Have you ever stopped to think about that slab of springs and foam you spend a third of your life on? We have. Probably a bit too much, if our dinner party conversations are anything to go by. It’s a strange thing, the modern mattress. It’s a product most of us buy with a sigh of resignation, picking our poison from a list of uncomfortable trade-offs.
Do you want to sleep hot, or be jostled awake by your partner’s midnight snack run? Do you prefer the sensation of being gently consumed by quicksand, or the feeling of sleeping on a beautifully upholstered trampoline? For decades, this has been the choice.
It begs the question: how on earth did we get here? How did we go from sleeping on piles of leaves to a multi-billion dollar industry built on compromise? It’s a rather fascinating story, and it’s one that we believe is about to get a much-needed new chapter. So, grab a cup of tea, and let’s take a little stroll through the lumpy, bumpy history of the bed.
A Brief, Bizarre History of Beds
Our ancestors, it turns out, were rather ahead of the curve. The oldest known “mattress,” discovered in a South African cave, is a staggering 77,000 years old [1]. It was a sophisticated mat of layered plants, some of which were specifically chosen to repel insects [2]. A comfortable, pest-free night’s sleep - what a concept.
For millennia, the formula remained much the same: find something soft, pile it up, and try not to get bitten by anything. Wealthy Romans stuffed their mattress sacks with wool or feathers, while the less fortunate made do with straw [3]. The very word mattress comes to us from the Crusades, borrowed from the Arabic matrah, which means “a place where cushions are thrown down” [3]. It’s a lovely, poetic image that belies the lumpy reality.
For centuries, that was that. Then, the 19th century arrived, clanking and steaming with industrial ingenuity. The game-changer? The humble metal spring.
The idea of putting springs in a bed wasn’t an immediate hit. A German inventor named Heinrich Westphal patented the first innerspring mattress in 1860s, but the poor man died without ever making a pfennig from it [4]. He was an unsung hero, a man ahead of his time. It took another 50 years and the invention of the “pocketed coil” by a Canadian, James Marshall, for the innerspring to truly take hold [3]. Marshall’s design, where each coil sits in its own fabric pocket, meant the springs could move independently. This was a revolution in contouring and a blessed relief for anyone sharing a bed.
By the 1930s, the Innerspring Era was in full swing, and it reigned supreme for decades. Then came the 20th century’s great material brawl. First, in the 1920s, scientists at Dunlop figured out how to whip rubber tree sap into a bouncy, resilient foam we now call latex [5]. Then, in a plot twist worthy of a science fiction novel, NASA entered the scene. In 1966, researchers trying to improve aircraft seats for astronauts developed a peculiar “slow springback foam” that moulded perfectly under heat and pressure [6]. They called it temper foam. We call it memory foam.
When NASA released the technology to the public, a Swedish company saw its potential and, in 1991, launched the Tempur-Pedic mattress, kicking off the Memory Foam Era [7].
And that, more or less, brings us to today. The market is now dominated by four main contenders, each a direct descendant of these historical innovations. And each, as we’ve hinted, comes with its own deeply ingrained compromises.
The Uncomfortable Compromise of Modern Mattresses
After a century of tinkering, you’d think we’d have perfected the mattress. And yet, the industry has largely settled on a philosophy of “good enough,” forcing you to choose which annoyance you’re willing to live with for the next eight to ten years.
- Innerspring Mattresses: The old guard. They offer robust support and great airflow (it’s hard to overheat when you’re sleeping on a network of air pockets). But their inability to contour to the body can create painful pressure points, and their tendency to transfer motion can turn your partner’s tossing and turning into a seismic event. It’s perhaps no surprise they consistently receive the lowest owner satisfaction ratings of any major mattress type .
- Memory Foam Mattresses: The body-hugger. Memory foam is unmatched in pressure relief, contouring to every curve and isolating motion beautifully. But this comes at a cost. Its dense structure traps heat, making it notoriously hot to sleep on. Its slow-rebound nature can also leave you feeling “stuck in the mud,” making it a chore to change positions.
- Latex Mattresses: The durable naturalist. Natural latex offers a wonderful, buoyant support that’s both responsive and long-lasting. It sleeps cooler than memory foam and is naturally hypoallergenic. The catch? It’s eye-wateringly expensive and incredibly heavy. A premium choice, but one that’s out of reach for many.
- Hybrid Mattresses: The diplomat. Billed as the “best of both worlds,” hybrids combine a pocket-coil core with foam comfort layers. They aim to deliver the support of springs with the pressure relief of foam. And while many are quite good, they often end up as a master of none. They can still sleep warm, transfer some motion, and carry a hefty price tag. Plus, with more layers glued together, there are simply more things that can fail over time.
For decades, this has been the deal. You are forced to choose your trade-off. But what if the problem wasn’t the materials themselves, but a fundamental misunderstanding of physics?
A Counterintuitive Twist in the Fabric of Physics
Stay with us here, because this is where it gets truly exciting.
Most materials in the world behave in a predictable way. When you stretch them, they get thinner in the middle. Think of a rubber band. When you compress them, they bulge out at the sides. This property is described by something called Poisson’s ratio.
But there exists a bizarre and wonderful class of materials that do the exact opposite. They are called auxetic.
When you stretch an auxetic material, it actually gets thicker perpendicular to the force [8]. And, more importantly for our purposes, when you press down on it, the material around the pressure point doesn’t bulge outwards—it draws inwards, becoming denser and stronger precisely where you need it most [9].
Imagine punching a block of foam. Normal foam squishes out to the sides, fleeing the pressure. An auxetic foam, however, would pull material in from the surrounding area to gather under your fist, reinforcing itself against the impact. Cork, as it happens, has a near-zero Poisson’s ratio—it doesn’t bulge when compressed, which is why you can shove one into a wine bottle without it getting hopelessly stuck [10]. Auxetics take this a step further. It’s a mechanical magic trick, and it’s one that holds the key to building a mattress without compromise.
Meet Huggah: The Mattress Without the Compromise
For years, auxetic foam was a laboratory curiosity - fascinating, but too difficult and expensive to produce at scale. It was a classic manufacturing puzzle. A puzzle that, we’re quietly thrilled to say, we’ve managed to solve.
Our proprietary Zetic ® foams are the world's first polyurethane foams with auxetic effect produced via a single-synthesis method, making this revolutionary technology finally accessible. It allows us to build a mattress from a single, seamless core that adapts to you in ways traditional materials simply can’t.
It addresses every one of the compromises you’ve been forced to make:
- It’s Supportive and Plush: That inward buckling magic means the Huggah mattress is soft to the initial touch, but firms up progressively the more you compress it. It provides a gentle, contouring hug for pressure relief, but as your heavier parts sink in, the foam densifies to provide deep, unwavering support. It automatically adjusts its firmness under every part of your body.
- It Adapts to Everyone: This unique property allows a single Huggah mattress to comfortably support a huge range of body weights and sleeping positions. It provides deep cushioning for a side sleeper’s shoulders and hips while preventing a stomach sleeper’s hips from sagging. No more guessing between “soft, medium, or firm.”
- It Sleeps Cool, Naturally: When you lie on conventional foam, your body compresses the cells, sealing them off and trapping heat. Because Zetic ® foam’s structure folds as a whole structure, its open-cell structure is thought to remain open even under load, allowing air to circulate all night long. The result is a mattress that is refreshingly temperature-neutral.
- It’s Responsive, Not Stuck: Zetic ® foam springs back instantly, much like latex. It supports you through every movement, so you can change positions with ease without ever feeling trapped in a body-shaped crater.
- It’s Built to Last, Sustainably: By engineering all of this performance into a single core, we eliminate the need for multiple, glued-together layers that can delaminate and fail over time. This mono-material design also makes the mattress far more durable and radically easier to recycle at the end of its long life.
The Next Chapter in Sleep
The history of the mattress has been a slow march of progress, from straw sacks to pocketed springs to space-age foam. Each step was an improvement, but each also introduced a new set of trade-offs. We believe that era of compromise is now over.
By going back to the first principles of physics, we’ve created a mattress that doesn’t force you to choose between comfort and support, or between pressure relief and a cool night’s sleep. It’s a mattress that simply adapts. It’s the next logical chapter in the story of our beds.
We invite you to explore the science behind the Huggah mattress and see for yourself. And if you’re not quite ready to make a change, why not sign up for our newsletter? We promise more curious tales from the world of materials, and perhaps an offer or two.
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References
1) Wadley, L. et al. (2011). “Middle Stone Age bedding construction and settlement patterns at Sibudu, South Africa.” Science, 334(6061), 1388–1391. DOI: 10.1126/science.1213317.
2) Gibbons, A. (2011). “Oldest Known Mattress Found; Slept Whole Family.” National Geographic News, 8 Dec 2011.
3) International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management (IJAEM) – “The Impact of Mattress on the Market” (2022).
4) https://www.nytimes.com/1962/06/18/archives/innerspring-bedding-was-patented-in-1853.html
5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foam_rubber
6) https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2005/ch_6.html
7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam
8) Lakes, R. S. (1987). “Foam Structures with a Negative Poisson’s Ratio.” Science, 235(4792), 1038–1040. DOI: 10.1126/science.235.4792.1038.
9) Lakes, R. – “Materials with Negative Poisson’s Ratio” (technical resource site)
10) Greaves, G. N. et al. (2011). “Poisson’s ratio and modern materials.” Nature Materials, 10, 823–837.
