Upgrading Your RV Mattress
Dave SolbergDescription
Most RVs come outfitted with a standard, inexpensive foam mattress. Depending on your comfort needs and frequency of use, this might not be up to snuff. We recommend that all RVers who plan to sleep in their vehicle a decent amount make the investment and upgrade their RV mattress. Doing so is fairly straightforward and can go a long way in making your journey that much more comfortable.
In this free lesson, RV maintenance expert Dave Solberg explains how to search for and buy a new RV mattress. With such a wide range of mattresses now available, from the typical spring to the more luxurious pillow top or memory foam, there is bound to be a mattress out there that fits your requirements. One particular word of advice: measure! Make sure you have enough to space in your bedroom to move around and extend a slide room if you have it. Do the proper research, maybe consider a customized mattress, and you’ll be sleeping in style in no time!
Most RVs come with a very inexpensive mattress. RV manufacturers don't want to put that money into it, because a lot of people don't even look at the mattress. They take it for granted they're getting a good one, and, a lot of times, they're just foam, covered. They call them a Deluxe Supreme. That's not a mattress company. We upgraded the mattress in this unit, here. It started out, actually had a fairly decent mattress in it. It had an inner spring. And the choices that you've got in the market right now, it's got the foam ones, very inexpensive. We call it the discount store mattress. You go up to innerspring, pillow top, memory foam, that's very popular now, and top of the line is the Sleep Number. But one of the things you'll notice there, we just went $200, $400, $800, $1,000 in a mattress. And that's why you don't see those in a lot of your RVs from the start, because it's, kind of, a waste of money, if you're not looking at it. Now there's some challenges in mattresses that you want to take a little bit of precaution with. You'll be amazed at how many queen bed sizes there are in the RV industry. Everybody's calling these mattresses queens, but they're not the 60 by 80, and a fitted sheet's not going to fit on it. We see 58 by 74s, just, kind of, all over the board, so make sure you take a look at what size platform you have. If you're looking at a 60 by 80 mattress, do I have room to walk around? You know, that's why some of these manufacturers will spec a smaller mattress size, because, then, it says a queen, but, wow, look at all the room I have to walk around to get into that bed. Well, it's because the mattress is downsized. You know, I have seen where some of them will take and have the corners cut in it and coming in and out, one corner or both corners. Now, all of a sudden, you've got a mattress that's pretty much customized just for that floor plan, and if you go put a regular queen-size mattress in there, you can't walk around. I have seen some people that have taken a regular one, because they don't want that cutoff. They're taller and they want the longer mattress in there, and they just realized that I'm going to have to walk around. If you have a slide room you also want to make sure that your mattress doesn't stick out far enough on the bedside, so when your bedroom comes in on that slide, that mattress doesn't hit the wardrobe cabinet or the wall that's on the other side. So take a little bit of time to measure. See what type of layout you have, what specific mattress. You might even have to go to a store, like Mattress King, or someplace that builds customized or sized mattresses for your RV.
I just bought a used Coachman Freelander 21RS and would like to replace the mattress. Because of the slide out, it comes in two pieces. Any idea where I can purchase such a mattress?
I have a Fourwinds 23U and it came with a horrible mattress. It is also one that is off sized and has one corner cut off at an angle. My solution was to go to an upscale memory foam with gel. I was concerned about actually cutting a "gel filled" memory foam mattress for fear the "gel" would run out. It turns our the "gel" is only an encapsulated gel within the foam and cutting the width down and cutting the angle on one of the corners worked perfectly. So this solution was a relatively inexpensive way to get a nice mattress without having to go custom. I used a simple long bread knife to cut the very thick foam. I then used the original mattress cover that came with the foam mattress and tucked the excess cover under the mattress. I can't say the cutting job was the neatest, but you can't see it after putting the cover and sheets on the bed. It fits perfectly in the original area which is surrounded by walls on 3 sides.