Mattress Firm

Mattress Firm on River Road in St. George carries mattresses, adjustable bases and bedding. The item beneath the mattress gets almost no attention at purchase and causes a surprising share of the complaints afterwards, because a mattress is only as flat as what it sits on.

How it works

The traditional box spring was a functional component: a wooden frame containing springs that flexed and absorbed shock, designed to work with a rigid innerspring mattress. Most of what is sold as a box spring today is a foundation - a rigid wooden frame with slats and no springs at all - because modern mattresses provide their own compliance internally and an actual sprung base under a foam mattress would let it flex where it should not.

What matters for a foam or hybrid mattress is continuous support. Foam takes the shape of whatever is beneath it, so a slatted base with wide gaps produces sag between the slats, and manufacturers commonly specify a maximum slat spacing in the range of a few inches for exactly that reason. A queen or larger bed also needs a center support rail with legs reaching the floor, since a frame supported only at its perimeter deflects in the middle under the mass of a modern mattress and two occupants. Most of the sag complaints made about a mattress a year or two old turn out to be the base: a missing center leg, slats spaced too far apart, or a foam mattress placed on an old sprung box spring that has softened with age.

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Nearby: Nothing Bundt Cakes, Handel's Homemade Ice Cream, The Orange Peel.