Plush Memory Foam Mattress Toppers

How to Choose a Mattress Topper

A topper solves exactly one problem: the feel of the sleeping surface. Lay a plush gel memory foam layer over a mattress that is flat and well supported but simply too firm, and you gain contouring at the shoulders and hips that the mattress itself does not offer. What a topper cannot do is add support. Support comes from the coil unit or the foam core, and no layer resting on top can restore either one. If you can see or feel a dip where you sleep, a soft topper follows that dip and deepens the sense of rolling into it. The same logic rules out using a topper to firm up a mattress that has gone too soft.

Heat is the standing complaint about memory foam, and gel does not settle that complaint so much as postpone it. Plain viscoelastic foam is dense and closes around you, so warmth has nowhere to go. A gel infusion raises the thermal mass of the foam, so the surface takes longer to reach body temperature, and once it gets there it behaves much like the foam around it. Airflow, an open cell surface and the sheet over the top do the sustained work. Thickness is the next decision, and the topper on this page is a single 2.5 inch layer: enough to change how the shoulders and hips settle, shallow enough to disappear under most fitted sheets. Measure the mattress and the topper together before you buy sheets, and check that it stays put, since a bare foam slab on a slick quilted panel migrates unless the fitted sheet holds it down.