The Best Cooling Mattresses for Hot Sleepers in 2020

If you’re dealing with night sweats or if you’re just a hot sleeper in general, you will want to make sure when you’re shopping for a new mattress that you find one with great airflow and breathability. Otherwise, your mattress could end up making you more hot.

So how do you know if a mattress is cooling? We’ll share our top 8 picks for the best cooling mattresses for hot sleepers and help you understand how to find a cooling mattress that can help alleviate those hot, sleepless nights.

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Best Cooling Mattresses for Hot Sleepers

• Best Cooling Innerspring Mattress – Saatva
• Best Mattress for Couples – Cocoon Chill by Sealy 
• Best Cooling Hybrid Mattress – Layla Hybrid 
• Best Cooling Mattress for Athletes – Bear Hybrid
• Best Cooling Memory Foam Mattress – GhostBed Luxe
• Best Mattress for Heavy People – Brooklyn Bedding Aurora
• Best Budget Mattress – Tuft & Needle Mint
• Best Mattress for Side Sleepers – Purple

All of these mattresses do a great job of cooling, but some appeal to certain sleepers more than others. Take a look at materials, price, and other performance factors to help you decide which bed can finally help you kick your night sweats.

Saatva

Made with high-quality and eco-friendly materials, the Saatva mattress naturally sleeps cool and comfortable. Specifically, the layer of pocketed coils promotes air flow throughout the mattress, while minimizing motion transfer.

The luxury pillow top cushions your hips and shoulders, but doesn’t retain too much heat thanks to the organic cotton cover.

On top of that, you get the option to choose your firmness level with purchase. The plush soft option is great for side sleepers or those who like to be hugged by their mattress. Luxury firm is the medium-firm level and works for all types of sleepers. The firm option is perfect for stomach sleepers and back sleepers to keep up their alignment.

Read our full Saatva mattress review.

Cocoon Chill by Sealy

The Cocoon Chill mattress takes Sealy’s popular Cocoon memory foam mattress and added cooling technology to target hot sleepers, starting with the mattress cover. Made with phase change material, the surface of the Chill mattress is cool-to-the touch while it absorbs body heat.

Sealy also lets you choose between their medium-soft model and their extra-firm bed. If you prefer a softer mattress that you can sink into, the medium-soft model is perfect; if you want something more sturdy and want to sleep on top of your bed, the extra-firm may be the way to go.

The Chill mattress is also great at relieving pressure points while isolating motion—great for couples who suffer from aches and pains.

Read our full Cocoon mattress review.

Layla Hybrid

The Layla Hybrid has a lot to brag about: it is a two-sided mattress with a soft side perfect for side sleepers and a firm side great for back and stomach sleepers. It features copper-infused foam that not only keeps bacteria and microbes away, but it keeps you cool at night as well. Say goodbye to gross night sweats!

With Layla Hybrid, you’re essentially getting two beds in one. Don’t like the side you’re sleeping on? Simply flip it! Not matter what side you sleep on, you can toss and turn in peace with Layla’s great responsiveness.

Read our full Layla Hybrid mattress review.

Bear Hybrid

The Bear Hybrid specifically made with athletes in mind: it features FDA-approved cellist technology that speeds up recovery time. This cellist technology also does a great job at keeping you cool, and the responsive springs don’t hurt, providing airflow throughout the Bear Hybrid. This bed also has nearly perfect spinal alignment. Do you know what that means? Virtually no back pain for side sleepers and an improved posture.

Read our full Bear Hybrid mattress review.

GhostBed Luxe

Hot sleepers will love this mattress. GhostBed takes pride in keeping their sleepers from coming down with a bad case of the night sweats. In fact, they’ve even described the cooling fabric on their outer mattress cover as “Ghost Ice Fabric.”

We’re here to tell you, it’s true. The cooling tech found in the GhostBed mattresses is effective and just what hot sleepers need. We’ve experienced it for ourselves.

The GhostBed Luxe happens to be one of our favorite models GhostBed has to offer. It is a gel memory foam mattress made with four core layers of cooling foam and wrapped in a cooling topper. The surface of the GhostBed Luxe is designed with phase-change technology that helps regulate body temperature and keeps you from overheating.

Although traditional memory foam has been known to trap body heat, the foams used in the GhostBed Luxe are designed to promote breathability and transfer heat away from the body. The GhostBed Luxe is also known for its extremely responsive surface that adapts to the curvatures of your body while also keeping your spine in alignment.

Read our full GhostBed Luxe mattress review.

Brooklyn Bedding Aurora

The Brooklyn Aurora is a luxury hybrid cooling mattress by Brooklyn Bedding known for its superior cooling technology. When we had this mattress in the mattress lab, it was cool to the touch even weeks after unboxing.

The Brooklyn Aurora earns its rapport as a superior cooling mattress because the first comfort layer consists of a proprietary foam designed by Brooklyn bedding that’s infused with patent-pending TitanCool™ beads.

This is a phase change molecule that regulates body temperature to keep your sleep surface at the optimal temperature for sleeping, which is 88 degrees. These cooling-gel beads liquefy at higher temperatures to provide cooling relief. Pretty cool, right? No pun intended.

Built with 1,283 wrapped coils and topped with contouring memory foam, the Brooklyn Aurora is the perfect mattress for someone looking to sleep comfy and cool.

Read our full Brooklyn Aurora mattress review.

Tuft & Needle Mint

The Tuft & Needle Mint mattress is Tuft & Needle premier mattress model. Next to the original Tuft & Needle mattress, the Mint stands out for it’s cooling properties that lie within the Adaptive™ foam layers.

This patented foam designed by Tuft & Needle is made with heat-wicking graphite that pulls heat away from the body. It’s also infused with ceramic gel beads that absorb five times more heat the conventional blue-gel products.

Additionally, the cover of the Tuft & Needle Mint is lightweight and breathable so air can easily escape and you can avoid night sweats. Plus, it’s the best budget mattress on our list, so you can save some cash.

Read our full Tuft & Needle Mint mattress review.

Purple

The Purple mattress is one of the most popular brands on the internet. What’s unique about this breathable mattress is not only the proprietary purple material used to craft the bed, but also its grid design. 

In fact, it’s the Smart Grid™ construction of the Purple mattress that keeps air flowing and your body temperature from rising. This grid system also offers great pressure relief for people with hip, back, or shoulder pain.

You see, when you have a big block of foam, there is nowhere for the heat to go. That’s why you need alleyways for air to travel; so it can disperse from underneath you. That’s exactly what the Purple mattress does.

Read our full Purple mattress review.

The Best Types of Mattresses for Hot Sleepers

One way to quickly narrow your search as a hot sleeper is to eliminate any mattress types that are known to be heat trapping and bad for hot sleepers. 

Let’s examine the materials found in most online mattresses, and find out what makes them ideal (or less than ideal) for hot sleepers.

Innerspring and Hybrid Mattresses

✅  GOOD FOR HOT SLEEPERS

Since “traditional” innerspring coils are thin, there’s a lot of air that can circulate between each coil, even if those coils are wrapped with fabric. And since coils are made of steel, they’re not great at absorbing or retaining body heat—a good thing—and are great at transferring it away from you. 

The best innerspring mattresses for hot sleepers are those with individually-wrapped coils.

Note: many modern mattresses, even those with inner springs, also contain a memory foam top layer. If two or more inches of memory foam are in an innerspring mattress, it’s considered a “memory foam hybrid.”

Latex Mattresses

✅  GOOD FOR HOT SLEEPERS

A latex mattress will generally keep you cool thanks to aeration—the tiny air holes punched into the material. Natural latex (made from rubber-tree sap) has greater cooling properties than most synthetic products, which might not have the same breathability and aeration properties. 

But even synthetic latex isn’t known to absorb heat, unless (like above) it’s combined with memory or poly foam.

Memory Foam Mattresses

Many people believe memory foam mattresses are heat trapping and bad for hot sleepers. In reality, it depends on what type of foam mattress you’re sleeping on as to how well it will circulate air and keep you cool 

Gel-Infused Foam Mattresses

✅  GOOD FOR HOT SLEEPERS

Infused with tiny gel beads that take a long time to rise to a body’s heat, this foam generally allows you to sleep cooler than memory foam. But if they do heat, these gel beads won’t provide enough heat transfer to make a difference. 

When inserted in greater-than-usual quantities, or paired with conductive materials like copper or graphite, we find they do better.

Memory Foam and Poly Foam Mattresses

❌ NOT GREAT FOR HOT SLEEPERS

These foams are great at relieving pressure — which is why they’re so prevalent — but unfortunately, they’re famous for insulating your body, soaking up your natural heat, and trapping it close to you. 

On its own, memory and poly foams ranks the lowest on our “best materials” list for hot sleepers. However, when combined with breathable top layers (like those made of latex) or coils or gel beads, these foams begin to let go some of their heat-retention properties. 

Additionally, a heat-transferring fabric cover can do wonders.

Cooling Mattress Materials

You can also look out for specific cooling materials in any mattress you’re looking at to determine if it has any additional cooling materials. 

There are certain mattress materials that are known to be more breathable than others. The best cooling materials for hot sleepers include: 

• Pocketed coils: Used in traditional innerspring mattresses and hybrid mattresses, pocketed coils leave a lot of room for airflow in a mattress.
• Latex: A naturally poor conductor of heat, latex will is temperature neutral, meaning its temperature won’t change. Also, latex foam is typically aerated. 
• Gel-infused memory foam: Gel works by absorbing your body heat to help you stay cool while you sleep.
• Copper-infused memory foam: Extremely conductive, copper helps dissipate your body heat. 
• Advanced foams: Traditionally, foam is thought to make you sleep hot. But with advanced designs, foams can actually be designed to keep you cool.
• Cooling cover: Your mattress cover plays a big role in your bed’s cooling abilities. Mattress covers made with Celliant, Lycra, or other special fibers that are designed for aeration and moisture wicking are ideal for hot sleepers.

Do Cooling Mattresses Really Work?

A cooling mattress is intentionally built to actively cool you down. The main factor that determines whether a mattress is cooling or not is its construction. There are two big factors to consider in material construction: breathability and heat conductivity and retention.

The more breathable your mattress materials, the better your mattress will be at allowing air in, out, and away from your body. As for conductivity and retention, these are measurements of whether your materials absorb and keep heat, or whether they dissipate heat and help it to move on (and away from your body).

An important thing to remember is that how hot or cool you feel on your mattress can also be impacted by the mattress cover or pillow topper you use, the sheets and bedding you use, and the clothes (if any) that you sleep in. So if you buy a mattress that claims to sleep cool and then add a down pillow topper, you’re going to negate the benefits of that mattress’s cooling technology.

Best Cooling Mattress Accessories

One of the best ways to make sure you are sleeping cool is by using cooling accessories along with your mattress.

Mattress Topper

If you’re looking for that extra boost of comfort, but don’t want to negate the cooling layers of your mattress, using a mattress topper for hot sleepers is the way to go. A cooling mattress topper is made of copper, graphite of gel-infused foam or latex foam.

Mattress Pad

Mattress pads are great for adding extra cushion and protecting your mattress. But, cooling mattress pads do this while promoting the cooling properties of your mattress. Mattress pads for hot sleepers are usually made from copper or gel-infused materials and bamboo fiber.

Sheets

Cooling sheets use a loose weave to allow for greater airflow and moisture wicking fabric to keep you from waking up drenched in sweat. Fabrics like cotton and bamboo are not only soft and cozy, but are great at keeping you cool.

Pillows

Your body isn’t the only thing that can overheat. Keeping your head cool goes a long way in keeping the rest of your body cool too. Cooling pillows are usually made from bamboo fiber, gel, latex foam, or charcoal-infused foam. They also tend to feature a breathable, cool-to-the-touch cover.

Summary

Compare our top picks for the best cooling mattresses below.

If you’ve spent a lifetime identifying as a “hot sleeper” and are ready to kick your night sweats, a mattress that helps you consistently sleep cooler isn’t just a game-changer, it’s a life-changer.

Imagine waking up every morning feeling refreshed, relaxed, and recharged—without sweaty feet, a clammy back, or a damp pillow. Bonus: longer sleep, unbroken by periods of sheet-thrashing and pillow-flipping.

Let us know which of our picks rings true as being one of the best mattresses for hot sleepers if you end up choosing it for yourself and experience cool nights of sleep. You might be helping others seeking the same relief.