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Whether you live in a warm climate or simply sleep hot, a cooling mattress can prevent you from overheating at night. Even with a cooling fan or an air conditioner in your bedroom, you can still heat up while snoozing, reducing sleep quality. If you tend to run hot, some mattress materials can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. Luckily, mattresses with specialized cooling technology have minimal heat retention — a game-changer for hot sleepers.
Here’s the thing about cooling bedding products: Not all of them actually cool you down. I’ve spent hours testing over 150 mattresses and researching the top mattress materials that will keep you cool. Below are my top choices for the best mattresses for hot sleepers, from beds made with cooling material (like gel-infused foam) that are cold to the touch to mattresses that allow maximum airflow to minimize heat retention.
If you’re looking for a more cost-effective way to cool down your current mattress, check out our list of the best cooling mattress toppers. If temperature isn’t exactly the problem, you can always check out the best mattresses for side sleepers or the best king-size mattresses.
What is the best cooling mattress overall?
There are several excellent cooling mattress options on the market, but the one that outshines the rest is the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe. Thanks to its well-thought-out construction, it’s the best overall cooling mattress in our roundup and literally one of the coolest mattresses I’ve tested. When you run your hands across the bed, the cover physically feels cold thanks to its unique TitanCool material.
The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora mattress is a premium bed with soft, squishy foam that bounces back quickly as you move around. It has three firmness options, giving you the ability to tailor the mattress to your body type and sleeping position. It’s the kind of mattress that anyone will like, which is why it’s the best cooling mattress you can get.
Video: Best cooling mattress
Watch CNET mattress expert and senior video producer Owen Poole review the best cooling mattresses.
Best cooling mattresses of 2024
Our take – The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe mattress tops my list of the best cooling mattresses thanks to the ample pressure relief and impressive cooling technology. It’s over 13 inches thick and is stacked with six different layers. On top of the high-density base foam foundation is a layer of hefty 8-inch zoned coils to enhance edge support and motion isolation. The top comfort layers are made with Brooklyn Bedding’s special Copperflex foam and GlacioTex Cooling Cover, designed to absorb and draw heat away from your body and create a cool-to-the-touch feel.
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Firmness
Soft: (3) Medium: (5) Medium firm: (7)
Warranty
10-year limited warranty
Our take – Thanks to its unique six-layer construction and cool-to-the-touch cover, the Leesa Legend Chill Hybrid mattress is ideal for couples who sleep too hot at night. With two layers of micro-coils and zoned springs, it provides the comforting feel of foam with the benefits of increased airflow and extra lumbar support. Its cushiony quilt top is infused with cooling fibers that help you maintain an ideal temperature by pulling heat away from the body.
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Warranty
10-year limited warranty
Our take – Some hot sleepers don’t want to spend a fortune on a new mattress, and that’s where the Cocoon Chill comes in. This budget bed comes in a 12-inch hybrid or a 10-inch all-foam model, but I recommend the hybrid because it offers more airflow and ventilation than the foam Cocoon Chill.
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Type
cooling memory foam mattress
Firmness
medium to medium-firm or 6
Warranty
10-year warranty
Our take – Tempur-Pedic is a household name and one of the most popular bedding brands in the world. The Tempur-Adapt line includes three luxury mattresses that are equipped with cooling covers. My favorite is the ProAdapt, which comes in three firmness levels, so anyone can find one that works for them. They also offer a hybrid model with medium firmness, depending on how supportive you want your Tempur-Pedic mattress to be.
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Type
memory foam hybrid mattress
Firmness
6 or medium to medium-firm
Warranty
10-year limited warranty
Our take – Hybrid mattresses with a medium-firm profile are ideal for back pain because they provide ample support to keep your spine aligned with your neck and prevent your lower back from sagging into the mattress. Thanks to its pocketed coils, zoned support and cooling technology, this hybrid mattress checks the boxes for back pain sufferers who want a cool mattress.
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Type
dense memory foam hybrid mattress
Firmness
medium to medium-firm or 6
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Type
cooling mattress cover
Warranty
five-year warranty
Our CNET Sleep editors have hundreds of mattress testing hours on their resumes; they know the beds that shine and those that are underwhelming. With so many to test and so few spots on our list, we can’t showcase every quality cooling mattress, but we want to give a few more beds the honorable mention they deserve.
Purple mattress: The original Purple mattress uses a Hyper-Elastic Gel Polymer grid that has a ton of air pockets. It’s one of the best materials for not retaining heat. We rate it around a medium or five out of 10 on the firmness scale.
Loom & Leaf mattress: With two firmness levels that sit toward the firm end of the spectrum (medium-firm and firm) and a special cooling gel layer, Loom & Leaf is a great mattress to help with temperature regulation. You sit more on top of the mattress rather than inside, and the cooling gel is actually effective.
WinkBeds EcoCloud mattress: WinkBeds doesn’t actively cool you, but it’s made with a breathable, non-heat-retaining latex foam material and pocketed coils. This allows for increased airflow, breathability and comfort. Not to mention, latex beds are hypoallergenic and antimicrobial.
Nectar Premier/Premier Copper mattress: These are Nectar’s premium mattresses, made with gel-infused memory foam inside and a cooling cover that helps wick away moisture. The Copper model takes it a step further with added copper fibers that help absorb heat from your body and disperse it throughout the bed. They’re rated around a six to seven on the firmness scale, so you don’t sink into the foam as much.
Saatva mattress: Saatva is a pillow-top mattress that contains breathable materials and offers firm profiles that help you rest more comfortably at night if you’re a hot sleeper. It’s a luxury mattress available in two different heights and three different firmness levels. That means it can accommodate all body types and most sleeping positions unless you’re a strict side sleeper who wants a plush and fluffy mattress.
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When we test mattresses, we have an established process that assesses key factors like firmness, feel and performance. We test how strong the edge of the bed is by sitting and lying on the edge. We test motion transfer by rolling across the mattress with a glass of water by the edge. These are things we do for all the beds we test. The best cooling mattresses have a unique testing process. We dive further into the bed’s construction, paying attention to each layer contributing to the cooling process. Read more on how we test mattresses.
Firmness and feel
Firmness and feel are the two main factors that help people decide which mattress to buy. Firmness is how hard or soft the bed is, which relates to your sleeping position. The feel of the mattress describes the sensation while you sleep on it. Does it give you that stuck-in-the-mud feeling that traditional memory foam does? Is it bouncy like latex foam? We evaluate and note the firmness and feel of each mattress we test.
Cooling technology
We test the beds to see if they feel cold and look for any specific cooling technology features. We get really hands-on during the process. The last test is actually sleeping on the mattress and using our experience as a guide. Did we sleep hot during the night? How good was the cooling bed at preventing heat retention? We have been known to pull out the thermometer gun, but have found that the best test is having one or two people see how hot it sleeps themselves.
Many brands will advertise a “cooling bed” that is really just a standard mattress with a mattress pad or cooling gel topper, which might not be enough to provide real relief for hot sleepers. It can be tricky to distinguish between these “cooling” beds and a true cooling mattress if you’re not careful. Be sure to look out for misleading marketing language, and keep a lookout for these different cooling technologies that seem to actually work.
Cooling cover
Some of the best mattresses I’ve tested have a cool-to-the-touch cover that relieves warmth upon contact. Some brands might call their organic cotton cover cooling, but it won’t exactly do the trick. Instead, look for covers with phase-change material or icy technology.
A cooling layer in the mattress
Rather than just copper-infused foam or gel-infused foam, look for a dedicated cooling layer in a mattress thats sole purpose is to offer relief. If a mattress has a cooling layer and a cooling cover, it’s even better.
Breathable materials
Other cooling bed models like the Purple are good at what they do because they don’t retain heat in the first place. Beds with latex foam, springs and hyper-elastic polymer offer a cooler sleeping experience than typical foam mattresses and fit the bill for the best cooling mattresses.
Pair your cooling bed with new accessories that will work to help keep you cooler as you sleep through the night.
- Cooling sheets are made with light and breathable materials that wick away moisture from night sweats better than other warmer-sleeping sheets like flannel, polyester and satin.
- Cooling pillows use breathable materials for cooler sleep, and some, like the GhostPillow, incorporate a phase-change material to physically feel cool to the touch.
- Cooling mattress toppers work like temperature-regulating foam in that they have materials that absorb body heat and disperse it throughout the mattress.
Latex foam and Purple’s hyper-elastic polymer are the most breathable mattress materials. Some beds come with cooling covers that make a bed physically cool to the touch. Memory foam, on the other hand, is known for retaining heat, so avoid that if cool sleeping is what you’re after. The exception would be if it has a special temperature-regulating technology like copper or gel-infused foam or phase-change material.
A handful of cooling mattresses on the market like GhostBed Luxe, Purple, Brooklyn Bedding Aurora and others sleep as cool as they claim to. Many beds that are marketed as “cooling” might not live up to your expectations. Keep a lookout for phase-changing materials, cooling covers and special cooling tech that goes the extra mile to keep you cool.
The obvious answer is before the hot summer months, but it’s economical to shop for mattresses around holidays such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Christmas because of the amazing deals offered.
Before buying a cooling mattress, you can cool your mattress down yourself by adding breathable sheets, cooling pillows and cooling pillow toppers that help disperse heat better than your bed. You can put a damp towel on the top of your bed, but make sure not to saturate it too much as you can ruin your bed’s foam.
The best mattresses for hot sleepers are ones with phase-change materials, like the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora, cooling gel or other cooling technology that helps regulate temperature. Breathable mattresses made from latex foam like the Avocado Green or hyper-elastic polymer beds like the Purple are also great options for hot sleepers.
