Best Mattress for Adjustable Beds in 2024
Enjoy customizable firmness or positioning with an adjustable bed. Our CNET sleep experts have tested and hand-picked the best options for you.
Our Picks
Each of us has our own unique sleep needs, and sometimes those needs can change over time. Adjustable mattresses allow us to customize our sleep experience to get the best night's sleep. The term adjustable mattress usually means one of two things: a bed with customizable settings that allow you to change its firmness and temperature or a bed suitable for an adjustable bed frame. Adjustable bed frames offer customizable sleep positions and provide benefits like better circulation, reduced snoring, pressure relief and improved spinal alignment to help you get a better night's sleep. They can also help relieve acid reflux and sleep apnea.
Read more: 43 Best Christmas Gifts and Ideas for Every Price Range
Our best adjustable mattress review includes options and a top-rated bed frame pick. Our team of sleep experts has personally evaluated over 100 beds and numerous bed frames, testing them all in our CNET facility, where we store each mattress we review. We hope to pair you with one of our six standout choices for the best adjustable mattresses. The prices mentioned are for queen-sized models, and bundling your adjustable base with a new mattress frequently results in a substantial discount.
What is the best adjustable mattress overall?
The Nectar Classic mattress with the adjustable base bundle was chosen as the best adjustable mattress option for two main reasons. The Nectar mattress is a well-received and popular mattress choice with an attractive price tag. Paired with the adjustable base, you can have a premium setup with all the bells and whistles you could want for a great price.
If you're looking to upgrade your entire sleeping situation and get a better night's rest, we can offer recommendations for the best sheets, pillows and more.
Read more: Best Mattress for Side Sleepers for 2024
Best adjustable mattresses of 2024
Why we chose the Nectar Classic mattress: The Nectar is a popular memory foam mattress with a medium-firm feel, and its base features everything you could want in an adjustable bed frame -- even a massager. As I mentioned above, you can score big during a big promotion and get a queen-size base and mattress for under $1,500. I own this adjustable mattress base and can say it was a great upgrade to my mattress setup.
The Nectar Classic mattress and adjustable base set is one of the most affordable mattress bundles you can get your hands on, but affordability doesn't equal low quality here. I like to compare it to Tempur-Pedic (but cheaper), and the adjustable base comes with extra features that other brands make you pay extra for. With price and quality considered, the Nectar tops our list as the best adjustable mattress overall.
The Nectar Classic mattress is rated around medium to medium-firm and it has a dense memory foam feel that will feel more firm upon first impression. After giving the bed a few seconds to warm from your body heat, it slowly molds around the curves of your body. Because of its firmness, I think it's best for stomach, back and combination sleepers.
Why we picked the Saatva Solaire: Not your regular ol' camping air mattress, the Saatva Solaire is a luxury air mattress that combines latex foam, memory foam and internal air chambers to provide a comfortable and customizable feel. With 50 firmness settings, it's virtually suitable for any sleeping position and it can hold up to 800 pounds on each side. Pair it with a Saatva adjustable base for the ultimate bedroom setup.
The Saatva Solaire adjustable mattress features certified eco-friendly foam, 100% natural Talalay latex, a top cover of organic cotton and a flame-retardant barrier of natural thistle pulp. With the Solaire, you can choose a standard mattress in seven sizes, or an Upper-Flex split-top variety in sizes, including queen, king and California king, to let you and your sleep partner choose different head elevations.
One especially great feature of the Solaire is that you can use the included remote adjustable bed controls to customize your own personal firmness level out of a possible 50 combinations. This makes it perfect for all sleeping positions from side, back, stomach and combination. Pair it with the Saatva Adjustable Base Plus that allows you to raise and lower your heat and feet for a more customized, elevated sleeping experience. It also comes with added features like a massager and under bed lights.
Why we picked the Purple mattress: The Purple is a unique mattress with what its maker calls Hyper-Elastic Polymer in the comfort layer. It's squishy and gel-like and gives you a weightless feel that takes pressure off your joints and back. The Purple is also designed to hold less heat and provide a unique flexibility that's comfortable alone or with an adjustable bed frame. When you pair it with Purple's adjustable base, you can lift the head and foot of your mattress along with other fun features.
The Purple mattress has become known for its one-of-a-kind Purple Grid feature, a gridded layer that promises to keep the sleeper's hips and shoulders in a gentle contour while the spine is held in proper alignment. Purple Grid is made with an enduring temperature-neutral, hyper-elastic polymer, much more stable than most forms of memory foam, which often allows the Purple mattress to outlast the lifespan of average mattresses. The material makes you feel like you're floating and offers a nice balance between supportive and pressure relieving, which does wonders for people who suffer from back pain.
There are Purple mattress bed frames to choose from, such as the Purple adjustable base. It lets you adjust the head and foot of your bed and offers different preset modes like anti-snore and zero gravity. It used to be purple, but Purple has since changed it to a neutral gray to blend in more with any bedroom set-up.
Why we chose the Lucid 10-inch Gel memory foam mattress: Upgrade your bedroom setup on a budget with the Lucid 10-inch gel memory foam mattress and its budget-friendly adjustable base options. The Lucid Gel Memory Foam Mattress is a wallet-friendly bed and a popular pick on Amazon. Similarly, the adjustable bed frames offered by the brand give you the ability to customize your sleeping experience for less. The mattress has a soft, contouring memory foam feel and would be most suitable for side sleepers who want a plush profile.
Available in three firmness profiles and six different sizes, the Lucid 10-inch Plush Gel Memory Foam mattress combines the minimalist with the plush to create a budget-friendly mattress fit for adjustable bed frames. Its gel-infused cooling memory foam is 3.5 inches thick, creating a top layer that helps sleepers experience a regulated temperature all night. Read more in our full Lucid mattress review.
Lucid also offers four different adjustable mattress bed frames with two entry-level models. The L100 is the most basic model with a look similar to a metal bed frame, while the L150 has more functions and looks like your traditional adjustable mattress. The L600 adjustable base is the most premium and loaded with additional features.
Why we chose the Avocado Green mattress: The Avocado Green mattress is an environmentally friendly bed with an impressive list of organic certifications. It's made with organic cotton, organic latex foam and recycled steel coils, and you can pair this green mattress with one of three adjustable bases for a sustainable and comfortable mattress bundle. At three different prices, they are essentially the brand's "good," "better" and "best" setups.
The Avocado Green mattress is an environmentally friendly favorite made with sustainably sourced natural and organic products. It's a latex hybrid mattress that utilizes certified organic latex foam, New Zealand wool, organic cotton and recycled steel. It's as green of a mattress as you can get, hence the well-suited name. It has a firmer profile and it feels very supportive. The bed is bouncy and responsive, so it's easy for a combination sleeper to move around and switch positions.
Perfectly suitable for an adjustable bed frame, the Avocado Green mattress pairs nicely with any of the three adjustable bases offered by Avocado: Eco Adjustable Base, Eco Plus and Eco Pro. The Plus and Pro come with a few extra bells and whistles, but I think the Eco offers the best bang for your buck.
Why we chose the Dreamfoam Doze mattress: When it comes to affordable mattresses, it is uncommon to have multiple firmness options for one bed. These mattresses are often cheaper since they are very basic -- you get what you get. The Dreamfoam Doze is unique. Not only is it one of the most affordable mattresses we have ever tested, it comes in three thickness and firmness options. The 7-inch bed is firm, the 9-inch is medium firm and the 11-inch is ultra-plush.
The Dreamfoam Doze is made up of a thin quilted top, a thick middle layer of dense, supportive foam and a quilted bottom layer. The thicker the bed you choose, the softer it will feel. We recommend the 9-inch option since it is right in the middle and should accommodate most sleepers. Smaller body types and side sleepers might find the 11-inch more comfortable.
Other adjustable mattresses we've tested
CNET editors have tested several mattresses. Their experience enables them to curate the best mattress lists like this one and pick the beds that stand out from the rest. The beds above are great options, there are a few more beds tested by editors that could be up for consideration.
Casper mattress: The Casper mattress gets partial credit for bringing bed-in-a-box mattresses to the mainstream, and it's arguably one of the biggest brands in the online market. So much so, that you can now find this mattress in popular retail stores like Target or Costco. It's an affordable all-foam mattress with a neutral, responsive feel, unlike memory foam. It also has a zoned-support design that provides targeted support to the back and pressure relief to the hips and shoulders. It's rated around a 5 or medium on the firmness scale, making it ideal for just about any sleeping position.
Brooklyn Bedding Signature: This is a pretty basic hybrid mattress, but it has a quality design with a surprisingly low price tag for a bed with coils. It's one of my top favorite brands because it manufactures its own beds, a feat most other mattress brands don't do. This allows them to sell their beds for the low. This bed is offered in three different firmness levels from soft to firm, so it's suitable for all sleeping positions from side, back, stomach and combo. Its hybrid design also makes it suitable for any body type.
Amerisleep mattress: This is a memory foam bed similar to the Nectar mattress because it's made with foam materials and has a dense, slow-responding feel. With Amerisleep, it comes in five different firmness levels. The softer the mattress, the more you're going to have to pay. A huge plus about this line of beds is they all come with removable, machine-washable covers. A lot of mattress covers require spot cleaning, so this makes removing stains a lot easier.
How we test adjustable mattresses
CNET editors pick the products and services we write about based on editorial merit. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission.
Firmness: How firm a bed feels is very subjective and will depend on how much pressure you put on the bed. In addition to hands-on testing, CNET has recently developed a method to measure a mattress’ true firmness: a machine dubbed the Mattress Smasher 9000. This proprietary device and corresponding software were developed in-house by our lab technicians. It presses into the middle of the mattress and scores each bed on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the firmest and 1 being the softest. We also test each bed personally for perceived firmness and feel, we have data from the MS9000 to back up our conclusions.
Here's the data we learned testing the best mattresses for adjustable beds with our Mattress Smasher 9000. Sorted from the softest beds to the firmest, here's how the mattresses scored on our firmness scale.
Feel: We get physical with the mattress and see what the material feels like. This is different from firmness. Depending on the foam and materials of a mattress, we see if the bed is bouncy, slow-responding, pressure-relieving or plush and fluffy.
Durability: It's difficult to tell exactly how long each bed will last because we don't test it for years on end. We can hypothesize a bed's firmness by looking at its construction. Hybrid or innerspring beds are more durable and last longer than foam mattresses.
Best body type: Based on a person's body weight, we determine how accommodating a mattress is. We use different-sized sleepers to test the beds and focus heavily on a bed's construction.
Best sleeping position: Using different sleepers, we test the mattress in each sleeping position: side, back and stomach.
Motion isolation: We use two people to test how well motion transfer across the bed is deadened, or place a glass of water at the edge of the bed to see how much it moves if we bounce around.
Edge support: We analyze the construction and physically lay on the sides of the mattress to get a gauge of how supportive it feels.
Temperature: Instead of getting fancy, we rely on our own experience sleeping on the bed and a temperature gun. We can tell if a bed is cooling, breathable or hot by sleeping on it for a few nights.
Smell: Mattresses in a box emit a smell once they're unpackaged like a new car does. Don't worry, it won't stick around. The smell will go away after 24 to 48 hours. Some beds emit less of an odor than others.
Read more on how we test mattresses.
Factors to consider when choosing the best adjustable mattress
Here are the key things you want to remember before buying a new bed for your adjustable base.
Flexibility: You want a flexible mattress that can bend without being damaged. Most bed-in-a-box and online mattresses fit the bill because they have supple foam and springs that move independently from one another. Older innerspring mattresses have inner springs that move as one unit, which may not be as ideal for an adjustable bed frame.
No box spring: This also has to do with how flexible your mattress materials are. Box springs are not bendy or ductile, so I advise you not to use a box frame with an adjustable base. The good news is that most modern mattresses, especially bed-in-a-box and online beds, don't require a box spring.
Best adjustable mattress FAQs
What mattress is best for an adjustable bed?
Most modern mattresses will be compatible with your adjustable bed frames, especially foam beds. The best include the Purple, Cocoon, Tuft and Needle, Casper, Saatva and Avocado. They are flexible mattresses that easily bend when you move your bed frame up or down.
Do adjustable beds help with snoring?
Yes. Adjustable beds allow you to elevate your head, removing pressure on the back of your throat and opening up your airways and nasal passages, which eases snoring. They also improve circulation and relieve joint pain.
What type of mattress is best for an adjustable bed?
Most bed-in-a-box mattresses are compatible with adjustable bases, but the best kind are ones that are flexible and allow for increased movement. Hybrid mattresses or beds with coils fit with adjustable bases, as well as latex foam, poly foam and memory foam beds.
What are the disadvantages of an adjustable bed?
There are a ton of reasons you might want an adjustable bed. There are also a few disadvantages you should consider. First, stomach sleepers may have a hard time sleeping on an adjustable bed. Adjustable beds tend to be more expensive than traditional options, they also can be heavy and hard to move once they are put together.