Cautions About A Memory Foam Mattress Topper

Don't get carried away as you begin reading glowing descriptions of the potential benefits of a memory foam mattress topper. It's true that the revolutionary material in memory foam beds deliver good nights of sleep with excellent support, and also seems to "remember" its original shape when you get up in the morning. But these benefits come from the way the mattress is constructed as a whole, and you might not experience them with just the foam mattress pad or topper alone.

What makes a memory foam bed work so well is a combination of things. The top layer of foam is what softens when exposed to body heat, changing to adjust itself to your contours. But the memory foam in lower levels of the mattress retains its shape and firmness, since the heat doesn't reach down that far. That quality of support provided by the lower level of the foam stems from its high density; in some cases as much as 8 pounds per cubic foot. This very firm support is just as important to the function of the memory mattress as the softening and changing of the upper level.

The problem is that the memory foam mattress topper likely won't do as well functioning alone; probably not as good as complete memory foam beds would do. A topper needs to rest on something that's reliably firm if it's going to work properly. Add to this the problem that unless your original mattress is brand new, it probably isn't completely flat and may already sag in places. Any memory foam mattress enhancer or topper will sag in the same places, meaning you'll derive almost no benefit from it at all.

All of this means that you might want to think twice about simply buying a memory foam mattress topper and sticking it on top of your regular bed. Unless you've already got a very firm mattress, completely flat with no sagging anywhere, then the foam in the topper won't have enough underlying support to provide you with the benefits of the best memory foam mattress. If you're going to spend the money anyway, you might as well go for the whole bed. That might be preferable to never getting all of the benefits you were hoping to gain.