A chiropractor once told me that anyone who pays more than $1,000 for a mattress is wasting their money. So with that in mind, in 2023 my wife and I scoured bedding outlets and factories as well as websites offering reviews and advice on how to replace our ageing queen-size slab with the “perfect” mattress. One Melbourne store suggested we buy a mattress “purpose designed to grant you your best night’s sleep, every night”, with pillows “to help you sleep like a baby”.

This was mattress land, where massive margins, perpetual sales and the fanciful hype of retail predators make the sleep-deprived easy meat. “Grant” suggested charity when the thing cost $8,599, and (spoiler alert) nobody sleeps like a baby except a baby. I scoffed at the “best night’s sleep” claim due to the wistful memory of the best I ever had – on a hessian bag filled with straw in a Tasmanian mining cabin when I was 18. But few people nowadays, including my wife, would consider the straw option unless prepared to change it often enough to avoid infestation by those bugs that beset our ancestors. Sleeping technology has come a long way since then. Or has it?, I wondered, as we began our quest.

Despite our intimate relationship with a product on which we spend so much time (and money), a mattress is among our most mysterious possessions. But it’s basically a rectangular bag filled with air, springs and foam. The ideal mattress would need to be soft on ageing bones but not engulfing; firm and resilient enough to avoid hollows and spinal stress and minimise partner disturbance; be cool in summer and warm in winter; and easy to wrangle when changing sheets. A Goldilocks mattress. But for under $1,000?

Checking if high prices reflected a mattress’s quality led us to whimsically sample a “platinum oasis”, “premiere reserve Barossa” and one inexplicably named after a US university. For $13,699 we could have springs made from titanium alloy, or for $5,899, “German boron steel”. Our fanciest crash was on a $27,799 spotlighted damask “masterpiece” boasting 26,300 independently acting tiny springs overlaid with angora, cashmere, silk and hand-teased Yorkshire wool. Sadly, after lying on it for 30 seconds we were still conscious. Aside from being way over budget, none of the top-shelf offerings felt much different from cheaper models.

Two minutes lying on a showroom mattress under the smirk of a salesperson hardly equates to spending a third of your life on it. And my wife and I had different opinions on every mattress we tried. I weigh more, so I needed a firmer mattress. (It’s by default a gender issue as women on average are lighter than men.) And since my wife sleeps cool and I sleep warm, standard memory foam was ruled out for me as it’s an excellent insulator.

Weeks of searching finally led us to a small factory outlet that made its own mattresses, including one configurable to our needs, with a zip-off top so we could shuffle layers for up to a month before committing. Over a stable, cool, pocket-spring core, we chose an elastic latex layer, topped with medium on my side, soft for my wife.

The first combo was too soft; the second too hard. The third option, of “cool gel” memory foam, was about right. But my pillow was now too low so I raised it with a pillow protector, balancing the pressure between head and shoulders.

There were trade-offs. The additional layers bumped the price from $1,250 to $1,650 (including recycling) and latex added weight. Then in March the outlet disappeared, taking our 10-year warranty with it. And we’d made our purchase before reading Choice magazine’s September 2023 review, which backed the chiropractor. Of 33 mattresses tested, nine were under $1,000, including four that Choice recommended as its “top performers with low price tags”.

Am I losing sleep over that? No. Am I sleeping better on our custom mattress? Yes, though not better enough (it still doesn’t beat straw). But then who does sleep soundly these days, except cats and babies? (They don’t lie awake in the wee hours brooding over interest rates, climate change, the workplace rival or Gaza.)

So our mattress isn’t perfect and I fully accept I may never sleep like I’m 18 again. But at least I know our mattress won’t stop me dreaming.