The 5 Best Mattress For Back Pain In The UK (June 2022)

Waking up with back pain? You’re not alone – Back pain plagues 1 in 6 Brits. Even a slight twinge of pain at night can lead to sleepless nights, leaving you feeling tired, run-down and less productive during the day. It’s a nightmare. Thankfully, there are a few changes that you can to help swerve back aches and pain during the night.

The best mattresses for back pain are comfortable, but remain supportive enough to keep your spine aligned throughout the night – no matter what sleeping position you prefer. As well as spinal support, these mattresses can relieve pressure to prevent back ache.

Popular brands like SIMBA, Nectar, Emma, and Tempur all design mattresses that will help with back pain. But with so many options on the market, it can be tough to find the best choice for you. If you suffer from back pain, we’ve put together a list of the best mattress choices to boost spinal support throughout the night and relieve aches – all to ensure you wake up feeling fresh and pain-free. If you’re looking to improve your sleep, check out our top picks.

How Can A Mattress Help With Back Pain?

A mattress with plenty of support not only relieves pressure on your back during the night, but it also ensures your spine is in alignment while you’re in bed. This allows your body time to rest and recover while you sleep. Firm – but not rock-hard is the recommendation from most sleep experts. Conversely, older mattresses are unlikely to provide support. That will put pressure on your muscles to support your body throughout the night …and leave you waking up with aches and pains.

How Should I Sleep With Back Pain?

When it comes to back pain, keeping your spine aligned with good posture is important whether you’re sitting, standing, or sleeping. The more that you contort your spine throughout the night, the stiffer and more aches you’ll feel in the morning.

Most sleep experts recommend sleeping on your side, with your knees bent. Rest your head on a pillow and place another between your knees. From the top down, this should look similar to the recommended posture when sitting at a desk, with your knees bent at 90º and a straight spine.

If you struggle to sleep on your side, sleeping on your back is another fine option. Place a pillow (or two) behind your knees and another under your lower back to add to the support and keep your spine aligned.

What Is The Best Type Of Mattress For Back Pain?

The best mattress for a bad back will relieve existing back pain or, even better, prevent it from developing at all. To do this, a mattress should be supportive and comfortable. Most chiropractors suggest a firm, dense foam mattress or a hybrid mattress, which combines memory foam and pocket-springs.

Memory foam is the go-to choice for most people with bad backs as it uses the heat from your body to mould to your shape. After a few weeks, the mattress will naturally sink to the shape of your body – supporting your hips and shoulders in a natural position and enabling your muscles to completely relax.

That said, some memory foam mattresses can lead to overheating, so it’s important to choose carefully. The memory foam mattresses in this guide use an open-cell foam, or breathable materials throughout to promote airflow to avoid this common issue.

How Much Should I Spend On A New Mattress?

Only spend what you can reasonably afford on a new mattress. After all, most sleep experts recommend buying a new mattress every six to eight years, so there’s no point shelling out thousands on a new mattress if you can’t splash the same amount of cash seven years later. Fortunately, the mattresses in this guide cover a wide range of price points. And if you manage to snag one of the best mattress deals, you’ll be able to enjoy a sizeable discount on your new purchase too!

You’ll easily be able to find a good mattress for back pain at your price point, especially with the “Bed In A Box” brands that offer critically-acclaimed mattresses at a surprisingly low-cost (usually because their overheads are very low, since these brands have no presence on the high street). It’s important not to pick a mattress on price alone, you’ll need to ensure that the firmness and materials are suited to your body and sleeping style to get the best results when easing a bad back.

Should I Buy A Mattress Online?

While a few years ago, the easiest way to find (and buy) the best mattress for you would’ve been to head in-store, lie on a dozen samples in your clothes for a few minutes, then decide which feels best – things have really moved on. While buying a mattress online might seem counterintuitive, the best brands on the market have developed sure-fire ways to ensure you end up with the best mattress for you.

With the extra-long sleep trials on offer – some of the companies in this guide allow most brands offer these days, you’ll be able to test your new mattress for up to a year before you decide if it’s the right one. Many brands also offer free mattress disposal of your old mattress, so there’s one less thing to worry about.

Shopping online also makes it far easier to compare the prices and features of different mattresses, so you can be sure you find the best possible deal.

Should I Try A Mattress Before I Buy?

Absolutely. While it’s a great idea to head to your nearest showroom and test a few beds, you might be better suited with the “Bed In A Box” brands like SIMBA, Eve, Nectar, and Brook+Wilde. Since these brands don’t appear in showrooms, they all offer ludicrously long trial periods at home, so you’ll be able to sleep on the mattress for up to a year – before deciding whether you’d like a full refund on your purchase or not.

And rest assured, you won’t have to spend the year sleeping on a pristinely-wrapped mattress. These brands want you to really get a feel for the mattress, so you can treat it like your own and return it in any condition at the end of the trial period. You’re likely to get a much better idea of whether you’re suited to memory foam or hybrid designs over a period of many months (in different seasons) than an afternoon touring the showrooms.

Best Mattress For Back Pain in June 2022

If you’re struggling to find a good mattress to ease back pain, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite picks. We update this ranking as new options are released, so it’s possible that you’ll see some changes in the coming months. The best mattresses for bad backs in this list cover a wide range of price points too, so there should be something for everyone…

Nectar Hybrid Mattress

Nectar is one of the most popular “Bed In A Box” brands in the UK, and it’s not difficult to work out why.

All of its mattresses arrive with a ludicrous 365-night trial, so you’ll be able to sleep on the mattress for an entire year – in every season, with a partner and on your own – before making up your mind whether to keep the Hybrid Memory Foam Mattress. That’s better than any showroom can muster. Not only that, but its mattresses arrive with a forever warranty, so you can be sure the company is very confident about the materials used in its designs.

Hybrid mattresses combine pocket-springs (springs that can contained within an isolated compartment, so they depress independently of the springs around them – adding support) and foam to create a mattress with brilliant edge-support and comfort that moulds to the shape of your body. Nectar’s 25-centimetre thick mattress packs 1,600 individually encapsulated springs to promote spinal alignment.

The addition of springs can improve airflow through the mattress, which ensures that sleepers stay cool in the sweltering summer months, while keeping the pressure-relieving benefits of memory foam.

Sizes: Single, small double, double, king, super king | Mattress Depth: 25cm | Material: Memory foam | Firmness: Medium-firm | Trial Period: 365 nights

SIMBA Hybrid Pro Mattress

Hybrid mattresses use a heavenly combination of pocket springs and foam to offer a supportive and adaptable sleeping surface. That winning combination can be ideal to provide support for your body throughout the night, letting your muscles rest while your spine stays perfect aligned.

In our five-star SIMBA Hybrid Pro mattress review, we praised the mattress for its comfort and low motion transfer, which means that movement in one area of the mattress is unlikely to cause the entire surface to move. That’s ideal for those who will be sharing the mattress with someone else, as you’re unlikely to be awoken each time they turn over in their sleep.

SIMBA Hybrid Pro packs seven distinct layers in its design, including a patented SIMBAtex “open cell” foam that allows plenty of airflow – keeping you cool in summer. Combined with the hypoallergenic wool used in another layer, the Hybrid Pro boasts brilliant temperature regulation so you won’t overheat in summer or get chilly in the depths of winter.

SIMBA is another company that’s confident enough in its mattress to offers a ludicrous 365 night trial. At any point during that period, you can return the mattress for a full refund.

Sizes: single, small double, double, king, super king, EU single, EU double, EU queen, kids | Mattress Depth: 28cm | Material: Hybrid | Firmness: medium-firm | Trial Period: 365 nights

Emma Original Mattress

Emma is one of the original firms behind the “Bed In A Box” revolution – cutting out the expense of expansive showroom floors in favour of generous trial periods in your own home. And it has enjoyed huge success with this winning formula. The Emma Original Mattress is one of the best value memory foam picks in this guide.

If you’re sleeping on an older coiled spring one, the supportive memory foam will be a huge upgrade and should relieve a lot of the pressure on your back during the night. Emma uses three distinct layers with different properties, with each of these divided into seven zones to cater to each part of your body. The medium-firm support is ideal for those with bad backs.

There’s a generous 200-night trial period which, admittedly, isn’t as long as some other brands in this guide. However, that should still be more than enough time to determine whether the Emma Original Mattress is improving your back pain during the night. If you decide you’d like to try another option, you’ll be able to return the mattress for free for a full refund. If you decide to keep the mattress, there’s a 10-year guarantee on the materials, so you can confident this design is built to last.

Sizes: Single, small double, double, king, super king | Mattress Depth: 25cm | Material: Memory foam | Firmness: Medium-firm | Trial Period: 200 nights

Nectar Memory Foam Mattress

If you’ve never tried a memory foam mattress before, Nectar is a brilliant place to start. The unimaginatively named Nectar Memory Foam Mattress has got countless awards on its shelf, thanks to its supportive and breathable design. Memory foam is ideal for distributing weight evenly across the surface of the mattress to relieve pressure on your body. The comfort provided by this material means that pressure points – hips and shoulders, especially when sleeping on your side – are cushioned to keep your spine aligned.

But the reason that Nectar is the ultimate starting point for newcomers is the ludicrously generous 365-night trial period. Yes, you can sleep on the Memory Foam Mattress for an entire year before ultimately deciding to send it back for a full refund. That means you’ll be able to see whether the mattress suits you during every season. Better yet, Nectar offers a “forever warranty” that lasts for the lifetime of the mattress and, for an extra fee, will responsibly take and dispose of your old mattress during the delivery of your new one.

Sizes: Single, small double, double, king, super king | Mattress Depth: 25cm | Material: Memory foam | Firmness: Medium-firm | Trial Period: 365 nights

Tempur Original Mattress

This well-reviewed mattress is built from the same material developed by NASA engineers to cushion astronauts during test flights. If the foam is capable of counteracting the crushing impact of G-forces in a rocket, you’d be right in thinking it’s perfect to cushion your body during the night.

Available in three flavours – Supreme (21cm depth), Elite (25cm) and Luxe (30cm) – the Tempur Original Mattress is designed to provide comfort and support. Combined with the medium firmness rating, this Original Mattress is a winning combination from anyone who is suffering from pangs of back pain when they wake up in the morning.

Better yet, the top cover is removable and can be washed at 40°C to keep everything looking and feeling fresh, even after years of use. With a 10-year warranty, you can be confident this NASA-inspired mattress is built to last.

While Tempur is not known as a “Bed In A Box” brand, it has taken inspiration from the lengthy trial periods pioneered by these new internet firms. As such, you’ll be able to sleep on the Original Mattress in your own bed for 100 nights before you make a final decision about whether or not to keep the mattress.

Sizes: Small single, single, long single, double, king, super king, custom sizes available too | Mattress Depth: 21cm, 25cm, 30cm | Material: Memory foam | Firmness: Medium-firm | Trial Period: 100 nights