Smarter Sleep Quality is a Wink Away

Next-generation mattresses have been shaped by the times, with buyers seeking beds that are high-tech, economical, and eco-friendly. “There is a revolution happening,” says Shannon Farley, co-founder of Luxi Mattresses. “With 80% of us not getting enough sleep or poor sleep quality, the search for it has become a cultural obsession—fueling the rise of an entire industry.”

All of this is making people very passionate about investing in sleep. Helix co-founder, Adam Tischman, says the current excitement is fueled by the revival of an industry that had fallen far behind. “The revolution in new mattress companies is really a reaction to the traditional in-store retail paradigm,” he says. “Consumers across all categories are looking for high-quality products at value-based prices, coupled with good experiences.”

If you’re wondering how to improve sleep quality, this is the way to go:

Poor sleep quality is a thing of the past with these mattresses. First out of the gate for this new generation of mattresses were companies like Casper and Leesa, who removed the mattress salesperson from the equation by putting a mattress in a box and shipping it directly. Now, companies are offering features like adjustability, progressive foam technology, ecological materials, and tech features like sleep-tracking and heating and cooling abilities.

If there’s one thing uniting these companies, it’s the craze for customization. Mattresses today offer an unprecedented number of bespoke and changeable options, ranging from those that can be customized to those with split construction to save the marriages of fussy sleepers.

Modern-day mattress wonders await those of us who are ardent about our 40 winks. Here are a few of the game-changers we’re eyeing.

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LUXI
Luxi is a family affair, with David Farley being a veteran in memory foam, and his daughter Shannon a technological guru. They combined their efforts to create something different for an outdated industry.

Luxi offers an adjustable bed-in-a-box, using shape-adjusting technology. Their mattress is engineered with individual foam columns that function like coils, supporting the back. “Our unique technology takes into account the anatomic shapes of our bodies,” explains Farley. “It adapts to your body’s needs throughout the night, such as sleep position, weight, and pressure points, helping you to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.”

Each mattress is made using premium and eco-friendly materials. Luxi leaves customization up to the owners, who can adjust whether they want the mattress soft, medium, or firm, according to the configuration of three different layers.

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HELIX SLEEP
Helix Sleep is a bespoke mattress innovator. The company builds mattresses using information gleaned from quizzing their customers about things such as body type, sleeping position, temperature, and more. It then uses algorithms to work out the best fit, combining dynamic foam, pocketed micro-coils, and polyfoam.

So, what has people hankering after mattresses made just for them? “It really comes down to fit,” Tischman says. “For the same reason that a custom-made shirt will fit better, a customized mattress can fit your preferences a lot better than something generic. And it makes a big difference.”

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HÄSTENS
Hästens is the mattress to buy if money is no object. They are the official mattress makers of Sweden’s royal family, being entirely handmade and stuffed with horsehair—a surprisingly wonderful material that ventilates and has antibacterial properties.

Although they have been around since 1852, Hästens offers progressive beds such as the Lenoria and Novoria, which have built-in motors for adjusting via a controller or iPhone. “This bed-making process has evolved over time as Hästens develops new and unique methods to create the world’s best beds,” explains Jan Ryde, executive chairman and fifth-generation owner of Hästens. “Our flagship bed, Vividus, combines the best materials and craftsmanship with new and old techniques from its long history.”

The Vividus is basically the closest thing to a haute couture mattress you can get. It takes about 320 hours to build, as each horse hair is hand-teased, and each mattress is stuffed by hand, hand-sewn, and hand-tied. These exclusive mattresses require an investment up to $150,000. But then, can you really put a price on a good night’s sleep?