Your first mattress: what to buy when it is finally yours to choose

Until now the mattress was chosen by parents, a university, a landlord, or a previous tenant. Moving into your own place is the first time it is your call, and it is a decision most people make in an afternoon with no experience of what they like. Here is how to make it well.

What most people get wrong

• Buying the cheapest thing that is a mattress. A £150 rolled double is finished in three years and you buy again. A £450 to £600 one lasts eight to ten and moves to the next flat.
• Buying firm because it sounds sensible. Most people under forty sleep best on medium, and firm is the most returned feel there is.
• Buying memory foam because it was on the advert, then discovering it is warm.
• Buying the size the last place had. If it is your room and your money, buy the double at least.

The three things that decide it

1. What you actually like. You have slept on halls beds, friends' sofas, hotel beds, your parents' spare room. Which was best? If you sink into a hotel bed and wake up happy, you like plush on firm. If you slept better on the firm halls mattress than the soft one at home, you like support. Most people, asked honestly, want medium: soft enough to settle into, firm enough to hold.

2. Whether you sleep hot. If you kick the duvet off, do not buy memory foam on top. Latex or a thinner comfort layer over springs.

3. Whether you will ever share it. If yes, pocket springs not open coil, a double or king, and a build that carries little movement.

What to look for

• Pocket springs, 1,000 for a king, 1.8 mm wire, with a foam rail or steel edge.
• A comfort layer of 3 to 5 cm, memory foam at 50 kg/m³ or better, or latex.
• Medium feel, with the option of Firm tension if you are heavier or sleep on your front.
• Densities printed. If they are not, ask; if you cannot get them, walk.
• 22 to 27 cm deep so standard sheets fit.
• Delivered how? Rolled means it arrives in a box and you unroll it; flat means two people carry it in.

See how to read a spec sheet.

What to spend

£450 to £650 for a double is the band where a mattress lasts a decade and the spec is real. Below £300 you are buying a mattress you will replace before your next flat. Above £800 you are paying for things (natural fillings, pillow-tops, split tension) that are wonderful and not necessary yet.

The everyday medium is nearly always right

The mattress most people should buy first is a medium-feel pocket-sprung hybrid with a decent memory foam or latex top, in a double, with a tension choice for the future. It is not exciting. It is right for the widest range of bodies and lives, it copes with a partner arriving, and it is still level when you move it for the third time. The chapters come later, when your body or your life asks for one.

Buy the base at the same time

A good mattress on a broken slat or a sagging second-hand divan feels like a bad mattress. Slats no more than 7 cm apart, a centre rail on a king. See which bed base.

How we built ours

The Single Life is the first-mattress build: medium feel, 1,000 three-zone pocket springs, 3 cm of gel memory foam at 55 kg/m³, Medium or Firm tension, densities on the page, delivered flat by two people who carry it up. It is the everyday mattress, and it is designed to be the one you buy at 28 and still have at 36.

The short version

• Not the cheapest, not firm, not memory foam if you run hot, not a single.
• Medium, pocket springs, a real comfort layer, densities you can see.
• £450 to £650 for a double that lasts ten years.
• The everyday medium first; the chapters come when life asks.