Is a Memory Foam Mattress Pad Worth it?

We’ve talked a little bit about memory foam in our discussion on visco elastic. As we discussed there, memory foam is basically just polyurethane with a couple of additives to boost it’s density and viscosity. The result is a foam that is firm, but gives when weight is applied. If you have sat on an airplane, or squeezed the headrest in a recent-model car, you have felt what memory foam feels like. It is a material that is unlike most others and has a feeling that is hard to describe. But, those who sleep on it each night swear by its ability to conform to the body, decrease tossing and turning, and promote an overall better night’s sleep.

So, if memory foam is so great, and people enjoy sleeping on it so much, then why is there a market for memory foam mattress pads, and why are you reading this post? Well, as I’m sure you may know, memory foam is expensive. Originally designed by NASA for airplane seats, this material actually only became available to the public market in the early 1980s, and only actually became affordable to the public sector about ten years later. Beginning in the early 1990s, the market for memory foam began to boom. Manufacturers of everything from mattresses, to seat cushions, to pool floats began experimenting with the foam to see if they could create better products. Unfortunately, though the material became available, and less cost prohibitive, it has remained to this day very expensive.


Now, that may have been a long winded introduction, but the real reason a market for a  memory foam mattress pad topper emerged is because the cost of making an entire mattress out of the stuff is still quite expensive. These sell for well over $1,000 and can approach prices of $3,000 and more. The benefits, as mentioned above, have long been touted by admirers. Users claim to sleep through the night with ease after switching to memory foam due to a number of reasons. The foam is engineered in such a way that it gives according to how much pressure is applied, and it only gives in the one local area. So, the mattress will sink in more where your hips rest than your feet because the mid-section of you body is much heavier. This allows the sleeper to attain a body position that is more natural that other mattresses allow, or so say the proponents.

But can an isotonic memory foam mattress pad offer the same benefits as a full scale mattress. You may not think so, but studies have shown that these pads can indeed nearly duplicate the effect of having a memory foam mattress, simply by being placed upon a standard mattress. Not bad, right? When you look at the price differential — a queen memory foam mattress pad, for instance, will cost around $200, the argument becomes very intriguing.

The big thing to look out for is the thickness of the memory foam mattress topper pad that you’re buying. There are several companies out there offering 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick pads for sale, attempting to simply cash in on the hype and popularity that memory foam has enjoyed in recent years. These often go for prices that look phenomenal, but beware. You’ll see almost no benefit from a pad of this thickness. To truly reap the benefits of one of these pads, you need at least an inch in width. After all, the whole purpose of this material is to allow your body ample room to inflict it’s will, so to speak, on the surface below. You simply won’t get this effect with a pad that is too thin.

My experience with memory foam has been a great one. I don’t yet have a full on memory foam mattress, but I suspect that it will come not too far down the road, as I have greatly enjoyed the mattress pad that I have been sleeping on for the last several months. And I don’t have a particularly nice mattress, mind you. I have a rather common Sealy, which is nice, but by no means spectacular. I came across the memory foam pads sort of by accident. I have had my mattress for about two years, but it wasn’t until several months ago that I began waking up with shoulder pains. Knowing that I couldn’t afford to simply replace the mattress, I decided to see if a modification of some kind might do the trick. I’m happy to say that augmenting my insufficient mattress with one of these pads did the trick in a big way. I now wake up feeling great, and can honestly say that I owe it all to making this switch. Buying one of these pads was a great way to test-drive memory foam, so to speak, without buying an expensive new mattress. But with the way I feel about it at this point, it may not be long before I bite the bullet. So, Is a memory foam mattress pad worth it? Absolutely.