News

The Single Mattress Guide for South Africa
The single is the mattress South Africans buy with the least thought - it's for the child's room, the spare room, the digs, the flat. And that's exactly why it's the size where the most money gets wasted. Because a single is "just a single," buyers grab the cheapest one on the floor, and eighteen months later it has a crater in the middle and gets replaced again. I manufacture mattresses, and I'll tell you now: a single carries a full-sized human on a smaller surface, night after night. It... Read more...
Extra-Length Mattresses in South Africa: The Made-to-Order Guide
Every standard mattress sold in South Africa - single, three-quarter, double, queen, king - is the same length: 188cm. That's fine for most people. But if you're 1.85m or taller, the arithmetic stops working: add a pillow at the top and your feet are at the edge, or over it. Tall sleepers spend years sleeping diagonally, curling up, or hanging their feet off the bed - and assume that's just how beds are. It isn't. Extra-length mattresses exist, and because I manufacture mattresses rather than resell them, we make them... Read more...
The 10-Minute Showroom Test vs the 365-Night Home Trial: Which Tells You More?
"I want to try it in person first." It's the most reasonable-sounding sentence in mattress shopping, and I hear it every week. So let's take it seriously - seriously enough to ask what a 10-minute showroom lie-down can actually measure, what it can't, and why we built our whole business around a different kind of test. Full disclosure up front: Mr Mattress has 9 stores nationwide, and everywhere else in South Africa our answer is a 365-night trial in your own bed. This article explains why we think that's the... Read more...
Turnable Mattresses: Why They Disappeared, and When You Actually Want One
If you grew up in a South African household, you probably remember mattress-flipping day: two people, one awkward wrestle, and a bed that felt fresher for it. Then, somewhere along the way, most manufacturers quietly moved away from the turnable mattress. Straight disclosure before we go further: we didn't follow that whole way - three of our four ranges (Comfort Foam, Active Foam, Revive Memory Foam) are still genuinely turnable, and this guide will tell you honestly why most of the industry moved on, and where our one single-sided range,... Read more...
Latex Mattresses in South Africa: An Honest Guide From a Factory That Doesn't Make One (2026)
Quick answer: Mr Mattress does not make a latex mattress; the closest match is the Revive Memory Foam, open-cell memory foam over a 50 kg/m³ high-density support core, from R4,899, with a 10-year written warranty. Let's open with the disclosure most mattress companies would bury: Mr Mattress does not make a latex mattress. Not natural latex, not synthetic latex, not blended latex - and you will never catch us calling our foam "latex" to catch that search traffic, because foam and latex are different materials and pretending otherwise is how... Read more...
The Queen Size Mattress Guide for South Africa
The queen is the size most South African couples actually end up buying - big enough that you stop fighting over territory, small enough to fit a normal bedroom and a normal budget. It's also the one size where you have the most choice, which means it's the size where buyers most need to understand what they're choosing between. I manufacture mattresses, and queen is the only size we build in every single range we make. Here's the full guide. What "queen size" means in South Africa A standard South... Read more...
The King Size Mattress Guide for South Africa (Sizes, Prices, Fit)
A king size mattress is the biggest sleep upgrade most couples ever make - and the purchase people most often get wrong on the practical details. Will it fit up the stairs? Is your room actually big enough? Why do overseas size charts contradict the South African ones? And why does the price jump so sharply from queen to king? I manufacture mattresses in South Africa, so let me answer all of it - including the honest bit about what we do and don't make in king. What "king size"... Read more...
The Student Accommodation Mattress Guide: Durability Per Rand (2026)
Quick answer: for student accommodation, the Mr Mattress Comfort Foam single (SABS-approved 50 kg/m³ core, R2,399, 3-year written warranty) is the durability-per-rand pick; the Active Foam single (R3,399, 10-year warranty) wins if the property plan runs past a degree. Whether you're a landlord fitting out ten student rooms, a res manager replacing a floor's worth of beds, or a parent kitting out a digs room in Stellenbosch, the student accommodation mattress question comes down to one metric nobody prints on the label: durability per rand. Not the cheapest bed. Not... Read more...
The B&B Mattress Guide: Sleep Quality Guests Review You On
Read the reviews of any South African B&B and count how many mention the bed. "Slept like a log." "The mattress was heavenly." Or the one that kills bookings: "lovely hosts, but the bed sagged in the middle." Your breakfast gets one line. Your mattress gets the star rating - because sleep is the actual product a B&B sells. I manufacture mattresses, and a fair number of them end up in guest rooms. Here's what a B&B bed actually has to survive, and how to buy one that keeps earning... Read more...
Choosing a Mattress for Older Sleepers: Support, Height and Ease of Movement
Most mattress advice is written for 35-year-olds. But the questions change as we get older - and having manufactured mattresses for fifteen-plus years, I can tell you the change catches a lot of families off guard. It's usually an adult child buying for a parent, standing in a shop being sold "orthopaedic" something, with nobody asking the questions that actually matter after 65. Here they are. The question that matters most: can you get out of it? For younger sleepers, a mattress is judged entirely on the eight hours you're... Read more...
The Kids' Mattress Guide: What Growing Bodies Actually Need
Buying a mattress for a child pulls parents in two directions at once. One voice says "it's for my child's growing spine - surely I should spend more?" The other says "they'll outgrow it, jump on it and spill things on it - surely I should spend less?" After fifteen-plus years of manufacturing mattresses, here's the honest answer: both voices are half right, and the trick is knowing which half. What a growing body actually needs A child's spine is still developing, and what it needs from a mattress is... Read more...
How to Choose a Mattress That Sleeps Cool in South Africa
Every summer the same complaint reaches our factory: "I love my mattress, but I wake up cooking at 2am." South Africa's heat is real, and so is the problem - but most of the advice about "cooling mattresses" is marketing fog. Gel this, graphite that, "climate technology" everything. I build mattresses for a living, so let me explain what actually makes a bed sleep hot, and what actually fixes it. Heat isn't a memory foam problem. It's a cell-structure problem. Memory foam earned its hot reputation honestly - but from... Read more...
The Back Sleeper's Mattress Guide for South Africa
Back sleepers are the lucky ones - on paper. Sleeping on your back spreads your weight evenly, keeps your neck neutral, and asks less of a mattress than any other position. So why do so many South African back sleepers still wake up with a stiff lower back? Because the position that's easiest to support is also the one that punishes a sagging mattress fastest - and most beds are bought with no idea of what keeps a surface level for ten years. I manufacture mattresses. Here's the back sleeper's... Read more...
The Heavy Sleeper's Mattress Guide: Density, Coils and What the Tests Say
If you're a bigger or heavier sleeper in South Africa, you've probably had the same bed-shop experience twice: a salesperson waves you towards "the firmest one we've got," you buy it, and eighteen months later there's a body-shaped dip in it and your back knows all about it. That's not bad luck. It's a mattress that was never engineered for the load it was carrying. I manufacture mattresses, so let me explain what weight actually does to a bed - and which specs tell you a mattress will cope. Weight... Read more...
Can a Mattress Help With Snoring? What Actually Works (And What Doesn't)
Somewhere on the internet right now, a mattress advert is promising to "stop snoring." Let me open with the honest version, as someone who manufactures mattresses for a living: no mattress cures snoring. Not one. Not ours, not anyone's. What a mattress can do is more modest, but real: it can make the sleeping position that reduces snoring - side sleeping - comfortable enough that you actually stay in it all night. That's the whole honest mechanism, and it's worth understanding properly before you spend money. Why position matters more... Read more...
How to Buy a Cheap Mattress in South Africa Without Getting Burned
Let's start with the honesty that most mattress marketing avoids: if you're looking for the absolute cheapest mattress in South Africa, it isn't ours. No-name foam singles go for around R1,299 - sometimes less - at discount stores and roadside sellers. Our cheapest mattress is R2,399. That's the truth, and I'm not going to hide it. What I am going to do, as someone who's manufactured mattresses for over fifteen years, is show you why the cheapest mattress is usually the most expensive one you can buy - and how... Read more...
Full Foam Mattresses Explained: What 'Full Foam' Actually Means (2026)
Quick answer: "full foam" means high-density foam, 50 kg/m³ or higher, running through the entire mattress, not just a comfort layer on top of springs. The Mr Mattress Active Foam, from R3,399 on a SABS-approved 50 kg/m³ core with a 365-night home trial, is our benchmark full foam build. "Full foam" is one of those phrases the South African mattress industry uses constantly and explains almost never. Shoppers see it on labels next to "memory foam," "hybrid" and "orthopaedic" and reasonably assume it's another flavour of marketing. It isn't -... Read more...
What Is a Hybrid Mattress? Coil + Foam Explained by the People Who Build One
"Hybrid" is one of those mattress words that sounds technical but gets used to mean almost anything. Ask three different bed shops in South Africa what a hybrid mattress is and you'll hear three different answers - usually whichever one matches what's on their floor. We build one. So here's the plain-language version of what a hybrid actually is, why the combination works, and what to check before buying any mattress with the word on the label. A hybrid is two support systems doing two different jobs A hybrid mattress... Read more...
Pocket Spring Mattresses in South Africa: The Honest Guide (From a Factory That Doesn't Make Them)
Let's get the awkward part out of the way first: Mr Mattress does not make a pocket spring mattress. Our spring mattress, the Hybrid, uses a Bonnell coil core - connected coils, not individually pocketed ones - and you'll never catch us blurring that difference to make a sale. So why is a factory that doesn't make pocket springs writing a pocket spring guide? Because after fifteen-plus years in this industry, I've watched the words "pocket spring" become one of the most abused labels in South African bedding - and... Read more...
What's Really Inside a Spring Mattress (And What Actually Fails First)
Ask ten South Africans what a "spring mattress" is and you'll get ten versions of the same fuzzy answer: coils, bounce, the bed at your gran's house. But there are actually two completely different spring systems sold in this country, and knowing which one you're looking at - and what's wrapped around it - matters far more than the word "spring" on the label. Bonnell vs pocket springs: the two systems Bonnell (connected coil): hourglass-shaped steel coils wired together into one lattice. The whole system works as a unit -... Read more...
The Soft Mattress Trap: Soft-Surface vs Soft-Through (And How to Tell Before You Buy) (2026)
South Africans talk about soft mattresses in two extremes: either a luxury cloud everyone deserves, or a guaranteed backache waiting to happen. Both are wrong - and the difference between a soft bed you'll love for ten years and one that wrecks your back inside two comes down to a single construction detail almost nobody checks before buying. Soft-surface vs soft-through: the only distinction that matters There are two completely different ways to build a mattress that feels soft: Soft-through: soft all the way down - plush surface, soft core.... Read more...
The Hard Mattress Mistake Almost Every South African Makes (What "Hard" Actually Means) (2026)
Walk into any bed shop in South Africa and ask for a "hard mattress" and you'll get a nod, a gesture towards the firmest thing on the floor, and no further questions. That's a problem, because "hard" isn't a technical term - and buying the hardest mattress you can find is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes South African buyers make. I build mattresses for a living, so let me give you the straight version. "Hard" is not a spec. Density is. No mattress factory in the... Read more...
Do You Really Need a Firm Mattress for a Bad Back? (South Africa Guide)
Last updated: July 2026 If you are searching for a firm mattress because your back is sore, stop for two minutes and read this first. The advice you grew up with, "bad back, hard bed", is outdated. The research now points the other way for most people. Where the firm-bed advice came from Fifty years ago, the average mattress was soft and saggy. Against that, a firm bed genuinely helped. Doctors said "firmer", shops heard "sell the hardest one", and the advice froze in time. Mattress technology moved on. The... Read more...
What Does Posturepedic Mean? The Word, the History, and What Matters Now
Last updated: July 2026 Quick answer: Posturepedic is a made-up word. It is a contraction of "posture" and "orthopaedic", created by Sealy in the 1950s as a brand name for mattresses developed with input from orthopaedic surgeons. It is a trademark, not a mattress type and not a medical standard. Where the word comes from In the middle of the last century, Sealy worked with orthopaedic specialists to design a mattress that promoted better postural alignment. They stitched two words together, posture and orthopaedic, and Posturepedic was born. It became... Read more...