A Review of Tempur-Pedic

You've heard the hype. You've seen the cheezy infomercials. What's a Tempur-Pedic really like? Springy and soft. That's rather surprising if, like me, you always imagined that it would feel like a barely defrosted Sara Lee pound cake. Still, is it really crucial that a glass of wine left sitting on the bed (you're always doing this, right?) doesn't tip over when the co-sleeper gets up to, god knows, spear another cherry tomato? That's the question I pondered setting out to investigate these beds.

Beneath the fabulous art and handsome vizsla above is Abby Messitte and Derek Eller's kingsize T-P. "I read Donald Antrim's article in the New Yorker a while back about buying a Duxiana bed* while his mother was dying, and after that I could not stop thinking about mattresses," Abby says.

It took a few years, until Derek, 36, was waking up in knifely back pain, to ditch their college-era relic. They bought a Tempur-Pedic because Derek's 80-something stepfather had slept on one for years and told them how much it helped his own back pain. Actually, they got a memory foam top for their old mattress first, which was like putting a kleenex on a brick. "It didn't work," Abby says. Potential T-P buyers, take heed: I've spoken with more than a few people who bought the mattress overlays, which cost around $800, and were disappointed. I've also talked to people who bought faux Tempur-Pedics that felt great but went to mush in six months. If you're going to buy a Tempur-Pedic, I'd say best to jump right in. If you order it from the company's web site, you can return it within 30 days. Plenty of people do.

Some just don't like the feel of this mattress. Others say it makes them sweat. The bed is made of synthetic foam, which doesn't sound promising for August in the northern hemisphere. But it is covered with a thick terry-velour fabric or, in the "Celebrity" series, cashmere — not that that sounds nice in deep summer, either. At any rate, I sleep hot and tested it on a hot night, and I was very comfortable. On the minus side, one might lie awake nights thinking about the fact that the memory foam is a petroleum byproduct.

Abby's first night on the real T-P was "weird," she remembers. "There was no give. It was unlike any kind of mattress I'd slept on." After night No. 2 she was hooked. Abby describes the feeling of sleeping on a Tempur-Pedic as "body-cradling" and firm.

I would call it a combination of soft and firm. The way I imagined it, the mattress would take an impression of your body, so that if you changed positions you'd be lying in a shallow depression, like you'd rolled over on wet sand. But I discovered, happily, that "memory foam" doesn't mean the bed forgets you're a kinetic being. It springs back when you push on it with your hand or roll around. It's soft to the touch, yet because there are no springs inside, it's entirely missing the bounce of a traditional mattress. It is a little strange at first, but not if you've slept on a natural latex mattress.

In short, I really, really wanted to dislike this bed — products people get fanatic about make me twitch — and I just couldn't. If I had an old mattress or one I was displeased with (rather than our Englander), I would consider a Tempur-Pedic.

Price: $2,100 for a queensize deluxe. Feel: An oddly beguiling combination of springiness and startlingly lush stillness. Velvety. Steady and comforting. Emotionally it's like walking into a familiar room when the power goes off and realizing, with complete calm, that you can do everything you need to by feel. Drawbacks: People who sleep on Tempur-Pedics get addicted to them and can have trouble sleeping on regular mattresses, making hotel and romantic life complicated. (Tempur-Pedics seem to cause a high number of fights between couples.) Doesn't feel the same without its native box spring, so it won't work with a platform bed.

*Antrim returned his Dux bed.