Hi Julia,

Thanks for asking how cool the Sleepeezee Gel Touch 5000 mattress is and for more detail. This is one of Furniture Villages mattresses that claims to help keep you cooler at night. Let's have a deeper look at how this mattress is made and whether the claim of being cooler warrants spending over £1000 on this mattress.
We need to ask why a mattress needs to be made specifically to keep you cool at night. There are two reasons for this.

1. Hot sleepers require cooler fibres (usually natural fibres) to help them regulate their temperatures
2. Memory foam uses Vasco elastic foam which stores and retains heat. This is why there's been a rise in 'cooling' foam mattresses to be released to try and address this.

The Sleepeezee Gel Touch 5000 mattress is a hybrid mattress mixing foam and different layers of pocket springs. It's an entirely synthetic man-made mattress. So we're assuming that because of this it is using a different foam to try and accommodate and reduce the heat retention of the synthetic fibres.

What's inside the Sleepeezee Gel Touch 5000 Mattress?

Let's have a look under the covers at what's actually inside this mattress based on the specifications on the Furniture Village website.

• Triple-depth layer of StayCool™ heat-sensitive, pressure-relieving gel foam
• 5200 pocket springs in king size - 1200 traditional pocket springs plus a layer of 4000 mini springs for individualised body-contouring medium feel support.
• Pillowtop mattress - one sided
• 38cm deep mattress

Image from www.furniturevillage.co.uk/geltouch-5000-mattress/

Triple depth 'Stay Cool' Pressure relieving gel foam:

It looks like Sleepeezee are using a hybrid foam here in the very top layers of the mattress, particularly the pillowtop layer (which we will come on to explaining in a bit and why you need to pay particular attention to whether you want the risks involved with these pillowtop style mattresses).

Unfortunately, Sleepeezee doesn't disclose what's in this foam. Frustratingly they list it as triple layered but there's no depth, density or detail on the foam. So the fact there are three layers is pretty meaningless without these technical details. Is it three 2cm layers or 3 5cm layers for example? Knowing this would make a big difference.

With all foams, you need to know the density, ie 60, 70 or 80kg, which will, in turn, help you assess the firmness of this comfort layer and whether it is suitable or you.

As we said before, memory foam mattresses are notorious for making some sleepers incredibly hot at night. Manufacturers have made a number of different gel-infused foams to try and reduce this. It's not going to completely remove the heat issue as all pressure reliving foams, even natural latex, will retain more heat than a natural fibre mattress. So you need to bear this in mind. This mattress will not, based on our experience of such hybrid foams, ever leave you cold at night, just slightly less hot than a memory foam mattress.

Pocket Springs Layers:

Now let's have a  look at the spring system. This Gel Touch mattress uses 1200 synthetic pocket springs - which we guess is in a 1.4 medium gauge from the description, but the actual tension is not listed. Which is fine for a mattress of this size and price. It would be nice to see a calico encased pocket spring given the mattress is around £1200 for a kingsize.

The issue we have is with the 4000 mini springs placed on top. Manufacturers are racing to increase the spring count in mattresses as a selling point. To this end, you can now see thousands upon thousands of springs. However, this is not always a benefit to you as they not only take up valuable space inside the mattress where fibres should go but also micro springs offer very little in terms of support. Have a read of our article on why we will never use micro springs in our mattresses.

Pillowtop Top Layer:

The biggest concern with this mattress is the fact it uses a pillowtop construction method. The issue with this is 2 fold.

1. Pillowtop mattresses mean they are always one-sided so you can't turn the mattress to even out settlement. You can only ever use half of the mattress ie one side.
2. Pillowtop mattress toppers are notorious for settling far faster than the rest of the mattress. So once the pillowtop fully settles you can be left with a very lumpy bumpy mattress comfort layer with no way to fix it.

You're far better buying a two-sided mattress and a removable topper to get a similar feeling but without this drawback.

This is also a very deep mattress, probably due to the depth of the pillowtop. So you will need specialist sheets to fit this mattress. Given the fact it is one-sided you will need to rotate the mattress monthly to avoid any settlement or dips forming. Ideally, you'd be able to turn over your mattress to fully even out natural settlement but unfortunately with this model that's impossible.

What's the best cool natural fibre mattress?

If you're looking for a cool mattress then natural fibres hands down are the best option. They are both breathable and naturally temperature regulating. There's no need for synthetic foams or gels to help address night time heat issues. They are also far more resilient and robust than synthetic mattress fibres. As we have said above a 2-sided natural fibre mattress can be turned to even out settlement, giving you two sides of your mattress to sleep on.

If you're looking for a cooler mattress than can be turned without the drawbacks of a pillowtop Julia then please take a look at our Artisan Bespoke 004 mattress. It's 100% Natural Fibre, Two-sided and comes in 3 different spring tensions which are tailored to your bodyweight.

Artisan Bespoke 004 Mattress

1: 1200GSM BLENDED BRITISH FLEECE WOOL AND COTTON

2: HAIRPROOF CAMBRIC COVER

3: 200GSM SOFT BAMBOO

4: 1200GSM PURE HORSETAIL

5: 1000GSM BONDED BRITISH FLEECE WOOL AND COTTON

6:1600 CALICO ENCASED POCKET SPRINGS [ 49MM ] [1.28MM]

TOTAL: 3600GSM

DEPTH:
27-30CM

CHEMICAL FREE COVER

We hope that helps Julia and if you have any more mattress related questions please get back in touch on info@localhost or 0161 437 4419.

Sleep well
John & Ryan