Can You Replace A Sleeper Sofa Mattress?

If you have a sofa bed, you’re probably wondering whether you can change sofa bed mattresses and if so, how easy it is?

Well, the good news is that it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to hook your bed up with a replacement mattress as long as you follow some basic rules while you’re shopping for them.

We spoke to a furniture maker and they explained that a sofa bed mattress isn’t completely straightforward to replace but it’s not that hard either.

This is what we learned from them to ensure your new sofa bed mattress is a good fit for your old sofa bed.

How To Replace A Sleeper Sofa Mattress

You can’t just rip out a sofa bed mattress and replace it with any old mattress.

A sofa bed replacement mattress needs to be chosen to fit the bed properly. The best sofa bed mattress will take up a similar footprint to the previous foam sofa bed mattress or you’ll end up damaging the opening mechanism on the bed.

So, to choose the right sofa bed mattress you need to know the following:

• The measurements of your sofa bed’s bed frame including the height and width. Never measure the sofa bed mattresses that you have themselves. This is because when people have slept on memory foam for a long time, it becomes compressed and it’s not the same shape or size that it was when you bought the bed. However, the bed frame never changes shape.
  
• You do, however, have to measure the maximum thickness of your current memory foam sofa bed mattress and that’s because you need to be able to ensure that your new gel memory foam mattress will fold properly into the sleeper couch.
  
• Finally, you should always look to buy the best gel memory foam sofa mattress that you can find, as though it can be tempting to avoid spending a fortune, you will find that in the long run, it will last much longer than a cheap one and retain its shape for comfort.

What To Consider When Switching Out A Sofa Bed Mattress

You also need to spend some time thinking about the following things before you buy a new mattress.

Material (Memory Foam, etc.)

Buy memory foam rather than polyurethane foam or other cheap foam sofa bed mattresses. Sure, the classic brands of yesteryear never used memory foam but that’s because it wasn’t around yet.

Memory foam is highly durable, emits no toxic fumes, and is super comfortable even if it costs a bit more.

We should also note that you can get latex mattresses too but these tend to be very, very firm and unless you’re buying the mattress with a particular sleeper in mind, you’re better off with something a bit softer.

Sleeper mattress styles that use an innerspring mattress style are a bad idea. The springs in a thin sofa bed mattress tend to make themselves known to a sleeper very quickly indeed and it’s very uncomfortable to sleep on.

Covers

The best sofa bed mattress is worth covering to protect it from damage. This can really boost the lifespan of the sofa mattresses that you have and so, you want to pick a cover that won’t tear easily or fray when in use.

You should also opt for a removable cover if you think you might need to wash it at some point. There are classic brands of mattresses that offer a sewn-in mattress cover and that can be handy for travel but not so much if your child’s friend has an accident in the bed on a sleepover and it needs cleaning.

Thickness

The standard thickness of a sofa bed mattress is about 4.5 inches. If you want something thicker, you need to take care that the bed will still fold with the mattress on it.

Sofa beds are much less useful if they won’t fold up into a sofa when you no longer need the bed.

Getting Rid Of The Old One

Once you’ve bought your new mattress, you should properly dispose of the old one (we’ve got a guide to getting rid of the couches if you decide to replace the whole sofa bed, instead, and some tips on where to get a new couch from too).

For a mattress, we recommend you either donate it (if it’s still in a decent state) or recycle it using a charity like Earth 911.

As a last resort, you can leave it for curb collection if your local ordinance allows but this is not very eco-friendly.

Sofa beds are awesome but all too often they’re not all that comfortable. You can make a huge difference to the comfort they provide by buying a new mattress topper that really supports the sleeper.

And as you can see from the tips above, it’s not that hard to find the right mattress. You just need to consider the details carefully.