Body size and sleeping position also affect your preferences, as does what you’re used to (in our case, everyone testing was used to sleeping on firm pocket sprung mattresses).
For each mattress, we used the bean bag to warm up the sleeping surface to 40C, then removed it and Alan sat on the hotspot with a thermocouple wire under his bum while I measured how long it took to fall below 25C.
‘One person’s luxury is another’s torture rack’: how I tested mattresses for comfort, cost and sustainability There’s more to testing beds than simply sleeping on them.
Having only one tester for each mattress felt too subjective, so I also assembled a testing panel (who happen to be my relatives – there are certain liberties you can take with family members, you see).
The softest mattress we tested (Eve Wunderflip Hybrid) sank a full 4cm under the weights, while the firmest (Origin Hybrid Pro) yielded a mere 1.8cm.
