In case you might not already know, the leading company who produces visco-elastic foam mattresses is Tempur-Pedic®. They were the first to market NASA’s technology in the 1980s and have increased their market share steadily since. Over the last five years there has been an explosion in the bedding industry with many other mattress companies bringing their own visco-elastic foam mattresses to the market place.

However, it is unclear how many of these mattresses really offer a similar feel and quality that the Tempur-Pedic® brand image has been able to spring board off of. The feeling I am referring to, in case you have been living on Mars and haven't tried one out yet, is the sensation of your total body being supported as if the mattresses was being molded around you, only to have it slowly come back to shape after you roll over.

To be fair, not every person has felt that visco-elastic space age foam mattresses are the best choice, citing that they can often get too hot because of the lack of breathability that occurs with the very dense visco-elastic foam.

That is why we were excited to test out a new patent pending visco-elastic memory foam mattress called the Temperflow™, which claimed to offer a ventilation system to keep you cooler, while comparing in feel, support and comfort to the Tempur-Pedic® brand.

The Temperflow™ uses a patent pending technology that allows body heat to ventilate out the mattress, while cooler air can flow back into the mattress.  See www.Temperflow.com for more information about how their technology works.

They did so by offering a design that uses many small ventilated holes that travel through the surface of the memory foam and exit through the convoluted airflow channel middle layer. While the patent pending design of the Temperflow™ looked impressive, we wanted to take it one step further and actually compare side by side this new mattress to the TempurPedic mattress model that they believed it most directly compared to. They chose the Deluxe bed by Tempur-Pedic, so we ordered one of each for comparison testing purposes.

Temperflow™ (left) and Tempur-Pedic® DeluxeBed (right) both use socking material for fire resistance. the socking material is thin enough to allow the foam to conform around the body.

The DeluxeBed had two layers of what appeared to be the same type of bottom base foam, while the Temperflow had only one thicker bottom base foam layer. Both mattresses had a convoluted area on the surface of the base foam with peaks and valleys that enabled airflow to travel across them.

When I pushed on the surface foam for each mattress, I was able to feel air come out the sides of both mattresses at the convoluted side portions. However, with the patent pending ventilation technology of the Temperflow, I was able to also feel air come out the top through the many small holes in the visco-elastic foam on the surface, where as I could not feel any air come through the Tempur-Pedic visco-elastic foam surface. Then came the most important test of all, the direct comparison of lying on both mattresses and testing the pressure comfort, feeling of proper support, and temperature comfort.

With the socking removed, it was apparent that both the TempurPedic® DeluxeBed (left) and Temperflow™ (right) use four inches of top memory foam divided up into two layers and both have convoluted base foam underneath to increase airflow. However, the Temperflow™ has many small ventilation holes that go through the top layer surface down to the airflow convoluted air channel layer. See www.Temperflow.com for more information about how their technology works.

The best that I, as well as the other Space Daily staff members could come up with, is that the Temperflow™ may start off feeling a bit softer initially, but both seemed to feel the same after lying on them for several minutes.

At that time I did not feel that I could make a decision about which one kept my body temperature cooler, as I knew that from my past experience that it may take several hours on a mattress to determine how hot it can get. So I did just that.

After splitting a night’s sleep on both mattresses, I was able to verify that the Temperflow™ did indeed keep my body cooler overall. It is also a consensus from the other Space Daily staff members who have since slept on the two mattresses, that Temperflow™ does indeed live up to its claim of being able keep the body cooler.

The Temperflow™ uses a patent pending technology that allows airflow to circulate through the foam via a patent pending ventilation system. See www.Temperflow.com for more information about how their technology works.

Needless to say, my staff and I agree that this new patent pending technology that the Temperflow™ uses, really offers a way to get the feel and support of the leading brand and best selling Deluxe model from Tempur-Pedic®, but with a cooler airflow ventilation system. Therefore, we unanimously decided to give the Temperflow™ visco-elastic foam mattress our Space Daily product innovation award for making excellent use of NASA’s space technology for home use and bringing to the market place a new, innovative technology that really works.

The Temperflow is a trademark of Relief-Mart, Inc. Tempur-Pedic is a registered trademark of Dan-Foam A/S Corporation. We don't sell either the Tempur-Pedic or Temperflow brands. The information on this site with regard to Temperflow and Tempur-Pedic mattress brands is strictly for comparison purposes.

Related Links
Temperflow Innovation Award at SpaceDaily.com