Comfortably Cool in Bed
Mattress makers are selling mattresses with a new claim to comfort: a cold night's sleep. Big names have various techniques to cool down a mattress and claims to solving what may be an even pricklier problem: couples rarely agree on temperature. Ellen Byron has a look. Photo: Getty Images. Video.
Mattress makers and other marketers of a good night's sleep are selling what they think is a must-have—a cold bed.
With names like Arctic, Glacier and Chillow, mattresses and accessories are promising to help people fall asleep and stay asleep by keeping beds cool. Nearly every major bedding maker now offers at least one product designed to regulate bed temperature.
Bed temperature, it seems, is almost as bad as snoring when it comes to the issues two people can face when trying to stay comfortable in the same bed night after night. One person who is overheated and restlessly kicking off covers makes the other person unhappy, too. The Better Sleep Council, an arm of the International Sleep Products Association trade group, surveyed couples about sleep problems last year and found bedroom temperature was their most common complaint (43%) followed by tossing and turning (40%).
Manufacturers are losing no time trying to restore peace with a battalion of cooling mattresses and other products such as mattress-top "layers" with remote controls, fans to circulate air from beneath the bed, two-zone comforters and water-filled pillow pads.
The Sleep Number i8 bed is 'temperature balancing,' claiming to be neither too hot nor too cold (king size starts at $4,100).
The Chilipad circulates water, either heating or cooling each side of the bed (king size, $999).
Technology tends to focus on the overheated partner by making the bed cooler. After all, the chilly person has plenty of low-tech options—extra blankets, warmer pajamas—to maintain a toasty sleeping environment.
A bed is at room temperature until someone lies down on it, and then, even in cool surroundings, it takes on a sleeping person's body heat and eventually can start to feel too hot. Mattresses with cooling capabilities typically claim to maintain a surface temperature in the 85-to-90 degree Fahrenheit range—well below the normal 98.6-degree human.
Brookstone offers the ChiliPad, a temperature-control mattress pad that uses a water-circulation system. At first, Brookstone thought it would appeal to people trying to save on energy costs for heating or cooling their bedrooms. But the product has taken off with couples looking to individualize bed temperature. "We're always looking for harmony under the covers," says David Figler, Brookstone's operational vice president. "Brookstone wants to save marriages."
In April, Sleep Number, a line of adjustable-firmness beds from Select Comfort Corp., SCSS -1.54% introduced the DualTemp "layer," which lays on top of the mattress under the fitted sheet and helps regulate temperature. With two remote controls and two heating-cooling units to fan air up and through its two halves, it costs $1,900 in king size.
"No two people are alike, yet most people sleep on a bed that's identical on both sides," says Pete Bils, vice president of sleep innovation and clinical research for Sleep Number. "The more you can individualize your sleeping environment, the better you're going to sleep."
Figuring it takes most people from five to 16 minutes to fall asleep, Tempur Sealy International Inc. TPX -2.20% offers a line of Sealy Posturepedic foam-and-innerspring beds with a heat-capturing technology called OptiCool. The mattresses feel cool to the touch for about 20 minutes.
"Most people roll over and move around in their sleep, so if you go to a spot 6 inches away, it will be cool," says David Moret, vice president of research and development for Sealy. Meanwhile, the spot you just vacated will feel cool again after about 20 minutes. "Through the sheets you can definitely feel it, too," he adds. The company is planning an ad campaign next week for the mattresses. Prices for a queen-size set start at $1,299.
Cooling beds really can benefit "hot sleepers," a group that includes women during menopause, people with fast metabolisms and overweight people, says Joseph Ojile, who runs the Clayton Sleep Institute, a St. Louis treatment and research center that doesn't work with bedding or mattress makers. "People generally do better when they try to go to sleep in a cooler, darker room than they do in a hot room," Dr. Ojile says.
A survey last year by the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation found some 67% of consumers said a cool bedroom temperature is important to a good night's sleep. Yet only 17% of consumers blamed their mattresses for an uncomfortable temperature.
"We can't affect the light in the room, or the noise, but we kept hearing about sleep temperature, and we as a sleep community jumped on that," says Scott Smalling, chief of specialty innovations at Simmons Bedding Co. It introduced AirCool technology last year in a Beautyrest innerspring mattress that starts at $1,399 and in a Comforpedic memory-foam mattresses that starts at $1,299. TruTemp gel inside the Simmons mattresses is said to absorb heat and release it back into the bed as needed. The target temperature range for the bed's surface, according to a Simmons sales training video, is 82 to 88 degrees.
Some say the cold-bed trend began in 2011, when Serta introduced a foam bed called iComfort with Cool Action gel. The bed addressed a common complaint about memory foam, the previous big new mattress technology—namely that it can make the bed feel overheated. Foam, an insulator, retains body heat at night and can make some sleepers feel too hot, Serta says.
Researchers at mattress maker Kingsdown Inc. tested its Blu-Tek line, including mattresses with names like Winter, Polar, Arctic, Glacier and Peak, using a mannequin called Rod, who was named for the heating element in his back.
They placed Rod on a bed and watched, via infrared camera, as the mannequin warmed up and heat dispersed into a mattress featuring the company's Cool Wave fabric-and-foam surface, with hundreds of pinholes where cool air can enter and warm air escape. Beneath that surface, a gear-like mesh of foam promotes additional airflow. Tests with Rod, and later with humans, helped the Blu-Tek mattresses reach a cool-off rate that Kingsdown says was 30% faster than that of standard mattresses.
Robert Oexman, Kingsdown's vice president of strategic development and research and a chiropractor in private practice treating patients with sleep problems, says he advises couples with temperature conflicts to use separate sheets and blankets. His research found this helped reduce sleep disturbances by 79%. "When I get too warm I shove the blankets and sheets off of me, and when I'm cold I'm grabbing them," says Dr. Oexman. "That is disturbing my partner."
The Tempur-Pedic foam-mattress line, also from Tempur Sealy, last year introduced Breeze technology, which promises to pull excess heat away from sleepers. "Tempur-Pedic has been looking for ways to optimize climate for a long time," says Rick Anderson, president of Tempur-Pedic North America. He says more consumers complain about being too hot on innerspring mattresses than on foam.
At Get-A-Mattress, a giant retail showroom in Arroyo Grande, Calif., only about 10% of customers come to the store specifically looking for a cooling mattress, says Jimi Breazeale, president of the SLO World Inc. unit. "They're trained to come in and ask for firmness or support," he says, but when they hear about cooling, they're sold.
Luxury mattress maker E.S. Kluft & Co. has been pitching the temperature-regulating benefits of its natural-fiber mattresses for years. Some are stuffed with up to 20 pounds of high-grade wool and cost more than $33,000.
Even so, the company last year rolled out a new line of beds with "airegelle" cooling technology, with prices up to $8,000.
"We need to be in that game right now," says Earl Kluft, chief executive. He adds, "Now you wouldn't think of buying a TV without a remote control. This is going to happen with these beds."
