Waterbed and mattress

A waterbed has a mattress that is filled with water - the best mattress filler available when it comes to shaping and profiling around the natural curves of the person sleeping upon it. This makes waterbeds perfect orthopedic beds.

Contrary to popular myth, waterbeds do not have a rolling or wave like motion when the person sleeping on them moves or adjusts their position. This is because modern water mattresses us a clever baffle system to break down the overall volume of water into smaller sections. This in turn nullifies any wave-like movements by absorbing the water's kinetic energy into the baffles.

Water beds have either soft or hard mattress sides. This is because the sides of a water mattress are structural and have to act in the same way as walls to support the water that is held within them. The hard-side is the traditional style water mattress whilst the soft-side is the newer type which does not have the over-hanging plynth look which is a feature of the hard side. The big advantage of the softside is that the water mattress will generally fall into the same size categories as standard mattresses making the buying of bedding un-problematic. The larger hardside waterbeds often have unusual dimensions that make finding suitable bedding difficult.

What a water bed feels like

Not surprisingly many people describe the sensation of sleeping on a water bed as being similar to that of floating on water. For a very small minority of people this is an unusual and hard to "adapt to" feeling, but for most people it results in the best possible sleeping experience.

Because water is completely viscous it reacts instantaneously when it comes to moulding itself to the shapes and contours of anyone sleeping on it. But just as importantly, water does not deform or deflect over time as a result of wear and use. This means that, as a mattress filling, water does not degrade and deteriorate like springs and foams. Therefore, these mattresses are not subject to faults like lumps, deflections and deformation.

A water mattress is the only bed type that will, if looked after properly, be as good to sleep on when it is ten years old as it was on day one.

A water bed is generally regarded as having a superior orthopedic mattress performance and, although expensive, it can provide many years of trouble free use.

Limitations

Water beds have a couple of potential drawbacks.

The first is the weight of the mattress which may make it unsuitable in some properties where the bed’s weight may be a problem, or require the strengthening of the floor.

The second is the fact that if the mattress is damaged there can be water leakage. It should be pointed out that these mattresses are not easily punctured, but this is always a possibility.

A third maintenance requirement is that it may (with some water beds) be necessary to replace or recondition the water held within the mattress. This can be done with conditioning chemicals, but it can be advisable to have this work performed by a specialist contractor.

The best alternative to a water bed is a visco elastic memory foam mattress.

Back to Orthopedic mattress and specialist bed page

Back to the Home Page