Frustration cut through my dad's voice, "we paid a lot of money to get a mattress that would work for your mom and me and just 3 months later my back is in pain!" My parents never had a big income and now that they're getting older they need a good mattress so they can have the restorative sleep, but certainly don't have a limitless budget to squander on trying every mattress out there until one works.
There is no single answer to the question, "best mattress for couples?" because everyone's body is different. With seemingly endless options, it's imperative to understand the MOST important properties you need in a mattress for you and your partner to rest easy at night. We've boiled down the most important considerations to remove the guesswork.
Best mattress firmness for couples
I asked my dad how they chose their mattress and he told me they walked into a store and laid on several mattresses, but most were either too firm for my mom who has a lighter build or too plush for my 6'4" dad whose hips sunk into the mattress and didn't provide support. This type of mismatch is common and I suspect if you've made it this far, you and your partner might resonate with this problem. My dad felt most supported at a 7/10 firmness and my mom is a lighter side sleeper and needed a 3/10.
Unfortunately, they made the biggest mistake they could and decided to split the difference and choose a 5/10. The result was, as you might have guessed, that my dad's back was thrown out of alignment and my mom felt like she was sleeping on a rock! It's just impossible to get a real feeling of a mattress under the harsh showroom lights with the pushy salesman staring at you as you lay for a couple moments.
Choosing firmness for an individual varies widely on weight, height, and sleep position. A heavier person is going to need a firmer mattress so their hips (typically where a person's weight is distributed at its heaviest) or shoulders don't sink too deeply and misalign their back. To complicate matters, side-sleepers will need a softer mattress, stomach sleepers will need a much firmer one, and back sleepers fall somewhere in the middle.
Even though I'm considerably heavier at 275lbs than my wife, we luckily end up falling into a similar firmness zone since I'm a side-sleeper and she is a combination-sleeper. If you forgot to put sleep position on your online dating profile, don't panic and rethink all of your life choices! First, spend a couple minutes filling out the SquishMat quiz to get your ideal firmness SquishZone for you and your partner.
We recommend (and you'll get this as a note in your SquishBlueprint results) that you get a firmness level that works for the heavier sleeper because it's a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to buy a plush mattress topper for the lighter sleeper than ultimately have to scrap your mattress and buy a new one because the heavier partner gets back pain.
Motion isolation mattress for couples
Unfortunately, I am the type of person who has to get up at least once at night to use the bathroom because I guess I lost the genetic bladder lottery (thanks a lot dad...). But in all seriousness, if one partner has to get up at night or if you were blessed with a partner who dreams about windmills every night it's really good to consider mattresses with strong motion isolation. Here is where memory foam layers can be a real boon since they specialize in dampening the motion caused by partner movement in the night.
If you take the Squish Mat quiz it will rate mattresses based on a SquishScore that includes motion isolation as a parameter for couples. It will also give you a mattress build construction breakdown by layer of each mattress so you can understand how each layer, be it springs, ploy foam, memory foam, or even latex contributes to how you'll end up feeling on the mattress if you purchase it.