Yes, you can turn on the air-conditioning to make sure you sleep comfortably during the hot nights of the year. However, cranking up the cool air (and your electric bill along with it) isn’t the only thing you can do to make your sleeping space a lot more comfortable. Throwing in a cooling mattress on top of your bed frame is one of the best ways to keep the heat in check without using any power.
Cooling mattresses help regulate body temperature by actively dispersing heat away from your body, which it achieves using a mix of breathable materials that promote airflow and cooling gel layers that absorb excess body heat. Those gel layers immediately release the heat as well, preventing heat from accumulating on your sleeping surface, ensuring the mattress surface maintains a pleasant temperature to keep things comfortable all night long (or whatever time of the day you actually get your sleep).
The best cooling mattresses don’t just do an impeccable job of keeping your sleeping surface at amicable temperatures, they also incorporate various elements designed to further promote sleeping comfort. From high quality materials that feel great on the skin and optimal support for your whole body to proper body alignment and pressure point relief, the best cooling mattresses ensure a good night of sleep in more ways than one.
These are the best cooling mattresses to keep you sleeping comfortably every night. Note, that all prices listed are for queen-size models.
Cocoon Chill Mattress
Want to keep things affordable? This cooling mattress provides all the cooling you need without having to veer in the four figures, making it an excellent choice for people looking for a budget-friendly way to put a cooling surface on top of their bed frame. They offer two types of mattresses in various sizes: memory foam and memory foam plus springs. We’re partial to the latter, of course, because of the layer of fabric-encased coils that move independently, allowing them to provide target support right where your body needs it. Additionally, the springs make room for additional airflow, giving the mattress increased visibility. The coils extend all the way to the edge of the mattress, by the way, allowing you to use every inch of sleeping surface. Both versions of the bed come with a cover made from a phase-change material that absorbs and dissipates heat, as well as breathable memory foam that adapts to your body to relieve pressure points, promotes airflow, and absorbs movement, so there’s minimal motion transfer if you sleep with someone who tosses in turn in the bed.
Nectar Premier Copper Memory Foam Mattress
This multi-layer mattress has a top cover that’s been woven with copper fibers for wicking heat away, four inches of gel-infused memory foam below it with phase-change material that reacts to your body’s temperature, a responsive foam layer in the middle for rebound and bounce, a thick layer of rigid stability foam below it, and a stitchbond polyester cover at the bottom to keep the bed from moving around. Normally, we find cooling memory foam mattresses with no springs a tad lacking, but the extra foam layers at the base do a good job of actually replacing the bounce and stability we get from the springs. Seriously, this bed feels like it hits the right spot of firmness without going too far. It’s also incredibly cooling, probably more so than all other foam-only mattresses we’ve tried, with the combination of the copper fibers in the cover and the cooling gel in the memory foam really proving themselves a potent combo for regulating temperature. In case you can’t live without springs, they also offer the same mattress with them, albeit for an extra $200.
Saatva Classic Mattress
A hybrid cooling mattress, this mattress is available not just in the usual sizes, but also offers two lengths (so really tall people can get a bid that fits) and three firmness levels. It has an innerspring design that uses dual coils made from 13-gauage tempered steel for durable support with high-density foam rails on the edges to keep thing firm at the perimeter. On top, it gets a three-inch Euro pillow later with quilting on the lumbar area and an organic cotton cover, as well as high-density memory foam at the same lumbar area for pressure point relief and a thick layer of polyfoam below it. Yeah, folks who find their backs aching with their current beds will want to try switching to this one. This is extremely breathable and relies mostly on airflow for cooling, by the way, so while it doesn’t have the fancy gels and specialty cooling materials many cooling mattresses use, it still does an admirable job of keeping things comfy all night long, with most of the features really focused on providing support and pressure point relief. We prefer the middle firmness option, by the way (they call it luxury firm), although your own preferences will likely vary.
Casper Nova Hybrid Mattress
Casper’s main cooling foam is called Airscape, a perforated foam that can be fitted with different levels of supportiveness and breathability. For this bed, the outfit uses two layers of Airscape foam on top: the top layer uses small perforations to increase airflow and push hot air out, while providing a premium and soothing feel; below it is another layer of Airscape that provides three different kids of supportiveness across three zones, such that it’s softer under the shoulders and firmer around the lumbar area. Below the Airscape foam layers is another type of foam with grooved channels that provides seven different types of support zones and a bed of springs at the bottom to add lift and airflow. The result is a bed that’s genuinely cool to the touch even when you spend extended periods lying on the same spot. Aside from the cooling function, we love the zoned support, which surprisingly feels really good whether you sleep on your back, side, or stomach, along with the soothing soft knit cover. Do note, this bed is on the softer, plusher side, so those who want a firmer sleeping surface might want to look elsewhere.
Purple Restore Premier Mattress
While it’s not exactly visible from the outside, the three inches of GelFlex Grid sitting just under the cover of this mattress is one of the coolest things we’ve seen in cooling mattresses. Yes, it seems like a gimmick, but for whatever reason, it does an incredible job of immediately adjusting to your physical characteristics and sleeping position, offering impressive pressure relief. On top of that, it’s also in charge of dissipating body heat, allowing you to cool your down even in warmer nights. This is a multi-layer setup, of course, so there’s a lot more than the grid-like structure that work together to make this an incredibly comfortable bed to sleep in, including an “ultra-comfort” foam layer, an independently responsive coil system, and an edge support system. If you want a bed that provides as much support and pressure relief as it does cooling, this mattress, which has been a favorite in the category for years, is definitely one to consider.
Tempur-Pedic Tempur-Breeze LuxeBreeze
If you’re willing to shell out the admittedly premium costs this requires, this is inarguably the coolest (in terms of temperature) of the all the options here. According to the outfit, in fact, it’s designed to feel 10 degrees cooler than a traditional mattress, which would make sense as soon as you spend a night in one. How does it achieve that? The main agents for the cooling is a heat diffusing layer that absorbs excess heat throughout the night and a perforated foam material called Pure Cool Plus that’s, apparently, the outfit’s exclusive cooling foam. Below it is a more conventional-looking foam they call Advanced Relief Material, which focuses on pressure relief while providing ventilation to help the mattress’ overall airflow. All this sit on top of the innerspring bed, which comes with 1,300 double-stacked coils for responsive support. It can be ordered in any of three levels of firmness.