My mom recently shared that my dad had was experiencing sharp back pain at night. He's 6'4" and a big guy. They walked into a mattress store and tested each mattress. They asked the sales rep all of the questions they could think of and finally made a decision based on the recommendations of the store staff. Initially the mattress seemed to work well, but within months the mattress layers started to break down and sag. It no longer provided the support he needed and his back was thrown out of alignment. Back pain was soon to follow. They don't have very much money and spending over a thousand dollars on a mattress is tough to budget for them, especially if it wears out in a few months!
If you're on the heavier side you'll already be well acquainted with the fact that most things in life are not really designed with you in mind. If you viscerally cringe when you think about sitting in that flimsy plastic lawn chair, try to squeeze past that person in the grocery aisle, and don't even get me started about airplanes! Mattresses are a particular pain point (literally) when you spend thousands of dollars just for the mattress to sag and deform within a year, throwing your back out of alignment and wake up in pain every morning. You shouldn't have to cringe when it's time to go to sleep in your own bed! Here is where doing a little extra research really pays off.
Firmness: Most important
The heavier a person is, the more softer the mattress feels. If you've read this far I'm sure you already read 5 articles telling you the same darn thing. If you've read any other articles you're probably starting to want to scream, "JUST TELL ME WHAT FIRMNESS I NEED FOR MY BODY!!". ChatGPT is unreliable with its advice because it's heavily swayed by the massive training datasets that are riddled with marketing BS. Luckily SquishMat has your back here (no pun intended, but also yes)! If you take the quick and free quiz the internal algorithm will take all of the factors that matter here (height, weight, sleep position...) and take the guess work out of it for you. A large part of the inspiration behind Squish Mat was to help people who don't fit the normal, one-size-fits-all size and need a personalized recommendation. I'm 6'11" and 275lbs so trust me when I say "I understand the struggle!". Please please please don't take the generic article's recommendation and get your personalized SquishZone, your ideal firmness range.
Foam Density: Support and Durability
Most people assume that firmness is the same as foam density. They are NOT the same thing! Firmness is the resistance with which the mattress pushes back on your body. The foam that mattresses are made of is kind of like billions of microscopic springs and density is the number of these springs packed into the space. THIS is the failure mode that my parents experienced. The mattress they picked had low density foam layers which quickly degraded little by little under my dad each night until it permanently deformed. Do not skip this step if you're 200lbs or over. Mattress manufacturers often try to cut costs by using cheaper, low density foams so take extra time to check each layer of whatever mattress you're considering and make sure foam densities for poly foam is at least 1.8 lb/ft³ or if memory foam 3.0 lb/ft³ as a minimum. Before your eyes glaze from the math I'm cruelly forcing you to endure, SquishMat has build construction breakdowns which show you a nifty visualization. Also, if you finish the quiz on the landing page it will give you a list of mattresses that will be likely good fits based on build construction quality.
Cooling
This one is a little tricky for heavy sleepers because generally as foam density increases, heat gets more trapped in the mattress and builds through the night. Coils in a hybrid mattress can be good for heat dissipation and, while pricier, natural latex materials in the layers near the top can really help to keep you cooler at night. Again, the SquishMat quiz takes sleep temperature into account in the SquishScores it assigns to mattresses so it is well worth taking a couple minutes to fill out the form.