Should You Select the Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed?

A little over a year ago, my husband and I purchased a Select Comfort Sleep Number bed. What led us to this purchase was his aching back. He'd broken a vertebra in an accident several years ago, and finding a comfortable mattress that gave him the support he needed was difficult. Some nights he needed a firmer mattress, while other nights he needed a softer mattress. We'd seen the advertisements for the Sleep Number bed and it sounded like it might offer us a solution. If he could adjust the mattress firmness, maybe he wouldn't wake up stiff and sore anymore.

About the Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed

The Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed differs from traditional spring mattresses and memory foam mattresses in one significant way. Instead of supplying support from springs or thick foam, support is given through air. Like an air mattress, air can be added or removed, depending on the sleeper's preferred firmness or softness. The Sleep Number bed provides a digital control to adjust how much air is in the mattress. In addition, the mattress is split into two sections; one for each side of the bed. This allows two people to adjust their side of the bed according to their preferences. It is a simple yet brilliant concept.

The Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed Product Line

Select Comfort currently offers three product lines: the Classic, the Performance, and the Innovation. Each product line has three bed models, ranging from basic to ultra luxury. The Classic line is the base model, and within this line, the largest difference between the three models is the fanciness of the digital controller and the thickness of the mattress itself. Both the Performance and Innovation lines build upon the Classic, and offer upgraded memory foam toppers and mattresses, thus increasing the thickness and comfort of the bed. We wanted to avoid the memory foam topper because my husband gets very warm at night and based on prior experiences with our Tempurpedic mattress, we found once it gets too warm, it loses the supportive qualities he needs for his back.

We chose the second bed in the Classic line: the c3. This Sleep Number bed gave us the digital controllers with a backlit LED screen so we could see and adjust the mattress in the dark, and a slightly upgraded mattress with an egg-crate foam topper. The c2, in comparison, did not include the foam topper or the backlighting on the LED screen. The c4 had all the same components of the c3, but had a thicker mattress and a pillow-top.

The Sleep Number Classic c3 model gave us a few extras, but without maxing out our wallet or our comfort. All told, the queen sized Sleep Number bed we chose cost us around $1,400.

The Sleep Number Bed: the only bed you can receive in the mail!

We ordered our Sleep Number bed directly from the Select Comfort website and it arrived early within the quoted shipping window timeframe. It arrived during the middle of the day when my husband was working from home. He signed for it, and then took it upstairs and assembled it within a couple of hours. I was surprised he was able to do all this by himself, but once I got a peek under the covers of how the Sleep Number bed is assembled it all made sense.

Assembling the Sleep Number Bed

The Select Comfort Sleep Number bed can be shipped and assembled so easily because all the components are broken down into small, relatively lightweight pieces that snap together. The covering, which gives the bed its classic bed look, is merely a large zippered covering. Imagine opening up a sleeping bag, stuffing the middle, and then zipping it back up. All the "guts" of the bed are put together inside the covering. The baseboards are made of sturdy plastic pieces that snap together to make a frame. Heavy foam pieces help shore up the sides of the bed. Once the plastic frame has been assembled, the two mattresses are ready to be placed inside. Each is about the size of a twin mattress, maybe thinner, and made of a very heavy canvas-like material. A hard foam separator is placed between the two mattresses in the middle of the bed to keep them separated and also provide additional support.

Once the mattresses are in place, the egg-crate foam topper covers the entire top and then the bed cover is ready to be zipped up. Once zipped up, the Sleep Number bed looks like any other regular bed. The hardest part about assembling the Sleep Number bed is connecting the hoses that run from the air compressor to the mattresses themselves.

When my husband unzipped it to show me how the Select Comfort bed was put together, I must admit I was disappointed. To me, it looked like a glorified air mattress, for which we paid $1,400. The foam pieces and plastic frame looked cheap in comparison to looking at a traditional bed. Then again, I never get to see the insides of a traditional bed. If I did, maybe I would be equally as disappointed.

Sleeping on the Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed

Once the bed was made up, we both lay down on our respective sides of the bed and used the digital controllers to fill up the mattresses. Only one side can use the compressor at a time, so one of us had to wait until the other was done. This was a minor inconvenience, but we did not think we would often need to adjust our sides at the same time.

The compressor was quiet and it quickly filled the mattresses. Releasing air is as simple as pressing and holding the "down" arrow button on the digital controller. One of the keys to finding your true sleep number is to make sure you are lying on the middle of the mattress when you are adjusting it. The digital controller may read one number while you are on the bed, and then read an entirely different number when you are not in the same spot, or not even on the bed. Since adjusting the Sleep Number bed relies so heavily on you being in the exact same spot as you were when you adjusted it the night before, it was difficult to consistently obtain the exact same firmness and comfort that worked so well the last time. This was a major aggravation.

We also found that sometimes the backlight on the LED screen stayed on all night. While this did not impact our sleep in any way, it was a bit of an annoyance, since we paid extra for this little feature.

The other major problem we discovered with the Sleep Number bed is that if both partners have vastly different sleep numbers (i.e. one person likes a really soft bed and the other prefers really firm), the bed becomes lopsided and the person on the firmer side ends up rolling towards the middle. There were many nights my husband woke to find himself sleeping on top of the hard foam separator, which did nothing for his already aggravated back condition. Meanwhile, I could not roll up over onto his side of the bed because my side was so low. This prevented us from sleeping close together whether we wanted to or not. Also, if I slept on his side of the bed, it would throw off his sleep number and the firmness of his mattress. It became more of a hassle than an advantage to sleep together, which is ironic, since Select Comfort touts the Sleep Number bed as the bed that brings people back together. Eventually these nuisances became enough for us to abandon sleeping on the Sleep Number bed altogether and return to our traditional mattress.

The Sleep Number Bed Warranty

A word of caution about the Sleep Number bed warranty: it is pro-rated. This means simply that the longer you own the Sleep Number bed, the less the warranty will cover and the more you will pay if something goes wrong with the air compressor. Like many others, we found this out the hard way.

After about a year of not using the Sleep Number bed, we decided to give it away to some friends who were in need of a bed. We used the compressor that morning to deflate the mattresses so we could disassemble the Sleep Number bed. That evening, we reassembled the bed for them at their house. We had put the whole thing together and when we went to fill up the mattress, the compressor refused to turn on. We made sure it was plugged into a working electrical socket, but it still would not come on. After doing some research online, we discovered that the air compressor on the Sleep Number bed is the number one customer complaint. The air compressors break easily and often, and usually around the one-year ownership mark. Due to the design of the air compressor, it cannot be taken apart to be fixed when a part breaks. Instead, one must ship it back to the factory for replacement. After a year of ownership, the pro-rated amount is in the hundreds of dollars. Meanwhile, all the benefits of the Sleep Number bed are rendered completely useless without the air compressor.

To me, this is entirely unacceptable, given the cost of the Sleep Number bed. The air compressor is extremely cheap to break so easily and the pro-rated warranty left a bitter taste in my mouth. Aside from the other problems with the Sleep Number bed, this is the one that would cause me to not recommend the Select Comfort Sleep Number bed to others.