Buy a Great Bed

Sleep like a designer.

Published on

Around 2 minutes to read

You spend one-third of your life sleeping.

If you live to 79, that’s:

…in bed.

Shouldn’t you have a great one?

I sleep great. Here’s how I picked a bed like a designer.

Discover

I wanted to know what makes a great bed, so I turned to a reliable source: upscale hotels.

Why?

Define

The goal: get a great night’s sleep.

The test: stay in different hotels and notice which beds deliver.

Develop

Testing beds by staying at hotels isn’t cheap. If I tried seven beds at seven hotels, I’d burn a week and potentially a few thousand dollars.

But for me, that’s still a smart investment in 26 years of great sleep.

I tried this out back in 2013. At the time, I was traveling often to workshop with clients and speak at conferences in other cities, so I luckily didn’t have to set aside separate time or money for this experiment.

After a few different hotel stays, a clear winner emerged: I got the best night of sleep at a W Hotel. Many hotel chains sell their bedding, and the W Hotel is no exception.

Deliver

The bed I slept on was a king size Plush Top Mattress.

(This isn’t a sponsored post—not even an affiliate link!—but it might as well be, since I recommend this bed so much to anyone who asks. W Hotels: call me!)

Twelve years later, I still sleep every night like I’m on vacation.

I paid about $3,400 for this bed, which definitely puts it in “luxury purchase” territory.

But amortized over a lifetime of good sleep, it’s about…

Which feels to me like a small price to pay for great sleep.

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