A foam mattress, but not as you know it: Leesa mattress review

How comfy is your mattress?

I absolutely need a decent night’s sleep to function properly, so a good mattress is a must-have for me. I’ve recently been trying out the Leesa mattress, to see how it delivers on comfort and support.

We’ve had our Leesa mattress for over a month now, and I’ve deliberately waited this long to write my review. I think it takes a while to get used to a new mattress, and I wanted to sleep on it for a good few weeks before giving my verdict.

The Leesa mattress – key features

The Leesa mattress is a foam mattress, but it’s definitely not your average, basic foam mattress. There are three different layers, each with it’s own function, and it’s been designed to provide the comfort and support needed for a really good night’s sleep. The 15cm base foam layer provides dense core support without feeling overly firm. In the middle, there’s a 5cm memory foam layer that provides body contouring and pressure relief. Finally, the 5cm Avena® foam top layer provides airflow to keep you comfortably cool, plus a little bit of bounce to allow freedom of movement.

The Leesa mattress is suitable for divan bases, metal or wooden bed frames and slatted bases. We’ve been using it on a slatted base.

First impressions

The first thing to note is that your Leesa mattress arrives in a remarkably small box. That’s because it’s vacuum packed, and expands once you unwrap it.

If you’re tight on space to manoeuvre a mattress up the stairs or into a bedroom, this will definitely appeal. Regardless of the space you’ve got, it’s worth putting the box in the room where your bed frame is before you open it, as it’s much easier to move the unopened box around than the mattress.

You might think rolling up the mattress means it arrives all squished and out of shape, but it really does ping into it’s intended shape pretty much instantly. To set up the mattress, you just take it out of the outer box, place it onto the bed base, and remove the outer layer of plastic wrapper. At this point it starts to expand, and you need to tear off the inner plastic at the top and pull it down and off.

It takes about an hour for the Leesa mattress to expand fully, and it continues to firm up over the first few days. Leesa advise that you can sleep on the mattress after a couple of hours, but it is fully expanded after 48 hours. I noticed a slight odour at first, but this soon disappeared.

My experience of using the Leesa mattress

I’ve been sleeping on the Leesa mattress for a month now, and have really noticed a difference. The first point I would make is that it really isn’t your average foam mattress. You can tell straight away from the premium look of the seamless cover and the generous depth of the mattress itself.

Lie down on it, and you can feel it gently supporting your whole body exactly where you need it to. I think the best way to describe it is just the right balance of support and squishiness; you don’t feel like you’re lying on top of it, but nor do you feel like you’re disappearing into it.

You’ve probably heard reports of memory foam mattresses making you really hot, so I wondered whether this would be the case with the Leesa mattress, due to the memory foam layer. In reality, I haven’t felt too hot at any point, which I suspect is thanks to the top layer concentrating on providing airflow.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m not stirring out of sleep as much when I change position. In the course of a night I usually switch from my back to my side; I often used to pretty much wake up while doing this, but with the Leesa mattress I don’t seem to be waking any more. That says to me that the mattress is providing plenty of support while I move about, which in turn is keeping those all-important sleep patterns uninterrupted.

My verdict

After a few weeks with the Leesa mattress, I can definitely see a positive difference in the quality of sleep I’m getting. I think the best compliment you can give a mattress is that you don’t really notice it doing it’s job, and this is certainly the case with the Leesa mattress. It’s comfortable and supportive, and is backed by a ten year warranty too. The cat definitely thinks it’s a comfy spot for a snooze too!