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Ubiquitous Vinyl - It Is Everywhere Vinyl - it is literally everywhere. It covers our houses, carries water into the house and sewage out, and bags our food and our garbage. It is hard; it is soft. It can be the box and the wrapping. We can pour out of it, drink from it, eat off it, and eat with it. It can protect our mattress, and in some cases can be the mattress. And it can be the casing on our remote. So what is vinyl? And how can it be used for so many things? When we say "vinyl"...
Sleeping on Air Many of us have dreamed at one time or another of floating on a cloud. Sometimes using a high-end luxury mattress is described as "sleeping on a cloud" or "sleeping on air." That is not always just a figure of speech. When we use an airbed, we are literally sleeping on air. As with any mattress concept, the goal is restful, restorative sleep. The modern airbed had its beginning with bicycles and automobiles. The first pneumatic tires (inflated with air) used innertubes,...
Nanocoils: The smallest mattress coils so far It used to be that the shortest mattress coils were the 4" Bonnell coils in a sofabed mattress. The reason they were so short, when most coils were 7 or 8 inches high, was so the mattress could be folded to fit inside the sofa under the seat cushions. With the introduction of pocket coils, the trend was for innerspring coils, at least the wrapped coils, to become taller, up to 9 or 10 inches. This allowed greater conformabiity and more...
The title of this post sounds like either an ad or a put-down of waterbeds. When waterbeds hit the market in the early 1970s, some people remarked, "You call that a bed?" But waterbeds became wildly popular. In 1987, they constituted about 22% of mattress sales in the United States. So what are waterbeds? Why did they become popular? Why did they decline? And where are waterbeds today? Waterbeds are also called water mattresses and flotation beds. The modern waterbed is like a water...
What Are Performance Fabrics? John is looking for a lightweight jacket, one to keep him dry and cool on a rainy summer day. He finds a Windbreaker online "with performance fabrics." "Huh?" he thinks, "What's that?" Mary needs another jogging outfit. She wants to stay cool and dry, not soggy and itchy as in the old running clothes. Aha! Here on Amazon is a top-and-shorts combo made of "high level performance fabric." "Okay," she mutters, "They're throwing all these new-fangled terms at...
Pillow Top or Euro Top: What's the Difference? Jack and Jill are shopping for a new mattress. They visit a couple of mattress stores, several furniture stores, and a department store. Just so they don't miss anything, they check the Internet. Jill read that some brands and models are sold only online. "Hey!" Jack says, "We didn't see that when shopping for our first mattress." "See what?" "Pillowtop mattresses." "That must be something new," Jill remarks. "We've had the Serta for over...
Lyocell (Tencel®) Lyocell, better known by the brand name Tencel®, is a cellulosic fiber. This means that it is regenerated cellulose. Natural cellulose is dissolved from wood pulp and extruded into filaments which are spun into threads and yarns for textile production. Tencel® is the brand name used for lyocell produced by Lenzig AG, an Austrian company. Lenzig bought American Enka, the company that first produced lyocell, and it is now the only large scale producer. Lyocell is further...
Is It Bamboo or Rayon? A November 2015 Beds.org review found that most of the top-selling pillows on Amazon featured bamboo. However, on reading the descriptions for individual pillows, some said the covers of the pillows contained "bamboo rayon" (or viscose) or "Rayon from bamboo," while others just said "bamboo." So, what is the distinction? What is the difference between bamboo and rayon from bamboo? And are the ones labeled "bamboo" really rayon? First, bamboo itself is a natural...
Minicoils or Microcoils? A previous blog article, Microcoils, covered the use of coils in mattresses that are significantly smaller than innerspring coils. In this article, I noted that some of these smaller coils are much smaller than others, and that there has not been a concensus on terminology. Until now, the whole category of small springs has been classified as microcoils. But now several manufacturers are placing two layers of these coils above the support core of a mattress....
It has been almost 4,000 years since Jacob used a stone for his pillow. Honestly, it was not the pillow that caused him to dream about angels walking up and down a tall ladder, but our pillows can affect how well we sleep, and perhaps whether or how we dream. What is the primary purpose of a pillow? To support and cushion the head. When a person lies down to sleep, the head needs to be high enough to keep the neck in line with the rest of the spine. Notice how many people who don't have a...
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