Lauren Sullivan is an editor at Wirecutter. She loves any smart tip that makes parenting less of a slog.
I didn’t buy my first brand-new mattress until I was in my mid-30s.
Until then, I’d slept on used or super-cheap mattresses, as one does when they are saddled with student debt.
But my husband and I eventually decided it was time to grow up. Our backs simply could no longer bear the springs from a 20-year-old mattress whose origin we couldn’t identify.
Making that decision was the easy part. We still had the challenge of finding a new mattress we’d both love.
He raved about the Tempur-Pedic guest bed at my aunt’s house. I thought it was too hard.
I gushed about the bed at a swanky hotel we splurged on. He thought it was too soft.
And so I turned to Wirecutter.
This was long before I worked here. And the sleep experts (whom I now know personally and trust even more as the very best in the biz) extolled Saatva, a brand I hadn’t even heard of.
As they explained the difference between innerspring and foam, used terms like “cushy” and “Euro top,” and emphasized firmness, I found myself checking off every make-believe box in my head.
Without even trying it out, I hit the purchase button for a Saatva Classic, our pick from the guide to the best innerspring mattress. And what a great decision that turned out to be.
Our pick
Pairing a classic innerspring bounce with a cushy top, this bed is for those who want to nestle in without being engulfed. But it doesn’t have the best motion isolation.
Buying Options
(queen)
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Goldilocks factor (not too soft, not too hard)
We landed on the Luxury Firm, the middle of the Classic’s three firmness options, and it turned out to be the perfect middle ground for my relationship. Somehow its luxury firmness appealed to my need for floating in clouds and my husband’s aim to sleep on a wooden plank.
Our bed feels like a true indulgence. It’s like we upgraded from the Holiday Inn to the Four Seasons.
This mattress has a perfect amount of buoyancy, which is helpful for a good night’s sleep, and bounce, helpful for any other activities you do together in bed. It has a cushy Euro top, which helps to ensure your partner’s night of tossing and turning won’t impact your own slumber. And overall it has the feel of a luxury item, but without the obscene price tag.
It has supported me through birth recovery, COVID-19 recovery, marathon viewings of The Sopranos, birthday breakfasts-in-bed made by my kids, and awkward family photo shoots (where we insist we look normal climbing on top of one another for the sake of holiday cards).
Truly, this mattress is a dream.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
In our review, we explain that thick pillow tops or Euro tops—as the Saatva has—can develop body indentations. And our guide writers did spot a few complaints about this in user reviews. But that’s the risk you take with the plusher top on this type of mattress.
Rotating your bed every six months may help (and Saatva’s generous lifetime warranty does cover body impressions of 1.5 inches or more).
Personally, after five years, I’ve had no issues with body impressions on our mattress.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTDelivery was a breeze, and returns are easy
I can’t overstate how easy the process was. Saatva customer service was so communicative. And its delivery team brought the new mattress up four flights of stairs—a boxed-mattress value proposition but with an innerspring result—and hauled away our old mattress.
If we hadn’t liked the mattress, we could have returned or exchanged it for a $100 fee, as part of Saatva’s generous, 365-night trial policy.
But we never considered returning our mattress. In fact, I bought a second one for our guest room.
This mattress is truly a wonderful combination of soft but firm, plush but practical—and it’s one of the only big-ticket purchases I recommend without hesitation.
I actually look forward to crawling into bed every night. I’m sure that has something to do with being an exhausted working parent and the state of the world and everything else that propels me to turn in by 9 p.m. on the dot nearly every weeknight.
But it’s also because I know I have a dream of a mattress to sleep on.
This article was edited by Christine Cyr Clisset and Annemarie Conte.
Meet your guide
Lauren Sullivan is Wirecutter’s director of audience, overseeing search, social, newsletter, and all the ways readers can find our journalists’ best-in-class coverage. It’s the coolest of jobs. Before Wirecutter, while raising two kids in an 800-square-foot shoebox, Lauren helped newsrooms (NBC News, The Huffington Post) and brands (LearnVest, Etsy) develop editorial strategies. She has since upgraded to a Philly row home and a third kid, but she still carries that minimalist mindset with her. (She has never owned a microwave.)
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