The
• Once upon a time, you were supposed to flip your mattress every few months.
• It was so the mattress wouldn't sag, and would remain in the right shape.
• Almost all mattresses made nowadays are one-sided.
Mattress sellers used to recommend that you flip your mattress every three to six months.
But if you make a habit of flipping your mattress, you can probably stop - most mattresses are now single-sided and there's no reason to keep turning them.
You see, mattresses used to be made double-sided, meaning they worked just as well no matter which side was facing up. Flipping your mattress was supposed to make it more comfortable, because it would even out your mattress use.
If you didn't flip it regularly, your body would put too much regular pressure on some of the springs, and the mattress would sag. Flipping your mattress was supposed to increase the lifespan of your mattress and allow you to sleep better.
"Many mattresses stopped being two-sided a while back," Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep expert, told INSIDER in an email. "There are a few models where this could make sense. [There] is often a base support layer (often springs), and then a few 'toppers' that are glued on top as a comfort layer. Thus the structure is not symmetrical, therefore if you flipped it, you would be trying to sleep on the support layer, which would be pretty uncomfortable."
The first single-sided bed was introduced by the mattress manufacturer Simmons in 2000, according to David Perry, the Executive Editor of Furniture Today. Nowadays, almost all mattresses sold are single-sided and shouldn't be flipped. The construction is strong enough so that they seldom sag.
What a relief.
"My customers are almost always thrilled to hear that all of our mattresses are one-sided," a mattress sales associate told Perry. "They confess that they rarely flip their two-sided mattresses and complain about how hard it is to do. When I explain that mattresses are now being made so that they never have to be flipped, my customers are usually thrilled."
If you're not sure whether your mattress is single- or double-sided, just take a look. If one side is padded while the other side is firmer, then the padded side belongs on top. If they're roughly equal in firmness, then it's a double-sided mattress and you should flip it every few months.
So there it is. Unless you have a really old mattress, you can stop flipping it now. And if you never knew you had to flip your mattress in the first place, you probably don't have to worry about it anymore.