-natural, breathable, durable materials such as Merino wool, TENCEL™, and natural latex. Choose a supplier who produces locally and can clearly show you what’s inside each mattress, and who uses responsibly sourced and traceable natural materials.

Book a consultation at Dreamwool and find the sustainable mattress of your dreams today.

Like a good pair of shoes, your new bed will wear in and settle over time. All mattresses, no matter the material, will experience some softening in the first month of use. But as you look to the full lifespan of your mattress, the question is how much softening will continue to occur, and when.

Do pocket sprung mattresses get softer over time? Let the experts at Dreamwool tell you what to expect when you get your new mattress home from the shop, and how it might change through the months and years ahead.

How to Break in a New Mattress

When you first purchase your new mattress and take it home, it’s important to sleep across as wide an area as possible, rather than in just one spot. By doing so, you will help the mattress to break in evenly. As it ages, be sure to rotate it with each season to ensure that you continue to utilise all areas of the mattress surface.

Choosing the Right Support

When choosing the best pocket spring mattress for support, your body shape, physical attributes, and sleep preferences all play an important role. Dreamwool Beds offers a huge range of customisable gauges and comfort layers in each pocket spring mattress, enabling you to tailor your support to your unique sleep needs. 

A larger wire gauge will more firmly support you and be more appropriate for larger bodies. But it’s also important to consider your preferences, as you may find that less support – and, thus, less resistance on your pressure points – is actually a better option for side sleepers or those who live with joint pain.

Firm vs Soft Pocket Spring Mattresses

When selecting a pocket spring mattress, consider whether you want firm support or more conformity. As we age and our bodies change over time, many of us may find that we want a softer mattress to accommodate tired hips and shoulders. 

It’s also important to consider how different your mattress might feel once you get it out of the shop – testing it for a few minutes is not the same as sleeping on it for eight hours. When in doubt, Dreamwool recommends that you err on the side of slightly too soft, as any mattress will feel firmer after your first full night’s sleep.

The Best of Both

It’s quite common for sleeping partners to have two very different sleep preferences or body types. Here, a twin king is an excellent option, as each partner can choose the best support level for their preferences and needs. No one should have to compromise!

How Long Do Pocket Spring Mattresses Last?

For a premium Dreamwool mattress, you can expect to experience optimum comfort and performance for 10 years or longer; for a budget alternative, this could be more like 5. Consider the longevity of any mattress you choose, as it may be a wiser purchase to invest in luxury from the outset, rather than having to replace your mattress twice or even three times as often.

Do Mattresses Get More Comfortable Over Time?

Any new mattress will immediately feel firmer and flatter than the old, used mattress it is replacing. You can expect a period of readjustment while your spine is being straightened out on the new mattress, but you should settle in fairly quickly.

Beyond that, there really is no such thing as improving mattress comfort over time. Again, it’s useful to think about your new bed in the same way you might think about a new pair of shoes. It takes a little while to break them in, but if they’re not right after a month or two, they probably weren’t the right choice for you.

The Best Investment in Tomorrow

While your new pocket spring mattress may soften a little over its first month or two of use, a good quality mattress will maintain optimal shape and support for many years. Poorer quality mattresses often have the opposite effect of getting firmer with time as their comfort layers compress – that’s where you’ll really start to notice the difference in quality.  

The best investment you can make in tomorrow is a good night’s sleep. Book a consultation at Dreamwool today and learn how you can rest easier tonight.

Merino wool is an excellent material choice for both mattresses and clothing due to its breathability and exceptional temperature regulation. This lightweight, natural fibre is renowned for its unparalleled softness, antimicrobial properties, odour resistance, high fibre density, and moisture-wicking ability.

Where Merino Comes From (and Why That Matters)

Merino sheep thrive in New Zealand’s high country due to their natural ability to withstand a huge range of temperatures and climate conditions. This means that their wool is uniquely suited for clothing and bedding due to its superior temperature regulation and moisture control, keeping you comfortable all night and in any season.

Merino Wool Mattress Benefits

Here at Dreamwool Beds, we know that Merino wool is the best natural mattress material because it far outperforms synthetic (and even some natural) alternatives. Here are some of the key benefits you can expect from your Merino wool mattress:

Comfort

Merino wool excels in terms of breathability, making it the ideal choice for a cool, fresh and dry sleeping experience. Its fibres grow longer, with greater density than traditional wool; this translates into a mattress with exceptional softness and comfort.

Longevity

The dense fibres of Merino wool don’t stick to each other and felt down, which means that it doesn’t compact as much or as quickly as other types of wool. As a result, Merino wool can provide greater longevity, with a longer period of optimal comfort.

Sustainability

Dreamwool’s Merino wool is responsibly sourced directly from select high-country farms in New Zealand’s South Island. The sheep are bred on land that is not suitable for intensive agriculture, and they can be sheared for many seasons, making their wool a renewable and sustainable resource. The end product is biodegradable at the end of its life, unlike synthetic fibres found in many other mattress materials.

Temperature-Regulating Bedding

When considering what materials to choose for your bed and bedding, natural is always best, especially when it comes to keeping your sleep environment temperature-neutral. We believe that Merino wool and charcoal-infused latex sourced from rubber trees make the best material combination for your bed as, together, they yield a high-performance mattress with greater breathability, cleanliness, comfort and hygiene. The result? A luxurious night’s sleep with less partner disturbance, fewer night sweats, and superior comfort at all times of year.

For your bedding, you want natural products both underneath and on top of you. Look for sheets made from cotton or TENCEL™ – a cooling fibre made from wood pulp – as nothing else really compares when it comes to breathability. 

Wool Vs Cotton Mattress Toppers

Both cotton and wool mattress toppers are natural and cooling, but wool has a superior ability to absorb and desorb moisture. Wool is also longer-lasting and more resilient than cotton.

Sustainable Sleep Materials

Sustainable materials such as Merino wool, TENCEL™, and natural latex are better for the environment and better for you. By selecting a mattress and bedding made from luxurious all-natural materials, you are choosing optimal comfort; beyond that, you are choosing something that will last you many years.

Breathable Mattress for All Seasons

Temperature neutrality is the key to sleeping soundly in all seasons; this is where Merino wool really thrives. The ability of Merino sheep to weather huge fluctuations in temperature and moisture translates into a mattress that will keep you sleeping soundly all year round.

An Exclusive Club

We love our New Zealand Merino farmers, and we know that their exceptional product is second-to-none for comfort and luxury. 

If you appreciate the finer things, contact Dreamwool Beds today and learn how a Merino wool mattress can boost your wellbeing and add real value to your life.

As hot sleepers seek new ways to increase their comfort and quality of rest, some bed manufacturers are responding with a range of materials and technologies designed to lower the temperature of your sleeping environment. But are these so-called cooling mattresses all they’re cracked up to be? 

The expert team at Dreamwool Beds is here to tell you all about how to stay cool and well-rested, no matter the climate or season.

What is a cooling mattress?

Some modern mattresses are manufactured with fans inside or underneath them, or with a grid-like top layer of what’s known as a Phase Change Material. This material, often a gel, is added to the surface of the mattress to absorb excess heat and help maintain a stable mattress temperature.

Do cooling mattresses work?

In principle, yes, cooling mattresses can help regulate the temperature of your bed, but in most cases, the cooling mechanisms are simply responding to problems created by flaws in the original mattress design. When mattresses retain heat, this is typically because they have been made with substandard materials and synthetic foams that fail to breathe, trapping heat and promoting night sweats. 

By adding fans or gels to these synthetic base materials, you’re masking the issue, rather than solving it. Unless air can move freely through the mattress – which is not possible in a closed-cell synthetic foam – you’ll never really be able to keep it cool. Simply put, cooling mattresses are more of a marketing angle than an actual improvement in comfort or functionality. And in the case of fan-powered cooling mechanisms, you are creating a noisy sleep environment which, for many sleepers, can actually worsen the quality of your rest.

Breathable Mattresses

The best cooling mattress for hot sleepers is one made from a combination of natural materials and generous, breathable comfort layers. Materials such as the all-natural latex and Merino wool used in Dreamwool’s second-to-none luxury mattresses are the product of thousands of years of evolution. They are naturally breathable, moisture-wicking, and temperature-neutral, unlike synthetic foams that lock in heat and don’t allow air to pass through. Using natural materials to absorb and disperse heat and moisture is the only way to truly maintain thermophysiological comfort.

Discover the Difference

When shopping for a temperature-regulating mattress, the most important thing to determine is exactly what it’s made of – it could be ticking the box but not actually doing the job. Don’t rely on computer-generated drawings; ask to see samples to learn exactly what’s inside and how much. These samples should clearly show you what the mattress is made of and exactly how those materials are working together to give you the best night’s sleep.

Here are the main things you should be looking for as you decide what to buy:

Natural Materials

You want locally made and sustainable natural materials including all-natural latex (not synthetic) and responsibly sourced wool. Merino wool is the best of the best as it will get warm but never hot, buffering the ambient temperature of your sleeping space even on a scorching summer night.

Quantity of Materials

Coolness comes from breathability; a big component of this is the volume of materials in your mattress. You should be looking for at least 25mm of all-natural latex as well as generous comfort layers of a natural product like Merino wool. 

Best Mattress for Night Sweats

Night sweats can be a hugely disruptive and unwelcome part of your sleep routine. We find that Dreamwool customers with night sweats benefit most from a mattress system with a layer of microcoils for added breathability. Microcoils support your mattress’ comfort layers by putting a buffer between them and allowing more air to pass through the bed.

Sleep Cooler Tonight

When figuring out how to sleep cooler at night, don’t be fooled by gimmicks and add-ons designed to distract you from poorer-quality materials and construction. The coolest, most comfortable night’s sleep you’ll ever have will come from handmade craftsmanship and the best quality and volume of all-natural materials. Book a consultation at Dreamwool today and discover the difference.