2 weeks Ago By Lori Keong
I’ve heard a lot about Avocado, the Los Angeles–based company on a mission to make the bedding business more sustainable: If you’re not in the know, it’s a certified Climate Neutral B-Corp with a laundry list of environmental accolades to its name. As someone who cares deeply about reducing my carbon footprint, I’ve wanted to try one of the brand’s mattresses for a while, so I jumped at the opportunity to review one. The Avocado Green Mattress particularly appealed to me because it’s made with eco-conscious materials like organic-certified latex, wool, and cotton.
The Green Mattress is a hybrid model that gives the people what they want: A cushy surface that still offers has plenty of support, thanks to the combination of latex foam and nearly 1,400 springy steel support coils (depending on your mattress size) that are arranged in zones to support the body where you need it most. Its medium firmness is ideal for combination back and side sleepers like myself. Because I enjoy mattresses that are slightly softer but still supportive, I opted for the pillow top version of the mattress—which, for an extra $680 (for a queen), adds an additional two-inch, non-removable layer of organic-certified latex rubber foam on top.
Read more on my thoughts about how the Avocado mattress measures up. How I tested the Avocado Green Mattress I slept on the mattress for the entire month of June to see how it stacked up in a few key categories, including support, motion transfer, and temperature regulation; you can read more about what goes into testing mattresses at SELF here. Considering summers are swampy in NYC and I share a bed with someone who takes a lot of nighttime trips to the bathroom, the Avocado had its work cut out for it.
Here’s the breakdown of how I rated the Green Mattress. Firmness and support aren’t the same—but both can contribute to how comfortable you feel in your bed. Firmness is a subjective metric scored on a 1-to-10 scale (with 1 as the softest, and 10 as the firmest).
It describes how you feel when you get into bed. Support, meanwhile, describes how well a bed holds you up. While the Avocado Green Mattress is a middle-of-the-road medium firm, a level that usually feels comfy for folks in all sleeping positions, to me, it felt too dense and hard—even with the additional cushion of the pillow top.
Sure, I sank into the pillow top, but then I hit the layer of support coils. Think of it as putting a pillow on the floor: You’ll get some initial squish, but pretty soon, you’ll feel the hard floor beneath you. When I slept on my back, my hips dipped into the pillowtop, causing me to wake up with minor lower back pain on a couple cranky mornings.
The level of support you feel in a mattress does have a lot to do with how much you weigh, your preferred sleep positioning, and which layers of support in a mattress you’re hitting. Overwhelmingly, I’ve noticed that reviews are more positive for this mattress among customers who say they weigh more than 130 pounds. And as someone who is lighter, I tend to feel more comfortable on slightly softer mattresses.
For what it’s worth, my partner—who is heavier than I am and can slip into a deep slumber on a whim—“did not have any major complaints” when it came to support (direct quote!), though he did say he thinks his Tempur-Pedic is more comfortable. When a bed is as strong around its perimeter as it is in its center, a person can sleep as close to the edge as they’d like without fear of rolling off the side. It’s an important metric for couples to consider (since mattress real estate is a thing when you have to share) and also for anyone who needs a stable base for getting in and out of bed.
When sitting along the edge of the Avocado Green Mattress, I measured that the pillow top sank down three inches. In our testing lab we saw a similar result, measuring two inches of sinkage, with less around the corners. My partner is someone who gets up a lot in the middle of the night, much to my chagrin.
I usually deal with this by wearing ear plugs, but it’s hard to not get jostled awake when you feel your sleep surface shifting beneath you—a reason why it’s so important to me that my mattress isolates motion well. The Avocado Green wasn’t terrible with motion transfer, but I can still feel enough shifting when my boyfriend moves around to wake me up in the middle of the night. My “just okay” take on the motion isolation category tracks with our testing lab results, which we collected by dropping a kettlebell on the bed and measuring its vibrational impact using a seismograph machine.
The initial splat made when the kettlebell hit the mattress was huge, but it didn’t carry all the way across the bed. Another thing I found surprising (despite so many positive reviews to the contrary) was how warm this mattress ran, causing me to wake up at times because my body was overheating. This may be entirely unique to the pillow top version, but the latex foam definitely seems to trap heat beneath the body, no matter where you lie—not an ideal sitch for hot and sweaty summer nights.
Even with crisp, percale cotton sheets, I still felt that the mattress itself was keeping me much warmer than I would normally be. Trial period It’s hard to get a sense of how well you’ll sleep on a mattress until you actually..
.sleep on it. Avocado’s generous year-long trial period means I have the opportunity to test the mattress through all the seasons—including the dog days of summer heat—and sleeping conditions before making up my mind for sure.
But, returns do require a $99 restocking fee. Shipping and delivery My mattress took about two weeks to arrive via truck. The Avocado Mattress arrives rolled up in shrink-wrapped packaging, and only needs to be sliced open to unfurl it.
Because my full-size pillow top mattress clocks in at 111 pounds, I requested white glove delivery for a team of two to get the thing up two flights of stairs to my apartment and place the mattress so it could expand into its true form. Delivery and assembly went very smoothly, but keep in mind, if you’re in a hurry, it’s not a two-day Amazon Prime situation. Off-gassing It’s normal for mattresses-in-a-box to off-gas, or release chemical compounds into the air when they’re unboxed, due to the depressurizing of compressed air and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are a chemical linked with poor health outcomes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency .
The amount of off-gassing will largely depend on the chemical makeup of your mattress. But I did note that compared to other mattresses in a box I’ve tested, the smell on the Avocado was particularly strong, persisting throughout the month of testing. At its most potent after arrival, the mattress cloaked my room in what I can best describe as baked-in cigarette smoke (some Redditors compare it to a barnyard smell ), and took two or so days of ventilation with the windows wide open and an air purifier going to get some of the stench to dissipate.
At its best, there’s still a noticeable dentist’s office smell that lingers on the surface of the mattress—presumably from the layers of latex I’m sleeping on. My partner, who has severe sinus issues, has notably never registered a scent. This is especially confusing since Avocado is certified for omitting chemicals like formaldehyde and flame retardants in its products.
The Green Mattress is Greenguard Gold Certified for low chemical emissions, too, which would suggest less off-gassing to begin with. A representative from Avocado assures me though that any smell that I’ve been experiencing is uncommon, and not off-gassing, but instead “a slight, sweet scent due to the natural latex and/or the natural wool we use.” She adds that “in especially humid environments, or for people with a latex sensitivity, it may be more immediately pronounced.
” For what it’s worth, the humidity was high the month I tested, but it doesn’t make me feel too much better about my smelly mattress. Price There’s no getting around the fact that the Avocado Green Mattress is expensive: $2,799 for a queen-size with a pillow top ($1,999 without a pillow top), and even more if you opt for in-home delivery ($249). While my experience sleeping on the bed doesn’t necessarily justify that investment, comfort in a bed is highly personalized.
Who knows? You might sleep serenely on it. If you’re looking to save, know that mattresses often go on sale around key buying events , like Black Friday and Memorial Day. The bottom line While testing this mattress, I had trouble falling and staying asleep—sometimes, I had several middle-of-the-night wakeups, which isn’t characteristic for me.
But while the Avocado Green Mattress ultimately didn’t work for me, beds are such a personal choice that it’s worth taking advantage of trial periods to do your own research. If you’re a deeper sleeper, or someone without a delicate nose like mine, you might have a more positive experience (and it looks like tons of other people have). Plus, many of my complaints—like the heat retention—were because of the pillow top.
Fence-sitters: If you want to test it for yourself, rest easy knowing that you’ll have a full year before you have to fully commit. FAQs While we classify the Avocado Green Mattress as a medium-firm mattress, the best firmness for you will depend on your sleeping position, body size and weight, and plain old personal preference. As SELF previously has reported, stomach sleepers and heavier people may prefer the extra support that a firmer mattress can offer; combination and back sleepers often do well with a medium-firm option; and side sleepers and smaller people may prefer the plushness of a soft mattress.
No, the Avocado Green Mattress has designated top and bottom sides, and shouldn’t be flipped. You’ll know it’s right-side-up if you can read the logo stitched onto the mattress. As Nick Jain, MD , a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon at DISC Sports & Spine Center, previously told SELF , “there aren't any specific mattress materials that are better suited for back pain versus not; however, each person is different, and people should take the time to try out different surfaces to find what works for them.
” If you’re someone who likes a medium-firm, latex-hybrid mattress, the Avocado Green Mattress may be what you need to keep your back pain away. As SELF’s favorite luxury latex mattress , the Avocado Green stands out for its organic material, and for its impressive resume of certifications, including Oeko-Tex Standard 100 , Global Organic Latex Standard , and more. Additional reporting by Alexis Berger Related: Nectar Premier Mattress Review 2024: A Sweaty Sleeper’s Dream The 9 Best Affordable Mattress in 2024 The 9 Best Queen Size Mattresses in 2024.
