I downsized from a queen mattress to a full and ruined my sleep — here’s why
I used to think that anything more than a full size mattress (a double in the UK) was extravagant and unnecessary.
After all, why wouldn’t I want to be close to my husband at night? And surely, even if we had a bigger bed we’d end up cuddling in the middle of it anyway?
I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m now a full convert to the queen size mattress lifestyle (king in the UK) because of the huge improvement both my husband and I have seen in our sleep.
After all, sleeping on the best mattress for your needs is one of the most important factors in getting consistently good sleep. But after trying out this blissfully bigger bed, we downsized back to a full. Don’t ask me why.
After just a week of sleeping on a full mattress again, I’ve realized that all my old sleep problems (waking up often, feeling uncomfortable, overheating) were caused by sleeping on a bed that was just too small to accommodate me and my partner. I’ve ruined my sleep by downgrading, here’s why.
How downsizing from a queen mattress to a full ruined my sleep
I’m exhausted and I’m slipping into old annoying sleep habits again. Why? Because I’m no longer sleeping on one of the best queen mattresses and I think my full size mattress is to blame. Here’s why.
I’m overheating at night
Inevitably, a smaller mattress means you’re sleeping closer to your partner. While this is great (for some of the night,) for me, it leads to overheating.
Our core body temperature naturally drops at night, which is a key indicator for our body to fall asleep and stay asleep. In the morning, our body temperature rises which helps wake us up.
So, if you warm up at night, you’re likely to wake up prematurely and find it difficult to fall asleep again. On our queen size mattress, my partner and I had plenty of space to spread out, which made the whole bed feel cooler.
Now, we’re forced to sleep side by side, making temperature regulation a near impossible task.
I’m waking up more often
While it’s normal to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle (which is around 90 minutes), most of the time you won’t remember these brief disruptions.
However, when I returned to sleeping on a full mattress, the frequency of my wake ups increased, as did the time I spent awake.
Whether it’s my partner wriggling and pulling the covers away, or me trying to stretch into my favorite starfish position but being blocked by a human wall, when sleeping on a full size mattress I feel like I wake up every other hour.
It takes longer to fall asleep
Even though my mattress offers great motion isolation so I don’t feel the movements of my partner travel across the surface of the bed, I still find it difficult to fall asleep on a full mattress.
No amount of motion isolation can stop you from noticing the way your partner sleeps when you’re that close to them.
After I tune into his movements, even the slightest of twitches can keep me from falling asleep.
The longer I stay awake, the more anxious I become about the night slipping away from me, staring at the hours ticking by on the clock, too aware of my impending alarm.
The mattress we’re sleeping on
So, some context that impacts how a full size bed feels is the mattress we’re sleeping on. And I think this is key, as our mattress makes a full size feel even smaller.
We went from one of the best memory foam mattresses in a queen size, to sleeping on a soft hybrid mattress that has lots of layers of squishy memory foam. It’s the softest bed my partner and I have slept on so far, and we’re not fans.
The edge support is almost non existent, meaning the actual surface area of the mattress we can sleep on is limited. This surprised me, considering the best hybrid mattresses usually have robust, reinforced edges.
On top of this, we sink so far into the mattress (which, granted, is great for pressure relief) that we end up rolling into a ditch in the middle of the bed.
So, who knows? Maybe if we had a medium firm or firm mattress with excellent edge support, a full size bed wouldn’t feel so bad. To find out more about how we found our first week sleeping on our current mattress, read our Nectar Ultra Hybrid hands-on review.
The actual size difference between a queen and a full
Looking to save space? Don’t sacrifice your mattress. I thought the one upside to downgrading would be that our bedroom would feel bigger, but I was wrong.
The dimensions of a full size mattress are 54″ X 75″, while a queen size mattress is 60″ X 80″.
Really, there is such a small difference between a queen size and a full size mattress that the extra space is only noticeable when you’re sleeping on it. It doesn’t actually impact the space in your room as much as you might think.
Source link
