How Long Should A Mattress Free Trial Be?

As new companies have come into the market, there has been a trend to have a very friendly return policy and free trial period.  It seems like the free trial period just keeps getting longer and longer.  This is extremely favorable for the consumer, but is it 100% necessary, and should you care?  I think the ideal time is 30 days.  Anything after that is obviously incrementally better, but I don’t feel like it’s necessary.  If you don’t know whether you will like a mattress within 30 days, the extra time after that probably isn’t going to help you either.

As long as the free trial period is 30 days or more, I don’t think that you should worry too much about the length, and it shouldn’t be a very big decision criteria when deciding between two different mattress companies.  I view it as a nice to have, but having a mattress for 30 days in my opinion is more than enough time for you to figure out whether you will like it going forward.

Having said this, this all goes back to my point that trying a mattress out in a store isn’t the best indicator of how you will like the mattress long-term.  Be careful of making a decision based on how you think you like a mattress while trying it out at a store for five minutes.  More often than you would think, people become disappointed that the mattress they thought they loved at the store didn’t end up being a great fit for them.

Online mattress companies need to provide lengthy free trial periods so that their customers can get over the fact that they can’t try the mattress out ahead of time.  They do a good job of allaying any concerns, but in my opinion 30 days is enough.  Just make sure you can try the mattress out for this long and you should be fine.