Best Mattress for Heavier Sleepers: What to Look For
If you have a heavier build, the best mattress for you is one with a medium-firm feel, a deep construction with springs running through it, supportive edges and good airflow. Those four things help keep your spine level, cushion your hips and shoulders, and keep you comfortable right through the night. In this guide, we'll go through each of them in turn and then show you how our own mattresses line up, so you can choose with confidence.
How Your Build Changes The Feel Of A Mattress
There's no universal measurement for firmness. Every manufacturer grades it in their own way, and each of us experiences a mattress according to our own weight and build. Someone with a heavier build will settle further into the comfort layers than someone lighter, so the same mattress can feel quite different to two people lying side by side.
The good news is that this makes it easy to know what to look for. You want a mattress where the top layers cushion you and the layers underneath hold you level, so your hips, shoulders and lower back stay in line whichever position you sleep in.
Why Medium-Firm Is The Feel To Look For
There's good research behind choosing a medium-firm feel. A systematic review published in the Journal of Orthopaedics and Traumatology looked at 39 studies and found that a medium-firm mattress promotes comfort, sleep quality and spinal alignment. One of the studies it covers reported benefits from a medium-firm mattress regardless of the participants' age, weight, height or body mass index.
That's why we've designed all our mattresses to feel medium-firm. You get a cradled, hugged feeling in the top layers and firmer support in the base layers, which is the combination that keeps your body aligned while still feeling comfortable at the hips and shoulders.
Depth, Springs And Layers
Once you know the feel you want, the next thing to look at is how the mattress is built. A deeper mattress with more layers gives you more cushioning comfort at the surface and more support underneath it. Springs matter here too, because they respond to pressure individually and push back in proportion to the load placed on them.
Every mattress in our Hybrid® range pairs Aerocoil® titanium alloy microsprings with Simbatex® foam, so you're never relying on foam alone. We place the microsprings near the top of the mattress, where comfort matters most, and they're designed to support the parts of the body with specific needs, such as your hips and shoulders. As you move up the range, you get more of everything. The Hybrid® Pro has 8 layers, a depth of 28cm and two layers of Aerocoil® microsprings. The Hybrid® Luxe has 9 layers, a depth of 31cm and three microspring layers.
Support That Reaches The Edges
If you sit on the side of the bed to get dressed, or you like to sleep close to the edge, it's worth checking how a mattress is supported around its perimeter. A well-supported edge gives you the full width of the mattress to sleep on, which is especially useful if you share your bed.
Our Hybrid® Pro, Luxe and Ultra all sit on a SupportCore™ sprung base. It's made with pocketed, tempered steel barrel springs that give firm edge-to-edge support with no roll-off, and it works with a high-density CertiPUR® foam layer to deliver stability.
Staying Cool Through The Night
Temperature is the other big factor in how well you sleep, and it's one of the main things that separates the mattresses in our range. Our Simbatex® foam gives you all the comfort of memory foam without the heat. It has over five times more airflow than memory foam in independent Intertek testing*, and it's infused with graphite to move warmth away from your body. The Aerocoil® microsprings help as well, because they push fresh air upwards each time they compress.
Every Hybrid® mattress also has a breathable cover that zips off for washing. If you'd like extra cooling, our HeatRelease™ technology uses graphite strips to draw excess warmth away from you, keeping you up to 4.4°C cooler. It's an optional upgrade on the Hybrid® Pro and Hybrid® Luxe, and it comes as standard on the Hybrid® Ultra.
*Intertek tests in May 2025 on nine memory foams from the top three UK manufacturers compared to Simbatex® using single pieces of foam to ISO 7231 010 Method B Determination of Air Flow value at constant pressure drop.
Which Simba Mattress Should You Choose?
In our guide to the range, we point sleepers of around 80kg and over towards the Hybrid® Pro and the Hybrid® Luxe, because their deeper construction and additional spring layers give you more support through the depth of the mattress. The Pro adds a breathable British wool layer at the top, and the Luxe adds a bamboo and wool top layer along with a third layer of microsprings.
Because every Simba mattress is designed to be medium-firm, you don't need to worry about choosing the wrong firmness. The decision really comes down to your budget and how much cooling you'd like. The Hybrid® Essential and the original Hybrid® give you the same Aerocoil® and Simbatex® technology at a lower price, and the Hybrid® Ultra gives you our deepest construction at 34cm, with 11 layers and HeatRelease™ included. If you'd like a second opinion, our mattress quiz will suggest a match based on how you sleep.
Give Yourself Time To Decide
It takes several weeks for your body to adjust to a new mattress, which is why every Simba mattress comes with a 200-night trial. It means you can find out how it feels across different seasons and sleeping positions in your own home. If you decide it isn't right for you within that time, we'll collect it for free.
FAQs
Our mattresses work on any standard UK divan, platform or slatted base, as long as it gives a flat, stable surface. If you have a slatted frame, the slats should be no more than 7cm apart so the mattress is evenly supported across its full length.
Yes. The springs in our mattresses are individually pocketed, so they respond in proportion to the pressure on them. That means each side of the mattress responds to the person lying on it, and movement on one side stays on that side.
You must rotate your Hybrid® mattress once a month for the first three months, and then once every three months after that. You do not turn it over at all.
Every new Simba mattress comes with a 10-year guarantee. If it fails during that time, we'll exchange it for a brand new one, subject to our terms and conditions.
Our Hybrid® mattresses arrive vacuum-packed in a box, which makes them much easier to get up the stairs. Once you've unpacked yours, it'll be ready to sleep on in six hours, although it can take a bit more time to reach its full shape depending on the model.
