Preventing Motion Transfer in Mattresses (Video)

Kirk Forsyth of Gardner Mattress talks about motion transfer, and what types of mattresses and mattress configurations help the most with this common problem.

What can I do about motion transfer in my mattress when sleeping with a partner?

Motion transfer is a biggie that we hear a lot here. Generally we would start with a pocketed coil. Pocket coils, because the springs aren’t attached by steel, they don’t transfer motion as much. The fabric attachment that each coil is wrapped in sort of dampens movement. Then ultimately, depending on your comfort levels, we would recommend generally a memory foam because it cuts down on motion between two people.

If it was a real extreme example, and people are really light sleepers, or one of the people is a very light sleeper, sometimes we’ll even recommend, especially if it’s a king, two twin extra longs, so there’s an actual break in even the top covering. We could customize even a queen size if we had to, because we can do that here, and make two 30 inch mattresses. But with a queen size we’d hopefully solve it with one mattress.

How do you best handle putting two twins together to form one King size mattress?

It would be all made up as one thing — mattress pad, fitted sheet, all the rest, so it will look that way. There are even products out on the market that have a strip that goes down the middle, and the strap that goes around both mattresses, just to ensure everything kind of holds together. But fitted sheets and mattress pads will hold everything together as well, so you won’t get any separation. But that’s extreme.

Can you make up each side of a two-twin mattress setup to be a separate firmness for each person?

Absolutely. Because all our mattresses aren’t the same height, what we would do is then adjust the box spring or foundation height to raise or lower, so that both mattresses would then finish the same height off the floor. So that they would finish parallel, or whatever you want to say. So, yeah, we can do a lot of different things. You know, sometimes we’ll even modify the mattresses themselves to fit people’s different comfort styles or preferences.