Tempur Original Supreme mattress review: A supremely comfortable memory foam mattress

In an increasingly competitive market, Tempur’s Original range of mattresses stands out as a premium option, both in terms of quality and pricing. Made from Tempur’s original NASA-designed material, the Original Supreme is a luxury mattress with heritage, and you’ll need a considerable £2,499 to buy one in king size.

It won’t come as any surprise that it’s one of the most expensive mattresses we’ve ever tested, but the good news is that if you’re looking for a foam mattress that offers the ultimate combination of support and comfort, the Tempur Original Supreme delivers emphatically.

Tempur Original Supreme mattress review: What you need to know

Tempur has been in the mattress game for a long time, having produced its first memory foam mattresses nearly three decades ago.

The Original Supreme mattress is its latest all-foam offering, so it has none of the springs you’d find in a traditional-pocket strung or hybrid-foam mattress. It’s available in three depth options: the 210mm Supreme we’re testing here, along with a 250mm Elite and a 300mm Luxe version.

The Original Supreme features three distinct foam layers: a 20mm Tempur comfort layer, followed by an 80mm support layer and finally an 110mm Durabase layer. The deeper Elite and Luxe mattresses follow a similar overall design but offer thicker comfort and support layers along with an additional layer of Durabase. The mattress is topped off with a wave-texture machine-washable cover.

As with most foam mattresses, the Tempur Original doesn’t need flipping and is only designed to be slept on one way. Unlike many of its competitors, the Original range does not require periodic rotating either. The mattresses can be used on solid platform bed frames or slatted frames, as long as the slats are no more than 90mm apart. Older sprung divans aren’t recommended and, for air-flow purposes, the mattress shouldn’t be placed directly on the floor.

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Like many of its bed-in-a-box rivals, Tempur offers a 100-night trial on all its mattresses, allowing you to test one out risk-free for over three months. You will, however, need to use a breathable cover on the mattress during the trial. While this isn’t the longest trial we’ve seen, it should give you plenty of time to decide whether it’s for you. And, should you decide it’s not, there’s a free, no-hassle collection.

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Tempur Original Supreme mattress review: Price and competition

Pricing for the Tempur Original Supreme starts at £1,575 for single, running up to £2,149 for a double and £2,499 for a king. If you’re curious about the deeper Original Elite and Luxe mattresses, they will set you back £2,799 and £3,499 respectively in king size.

This pricing pitches the Tempur well above most of the bed-in-a-box memory foam options we’re used to testing. However, while it’s one of the most expensive mattresses we’ve reviewed on this site, it’s not at all unusual for mattresses to cost this much.

Indeed, traditional pocket spring mattresses like the medium tension Woolcott Pillow Top from Hypnos or John Lewis’ own Natural Collection Silk both retail for around £2,500 and other models available at John Lewis easily exceed that price.

At the top end of the bed-in-a-box market, the excellent Simba Hybrid Pro (which combines micro pocket springs with foam), will set you back £1,300 in a king size, while Eve’s all-foam The Premium mattress retails for just under £1,000 in king size.

Best alternatives and where to buy them:

• Tempur Original Elite | Buy now from Tempur
• Hypnos Woolcott Pillow Top | Buy now from John Lewis
• John Lewis Natural Collection Silk | Buy now from John Lewis
• Simba Hybrid Pro | Buy now from Simba
• Eve Premium | Buy now from Eve

Tempur Original Supreme mattress review: Performance and comfort

While I don’t usually comment on the delivery process, I think it’s worth mentioning in the case of Tempur. The manufacturer employs its own dedicated courier service that gives you a clear delivery window, so I didn’t have to sit in all day waiting for it. And, unlike some mattress deliveries, Tempur brought the mattress up the stairs and into the bedroom for me, which is helpful when you’re buying a mattress that’s not vacuum packed and boxed.

The upside to the mattress arriving fully formed is that it means it’s ready to sleep in after just an hour whereas vacuum-packed mattresses can take up to six hours before they’re ready to sleep on. I also found that the Tempur was free of the chemical off-gassing smell often associated with a new foam mattress.

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Once I’d let the Tempur ‘breathe’ for an hour, the first thing I noticed about it was its unique feel. While I’ve heard it described as marshmallow-like, I’m not sure that quite does it justice. The instant you lay on the bed the mattress feels rather firm, but within a fraction of a second, it starts to depress and mould in response to your shape and weight distribution. This distinctly Tempur response is most apparent while the mattress is cold and it starts to feel a little more conventional as the bed gets warmed by body heat.

Describing the firmness of a mattress is always a bit of a challenge as it’s not exactly an exact science. And in this instance, it’s even more complex, such is the unique feel of the brand’s memory foam. Tempur advertises the Original range of mattresses as having medium firmness and I’m inclined to agree. On a sprung slatted bed frame I’d rate the Tempur Original as a five out of 10 for firmness, with 10 being the most firm. As with all mattresses, it’s slightly firmer feeling when used on a solid base, perhaps bringing it up to around a six. This is all somewhat dependent on weight, however, and it may feel softer if you’re of a heavier build.

What’s surprising about the Tempur Original is that it’s far more supportive than its firmness might have you believe. It seems logical that for more support, you’d need a firmer mattress, but that’s not quite the case here. The Tempur Original Supreme manages to be both luxuriously comfortable and supportive, despite the Supreme being the shallowest mattress in the Original range.

Indeed, there’s a decent amount of give in the upper layers, allowing the mattress to form around your shape to give relief around your hips and shoulders. The denser lower layers, meanwhile, provide ample support to your lower back. As a natural side sleeper I do tend to favour softer mattresses, but the Tempur also manages to provide enough resistance below my hips when sleeping on my back.

The Tempur also performs exceptionally well when it comes to motion transfer. Put simply, this means that when there are two people in the bed, the mattress does a great job at limiting how much you can feel one another’s movements. This makes the Tempur Original ideal for restless and light sleeper pairings.

While I’ve thus far painted a picture of this mattress being somewhat alien, after having slept on it for a few nights, I soon began to forget about it completely – in a good way. To elaborate, I soon grew used to how it felt and enjoyed waking up free of the aches I’ve often felt while sleeping on other mattresses.

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A common complaint when it comes to all-foam mattresses is that they’re too warm. Unsurprisingly, dense body-forming foam can result in great insulation and poor airflow. However, I’m happy to report that with the Tempur I suffered no such issues. It’s perhaps a touch warmer than the average pocket sprung mattress, but, in my experience, this would be easily corrected with a lower tog duvet, if needed.

There are, however, just a couple of criticisms worth mentioning. While the memory foam conforms nicely whether you’re a front, back or side sleeper, it can take a little effort to change position once the mattress has already adapted to your current position. I personally found this to be a relatively minor issue, not least because the comfort level of the mattress meant I found myself changing position less often.

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A further point to note is that edge support is pretty much non-existent as the malleable foam extends right to the periphery of the bed. If you’re someone that finds yourself spending any length of time sitting on the edge of your bed, you’ll likely find that the Tempur is somewhat lacking.

Tempur Original Supreme mattress review: Verdict

All in all, though, the Tempur Original Supreme truly is an incredible mattress. While there are other all-foam mattresses on the market, none that I’ve tested offer quite the same no-compromise combination of supreme comfort and excellent support. The Tempur truly has a unique feel to it that most of its new-age bed-in-a-box rivals can only aspire to.

Sure, it’s very expensive, but, in this instance, I’d argue that you get what you pay for. Over the course of ten years, at full price, an Original Supreme double would set you back a little under 60p a night, or 70p for a king. That’s a considerable investment, but if the Tempur Original Supreme helps you to have a great night’s sleep and wake up free of aches, then it may well be an investment worth making.

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