Sleeping Duck, Ecosa and Tempur among Australia’s most reliable mattress brands, says CHOICE research

Buying a new mattress can feel like you’re taking a bit of a gamble. 

Trying a bed in a showroom while a salesperson looks on and other customers stroll past is unlikely to give you a good idea of what it’s actually like to sleep on. 

Even if you can relax enough to get a sense of how comfortable you’ll be, you won’t know how long your mattress will continue to perform. 

And with more and more of us choosing to buy a mattress online, you may not even have the chance to get a feel for the product before you buy.

With so many different products available from various brands all promising you a great night’s sleep, with drastically differing prices and features, it can be overwhelming to decide which one to buy. How do you know which mattress will give you the best value for money?

Our mattress reviews are the result of extensive product testing using specialised equipment and methodologies to assess wear and damage from usage, firmness, comfort and a range of other features. The results help us score those products and can be invaluable in helping you choose a mattress that suits your particular needs. 

And to help mattress shoppers even more, we recently surveyed more than 2000 Australians about their mattresses. This gave us real-world results about which brands and mattress types delivered the most satisfaction and reliability as the years passed.

Measuring reliability and satisfaction

We wanted to understand how satisfied consumers were with their mattress purchase, and also how reliable the product was. 

We looked at a variety of well-known mattress brands, including Ikea, Sealy, Sleeping Duck and more, and gave each brand an overall score based on how satisfied customers were with that brand’s mattress and how reliable it was over time. 

The reliability score indicates how likely the mattresses are to develop faults over time. Simply speaking, the higher the score, the fewer people reported having had problems in the previous 12 months. 

The satisfaction score is more subjective and is based on responses to a question about how respondents would rate their mattress overall. 

This can include the perceived reliability of the product, but also encompasses:

• general comfort
• the experience of using the mattress
• interactions with the sales and support staff
• anything else that affects how the customer feels about their mattress.

The most reliable mattress brands

Our survey found that the most reliable mattresses came from Tempur, Ecosa and Makin. 

The mattress-in-a-box brands achieved some of the highest reliability scores, with Ecosa, Sleeping Duck, Emma and Koala all earning a high rank. Among the more traditional brands, Tempur and Makin scored the best.

Mattresses judged to be less reliable in our survey were from Sealy, Ikea, Sleepmaker and A.H. Beard (King Koil). 

“Within six months it sagged and dipped on either side and a hard lump/ridge built up down the middle,” says one A.H. Beard (King Koil) customer. 

Another customer who owned a SleepMaker product was similarly unhappy: “Hasn’t been comfortable since I purchased it and it started to sag in the middle after a few months.”

Mattress type

From our results we were also able to glean whether traditional coil/spring mattress, memory foam or latex mattresses were the most reliable. 

When it comes to mattress type, memory foam and latex mattresses had the highest reliability scores. 

Don’t buy based on brand alone

It’s important to note that some mattress brands have many more types and ranges of mattresses than others. For example, Sleeping Duck sells just one type of mattress, while a brand like Sealy might have dozens in their range. 

CHOICE testing often finds that different products from the same brands can vary wildly in performance so rather than buying based on brand alone, it’s wise to look at our review results for individual mattresses before you shop. 

Which mattress brand has the most satisfied customers?

The most satisfied mattress customers in our survey were those who’d bought a Sleeping Duck or Tempur product, while the least satisfied were those with a Sealy, SleepMaker or A.H. Beard (King Koil) mattress. 

One Tempur customer expressed their satisfaction as follows: “Love this mattress, so comfortable. It can be a bit hot during summer. It is a bit expensive but overall worth it.”

Overall, we found that people with a mattress-in-a-box product were more satisfied than those who bought a more traditional mattress, and in general spring/coil mattresses earned the lowest satisfaction scores.

Common mattress problems

Of the mattress owners we spoke to in our survey, some 43% said they’d had a problem with their purchase. The most common problems were sinking, sagging or denting (17%), the mattress being too heavy (16%) and body pain (13%).

Problems were less likely for those with a mattress-in-a-box (37%) than for traditional mattresses (50%).

By brand, Sealy (28%), A.H. Beard (King Koil) (27%) and SleepMaker (26%) owners are more likely to report their mattress sinking, sagging or denting.

In general, spring/coil mattresses are more likely to sink or sag, be too heavy to lift, become uneven, or have materials bunching up according to our survey results. Latex mattresses are also more likely to be too heavy to lift and slightly more likely to have stitching come undone or fabric rip. 

Memory foam mattresses, on the other hand, were reported to be lighter and less likely to sag. 

Our comprehensive mattress testing uncovers many of these potential problems during our laboratory assessments. The specialised methodologies and equipment we use allow us to score each mattress we test for sagging, comfort retention after eight years, and comfort levels for men and women. 

We’re also able to assess temperature regulation, sweat absorption and stabilisation, all of which can contribute to the satisfaction you’ll experience with your new mattress.