Back pain is one of the most common challenges for aging bodies, and it often wreaks havoc on your sleep. Choosing the right mattress can help you alleviate pain (much like using the wrong one can exacerbate it!). But what’s the right option to enhance your spinal health?

Historically, back pain sufferers have been told to sleep on the firmest mattress available, but this isn’t necessarily the case for everyone. It’s important to note that back pain encompasses a huge range of illnesses and injuries, some of which may be chronic and others, shorter-lived. What’s best for you will depend largely on the nature and location of your pain, as well as other factors like its cause, severity, duration, your age, your body composition, and your overall sleep preferences.

If you’re struggling with back pain, any new mattress is likely to provide some amount of relief, as most people are sleeping on mattresses that are well past their best-by date! But here’s some advice to help you find the best mattress support for your spinal needs.

Latex Bed for Back Pain

The experts at Dreamwool Beds would generally recommend an all-natural latex mattress for most back pain sufferers. This is because latex offers a wide range of different densities that allow for the best conformity out of any sleeping surface, providing customisable support for every kind of body and injury.

The Right Foundation

As important as your mattress is the base underneath it. By pairing your latex mattress with a European flexible slat base, you can achieve a comprehensive level of comfort and support. A flexible slat base allows you to put extra support in the middle with an adjustable tension kit. This enables you to deflect your hip and shoulder for a better fit and greater comfort by redistributing pressure to alleviate pain and improve function . Think of it like putting an orthotic into your shoe; a flexible base helps your mattress do its best work and keep your alignment as straight as possible.

Sleeping Position for Spine Alignment

For most people with back or joint pain, sleeping on their back is the best position to maintain spinal alignment. If you prefer to sleep on your side, we recommend that you use a pillow between your knees to keep them separated and cushion sensitive joints.

Choosing the Right Bed for Your Spine

Don’t be fooled by so-called orthopedic mattresses; the truth is that these are typically just a firmer mattress from within a manufacturer’s existing range. If you do have genuine orthopedic concerns, it’s best to discuss these with your doctor or specialist to get specific recommendations for a mattress that will meet your joint and spinal health needs.

Regardless of the exact nature and circumstances of your back pain, there will be a number of potential options for you, but perhaps just one right solution. While firmer could be best, we wouldn’t recommend jumping straight to a firm mattress – there is no one-size-fits-all answer to curing your back pain. You must also consider your individual characteristics, such as the location of your injury, your body shape and weight, and your sleep preferences. The best way to find out what works best for you is to try a number of options and ask plenty of questions while you shop.

Bottom line – if you’re suffering from back pain, a new sleep set should be a high priority. Any new bed will help. And if you want the best for your spine, an all-natural latex mattress with a firmness tailored for your needs, paired with a European flexible slat base, is the way to go.

Do your spine a favour and come see us at Dreamwool today to find your perfect fit.

Anyone who’s woken up feeling clammy in the middle of the night knows that a temperature-neutral sleeping environment is critical for a great night’s rest. While we often hear about hot sleeping in relation to menopause, the truth is that anyone of any age can lose out on quality sleep due to temperature changes. 

For those who naturally sleep a bit hotter or whose body temperature fluctuates through the night, the key to staying cool is choosing the right mattress for your needs. The experts at Dreamwool Beds are here to talk cooling mattresses, breathability, and natural solutions for the best hot sleeper bed to give you optimum comfort and support, no matter the season.

Can I get a cooling mattress in NZ?

Heat is typically retained in your mattress because of synthetic materials like memory foam that fail to breathe, trap heat, and promote night sweats. Some modern “cooling” mattresses attempt to address these problems with interior fans or a grid-like top layer of gel intended to absorb excess heat and help stabilise the temperature. 

While these methods can work, in principle, the question to ask is: how hot is hot? Yes, 30°C is 15% cooler than 35°C, but it’s certainly still not comfortable. You may be able to briefly cool down a synthetic mattress, but if air can’t move freely through it – which is impossible in a closed-cell synthetic foam – you’ll never really be able to keep it cool. This is because you sink into synthetic materials throughout the night, trapping air flow and preventing breathability. 

Bottom line: you’ll always sleep hotter on a synthetic mattress, no matter how you dress it up. And the cooling mechanisms you see advertised are generally responding to problems the manufacturer has created through poor design or by using inferior materials.

Breathability Matters

The biggest contributing factor to your bed’s temperature is the breathability of the materials it contains. When purchasing a breathable mattress, look for all-natural materials like Merino wool and natural latex in thick, generous comfort layers that will help with airflow and moisture-wicking. You’ll also want to ensure that your all-natural latex has pinholes that aid in ventilation and allow it to breathe. Top this off with bedding made from natural, breathable materials like organic cotton and TENCEL™. 

Why Natural is Best

The breathability of natural mattress materials helps to control your bed’s microclimate and achieve temperature neutrality, allowing you to better weather external temperature changes or hormonal fluctuations. By stabilising the temperature of your sleep environment with all-natural materials like Merino wool, your body doesn’t have to adjust to changing temperatures through the night. This means that your heart rate can remain consistent, allowing you to achieve a deeper, more restful sleep with fewer disruptions.

Cooling mechanisms can emulate this effect, but this typically requires chemical additives to better distribute heat, and the cooling effect may not last through the night.

The Best Choice for Hot Sleepers

Night sweats and overheating can be a hugely disruptive part of your sleep routine. For hot sleepers, the experts at Dreamwool recommend a mattress system with a layer of microcoils to maximise breathability. By putting a buffer between your comfort layers, microcoils can work in tandem with your mattress’s natural materials to maximise breathability and minimise temperature-related discomfort.

If you’re desperate to sleep cooler at night, don’t be fooled by gimmicks. Talk to your salesperson about your specific comfort needs, and prioritise natural quality and craftsmanship over high-tech cooling gadgets from bedmakers that might only be solving a problem they created.

Discover the difference today and sleep cooler tonight with the handmade craftsmanship and abundance of all-natural materials in a Dreamwool bed. 

Book a consultation to learn more.

An Investment in Sleep

The best investment you can make in tomorrow is a good night’s sleep. There are numerous studies demonstrating how sleep positively impacts critical health factors, including illness and injury prevention and recovery, weight, blood pressure, mental health, and stress. To ensure that you’re getting the best night’s rest, it’s important to invest in a mattress that supports your overall health and well-being.

At Dreamwool Beds, we understand the true long-term value of a quality mattress, and we’re here to share some things to consider when you’re deciding how much to spend on your next bed.

Spot the Difference: Low-Quality vs Premium Mattresses

When weighing up your next choice of mattress, there are several key differences you’ll notice between a high-end mattress and its budget alternative.

Materials

Cheap mattresses will typically use synthetic materials such as gels and memory foams, sometimes with a small amount of natural product included. In contrast, premium mattresses will generally use a large volume of high-quality natural materials. The density of a mattress can sometimes be a helpful way to assess this, as higher-end mattresses typically have much more generous comfort layers. Just make sure to ask for a sample to view, so you can see exactly what’s inside.

Comfort

Bed-in-a-box and bargain mattresses may feel comfortable for a short time when you first start using them, but they degrade much faster than their premium counterparts. You’ll also quickly notice the impact of synthetic materials like memory foam, as they tend to trap heat and decrease in comfort and support throughout the night.

Durability

Most standard mattresses are made to last an average of 5-7 years, though many people sleep on them long after their use-by date. With a Dreamwool mattress, you’ll typically get optimum comfort and support for up to 15 years (sometimes more).

The fewer and poorer quality the layers, the less comfortable a mattress will be as it ages. You will feel the bed get firmer, and you will see it show more signs of wear, with less resilience and support than when it was new.

Cheap Mattress Risks

A cheap mattress is a lot like fast food. It will fill your immediate need, but it doesn’t nourish you in the longer term. In recent years, bargain, mass-produced mattresses have commoditised sleep by making it cheap and easy to buy a new bed in a few clicks, but they don’t support your health and well-being or maintain your quality of life. In fact, they can actually cause or exacerbate both injury and illness. 

Cheap mattresses are also often poorly manufactured with substandard materials and harmful chemicals. Low-quality and artificial materials – or an insufficient quantity of natural materials – can negatively impact your sleep by reducing breathability, support, and temperature control. Some of the most common issues caused by subpar mattress quality are poor sleep, night sweats, aches and pains, and partner disturbance.

Why Quality Beds Matter

The primary benefits of using natural materials such as Merino wool and all-natural latex are breathability, longevity, conformity, comfort and support. A premium mattress will help you sleep better and longer with a higher quality of rest. It will also last considerably longer than the cheap alternative, meaning that your investment in a high-quality mattress can save you money in the long term.

At Dreamwool, our mattresses provide the best quality of rest because they are built to the highest standard of materials and craftsmanship. We don’t compromise on the quality or quantity of materials used, and all of our mattresses are handmade to exacting standards. 

With a premium Dreamwool bed, you can achieve a better quality of sleep, a better quality of life, and a higher standard of overall health and well-being. Book a consultation today to learn more.

Personalised bed comfort starts with finding the right mattress for your body and sleep preferences. You probably already know that you can find a bed in a range of sizes, featuring a number of different materials. But customisation options can go far beyond that, empowering you to experience exactly the right contouring, support and comfort for your unique needs.

Learn from the Dreamwool Beds experts exactly how to use mattress tailoring to give yourself the most luxurious sleep of a lifetime.

Customisation Mattress NZ

Latex or Pocketspring

The first choice you’ll want to consider is whether you would prefer a pocketspring or a latex mattress. These options can offer two different but equally luxurious sleep experiences. They can each achieve the same level of firmness, with pocket springs providing flatter firmness and latex offering a bit more deflection. 

Size

As a luxury, hand-crafted bed manufacturer, Dreamwool makes beds in all standard sizes (Single, King Single, Double, Queen, King, Super King, Californian King) as well as European sizes and any custom size you might need, for instance, for your yacht or RV. We recommend choosing the largest bed size that will fit comfortably in your available space.

Firmness

Different wire gauges and latex densities can help you achieve your ideal level of firmness. A firmer mattress will feel more like you’re lying on top of it, rather than conforming into it, as you would with a softer mattress. But like with anything, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Age, weight, body type, injury, illness, partner comfort, and sleep preference can all affect your final mattress selection.

The only way to know for sure what works best for you is to lie down on the mattress and try it for yourself. Spend at least a few minutes trying it on both your back and your sides, and talk to the salesperson about your sleep preferences. If you’re tossing up between two options, we’d suggest erring on the slightly softer side; a bed will always feel firmer after eight hours of rest than it did after a 10-minute test on the shop floor.

How can I customise my pocketspring?

The thickness of your wire gauge can affect the firmness of your mattress, as does the coil count. A high coil count with a heavier gauge might feel quite firm, whereas the same gauge with fewer springs can feel much softer. It’s all to do with the pitch and diameter of the spring; every one has its own performance that can provide very different types of comfort and support.

Partner Preference

Bed comfort is easiest to achieve when there’s only one sleeper to accommodate, but that doesn’t mean that partners need to compromise. Just as you wouldn’t wear each other’s clothes, you shouldn’t expect that your sleep needs and preferences will be the same as your partner’s. If you are significantly different sizes, or your sleep positions or needs are very different, a great option can be a Split mattress option, where each partner is able to customise their side of the bed so that it suits their unique body and preferences.

Why should you customise your mattress?

Customisation is happening everywhere; there’s no reason it shouldn’t apply to your sleeping environment as well. People are finally starting to acknowledge that sleep is the most critical aspect of overall health and well-being. So why not invest in a tailored solution that works best for you? 

Bed-in-a-box models might be convenient, but they’ll never deliver exactly what you need. By going into a shop and talking through your preferences with a knowledgeable salesperson, you can find out exactly what combination of materials and benefits will work best for you and test it for yourself.Dreamwool’s premium pocket spring and latex ranges offer a variety of customisable sizes, firmnesses, and spring gauges to suit your unique needs and sleep preferences. Book a consultation today and find your perfect fit.

Businesses have cottoned on to the fact that savvy consumers are increasingly interested in the sustainability credentials behind the products they buy. But what is actually environmentally responsible, and what is just marketing speak?

The experts at Dreamwool Beds are here to help you sift through the claims and choose an eco-friendly NZ mattress that matches your priorities and values.

What is greenwashing?

Greenwashing is when a business or product purports to be environmentally friendly as part of a marketing strategy, but with sustainability claims that don’t necessarily hold up to scrutiny. You can generally spot greenwashing by looking for environmental buzzwords, a focus on features instead of benefits, or specific assertions (think Fair-Trade or Organic) without any certifications to back them up. The best way to ensure that your next mattress delivers on its promises and provides a sustainable sleep is to ask plenty of questions and look closely at what’s inside. 

Common Greenwashing Claims

One of the ways that bed manufacturers greenwash their products is by producing computer-generated drawings that don’t clearly show what’s inside. It’s easy to say “made with wool”, but how much? Where did it come from? How was it processed? They could be ticking the box without giving you any of the benefits. Ask the salesperson to show you real-life samples and give you the details of any eco claims, because no amount of comfort or sustainability ever came from just 5mm of all-natural quilting latex.

Another common greenwashing claim is to say that materials are local when, in fact, they are sourced locally and then processed overseas. The environmental impact of shipping NZ materials overseas to be processed and manufactured is huge, and once they’re overseas, there’s no way to ensure that the manufacturing processes are in line with your environmental values. Make sure you don’t fall for this, look for traceability in your bed maker’s manufacturing processes, and ask them about their supply chain.

What is an eco-friendly mattress?

The definition of eco-friendly is very much open for interpretation, and it can be difficult to wade through the advertising language. Some of the key things to look for are:

• Locally sourced and produced
• Transparent supply chain
• Trustworthy maker
• Samples you can see and touch
• Ethically produced natural materials (and an abundance of them)
• Responsible production processes

Greenwashing Bedding

Greenwashing isn’t just limited to your mattress; you might see this applied to your bedding as well. The eco-friendly bedding materials you want to choose, where possible, are TENCEL™ or organic cotton.

TENCEL™ is made from wood pulp and requires less energy, water and chemicals to produce than conventional cotton. It is biodegradable, requires less harmful dye, and can be sourced from certified and responsibly managed forests. Organic cotton is the next best option and is an excellent choice for sustainable bedding, but it still typically uses more land and more water to produce than TENCEL™.

Making the Most Sustainable Choice

Ultimately, sustainability is about determining the maximum value and eco credentials that you can realistically afford, and then looking behind the label to see if your purchase measures up. 

If certifications are important to you, look for GOLS, Oeko-Tex Standard 100, and FSC. If locally sourced, natural materials – like those used in abundance by Dreamwool – are what matter most, ask your salesperson to explain exactly what’s inside, where it comes from, and how much is in there. If the mattress delivers on what they’re promising, they’ll be delighted to back up their claims. 

Dreamwool mattresses showcase locally sourced Merino wool, natural latex, and finely crafted, European-made pocket springs. We use only the best natural materials at meaningful volumes, allowing you to reap the sustainability benefits and experience optimum comfort. And we’d love to tell you all about them. 

Book a consultation with our expert team today to learn more.