For Australians who sleep hot
Why do you wake up hot at two in the morning?
One leg out. Doona half off. Pillow flipped for the cold side, twice. You fall asleep comfortable and wake up in a sauna, and you have probably decided you are just a hot sleeper. Maybe. Or maybe you are a normal sleeper lying on a surface that will not let your heat leave.
You know this routine
The nightly hokey pokey
You put your left leg out. You pull your left leg in. Somewhere around two in the morning the doona becomes the enemy, so it goes, then twenty minutes later you are cold, so it comes back. The pillow gets flipped for the cold side so often it no longer has one, and if you share the bed, there is a second heater lying next to you running all night.
Summer makes sense. Everyone sleeps hot in a heatwave. But you do this in April. You do it with the window open. You have bought cooling sheets and a lighter doona and pointed a fan at the bed, and the two o'clock wake up still comes, so you have filed yourself under hot sleeper and moved on.
Worth asking one question before you accept the label. Where exactly does the heat sit when you wake up? Because for most people it is not the room and it is not the air above the covers. It is underneath you. The bed itself is warm, the shape you have been lying in is warm, and rolling half a metre to a fresh patch of mattress feels like relief for about twenty minutes until that patch is cooked too.
Heat that lives under your body is not a weather problem and it is not a you problem. It is a mattress problem, because every hour you lie still, your body is trying to send heat out and down, and some beds simply refuse to take delivery.
The overnight mechanics
What heat does to a night of sleep
Falling asleep is partly a temperature act. Your body runs a cooling routine every night, and the surface you lie on either helps it or fights it. Three things decide which.
01
Your body cools itself to sleep
To fall asleep and stay in deep sleep, your core temperature needs to drop, and your body does that by pushing heat out through your skin all night. That is the whole system. Which means everything touching your skin for eight hours is either part of the cooling system or an obstacle in the middle of it, and no surface touches more of you than your mattress.
Deep sleep depends on heat being able to leave, and most of it leaves downward.
02
Foam that hugs also insulates
The cruel joke of many mattresses is that the layer giving you that lovely contoured hug is made of the same kind of dense foam an esky is proud of. The deeper you sink, the more of your skin is wrapped, and the less air can move past it. The heat you are trying to shed gets stored right where you are lying, the humidity builds with it, and by the small hours you are sleeping on yesterday's warmth.
The hug you feel going to sleep can be the oven you wake up in.
03
Every kick of the covers is a waking
The leg out, the doona toss, the roll to the cool patch. They feel like habits, but each one is your body waking itself up just enough to fix a temperature problem, and those small wakings are exactly what carve up deep sleep. You can spend a full night in bed, wake up with no memory of any of it, and still feel like you slept four hours, because in usable terms you did.
The doona hokey pokey, plotted. Heat wakings keep pulling you out of the deep end.
Try it yourself
A night on two different surfaces
Drag through the night and watch what happens to the warmth under your body on a heat-trapping surface versus one built to let heat escape. You already know which line you have been sleeping on.
An illustration of how surface heat builds rather than a lab measurement. Rooms, seasons and bodies differ, and that is exactly why the surface you can control matters.
The buying checklist
What a hot sleeper needs from a mattress
You do not need a fridge disguised as a bed and you do not need to give up the contouring that makes a mattress comfortable. You need three things working together, and you can hold any mattress from any brand up against them.
A surface that breathes
The cover is the first gate your heat has to pass through, so it needs to be a knit that air can actually move across, not a padded quilt top that works like a jacket. If heat cannot get through the first centimetre, nothing underneath it matters.
Cooling where you sink
The comfort layer is where heat gets trapped, so that exact layer is where the cooling has to live. Gel infused foam draws warmth away from your skin and spreads it instead of storing it, which means you keep the contoured hug without the slow bake that usually comes with it.
A core with air in it
A pocket spring core is mostly open space, and every movement you make pushes air through it like a bellows. A solid foam slab is the opposite, a block with nowhere for warmth to go. Springs under the surface give all that trapped heat a basement to escape into.
A word on feel. Cooling does not decide firmness. You still need the support and pressure relief that suit your build and sleeping position, and the right answer there is personal. The two minute quiz at the bottom of this page works both out together, temperature and feel.
That checklist is not hypothetical. It is the exact build of the cooler sleeper in the Mattress Crafters range.
Sixty years in the trade
A layer for every problem on this page
Mattress Crafters is an Australian family business with sixty years in the mattress trade, and the Boutique Deluxe is the mattress they built for the doona hokey pokey people. It carries a dedicated gel cooling layer where most beds carry a heat trap, and every layer answers something you just read.
LAYER 01
Breathable knit cover
A soft, breathable knit that lets air move through the surface instead of trapping it, so the bed feels cool to the touch the second you lie down and the first gate stays open for heat to leave all night.
Opens the first gate your heat passes through
LAYER 02
CrafterCool-Ice gel cooling foam
The layer that makes this the Deluxe. A dedicated CrafterCool-Ice gel infused foam that draws heat away from your body while it contours to your shape, so you get the pressure relief of a hugging layer without the overnight heat build up that usually comes with one.
Answers the warm patch you keep rolling away from
LAYER 03
Seven zone CrafterCoil pocket springs
A seven zone pocket spring core that supports your shoulders, hips and lower back while leaving the middle of the mattress full of moving air. Every spring is wrapped on its own, so turning over is easy and a partner rolling over does not drag you with them.
Gives trapped heat a basement to escape into
LAYER 04
CertiPUR-US certified base
A high density support base under it all, with every foam CertiPUR-US certified for safety and low odour. The whole mattress arrives compressed in one box with free delivery, and it is ready to sleep on within a day.
Nothing in the build you would not want in your bedroom
Verified reviews
What Deluxe owners say
These are verified reviews from the Mattress Crafters store, from people sleeping on the Boutique Deluxe right now.
"I am very impressed with this mattress. It is extremely comfortable, feels soft but is firm at the same time. My last mattress was a few thousand dollars and much firmer, but nowhere near as comfortable."
"Best mattress on the market for the price. Feels like a high end hotel mattress. We bought one for our spare bed and loved it so much we bought another for our own bed."
"We needed something compact to get into our apartment. One of the most comfiest beds and best night sleeps I have had. Plush but firm, and it does not sink in when I am sleeping next to my husband."
"I was nervous purchasing a mattress online but after lots of research I am so happy I bought this. I suffer from chronic back pain so was anxious about how my sleep would go. I am absolutely delighted."
"Very comfortable, has eased my lower back pain considerably. Definitely worth it. Arrived quickly and was very easy to set up."
"So luxurious yet supportive. Amazing value. Highly recommended."
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The obvious objection
Why the price looks too low
Gel cooling layers usually live in beds with four figure price tags, so $399 reads like a catch. The catch is real, it just is not in the mattress. Most of what you pay in a traditional store never touches the bed you take home.
The only test that counts
Test it through 120 real nights
You cannot judge a mattress for heat in a showroom. Two minutes lying down in air conditioning tells you nothing about hour six of a February night, and that is the only exam that matters.
So take the exam properly. The 120 night trial gives you four months of real nights in your own bedroom, through warm spells and cold snaps, next to whoever you share the bed with. If you are still doing the doona hokey pokey at the end of it, send it back and get your money back.*
The risk sits with us, not with you. And when it works, it keeps working, because the build is backed by a 15 year warranty rather than a couple of summers of good behaviour.
*The 120 night trial is a money back comfort guarantee. A return can be started after the first 30 nights, and the original delivery and the return freight are paid by you, so what is refunded is the cost of the mattress. Soiled or damaged mattresses cannot be returned.
Two minutes, no email required
Check the Deluxe is your fit
Cooling is settled, but firmness and support are personal. Answer a few quick questions about your build and the way you sleep, and the quiz will confirm the Deluxe or point you to the feel that suits you better.
Already sure? Go straight to the Boutique Deluxe from $399