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Given all of my work travels, I’ve been given the “opportunity” to test a lot of different mattresses. I’ve specifically booked hotels because they claimed to have cooling mattresses only to find myself disappointed, flinging the covers off, and brewing extra coffee all day.
Over my search for the best mattress for hot sleepers, I’ve learned that the term “cooling foam” is usually just a marketing ploy, something that refers to a material that allows for airflow but doesn’t actively cool you. What I realized I needed was something that provided long-term thermal regulation throughout the night, things like high-airflow cores, active air systems, and phase change materials.
These types of verified technologies work to manage your heat actively, moving it away from the mattress as opposed to standard gel foams, which stop working as soon as they reach your body temperature.
My Top 6 Picks for the Best Mattress for Hot Sleepers
Based on that research, these are my top six picks for the best mattress for hot sleepers in order:
- Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe: Best Overall Cooling Mattress (and Most Advanced Cooling Architecture), approx $1,700 for a queen.
- Helix Midnight Luxe: Best Hybrid Cooling Upgrade Option, approx $1,800 for a queen.
- Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-LuxeBreeze: Best Premium Cooling Memory Foam Mattress, approx $5,200 for a queen.
- Purple RestorePremier: Best Non-Foam Cooling Mattress, approx $3,500 for a queen.
- GhostBed Luxe Hybrid: Best Cooling Option for Memory Foam Lovers, approx $2,000 for a queen.
- Sleep Number ClimateCool: Best for Couples with Different Temps), approx $5,000-$9,000 for a queen.
Each of these picks rely on slightly different technology, and some have more active systems than passive systems to ensure that you stay cool throughout the night.
1. Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe
The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling Mattress is my top choice because it has been engineered with a multi-layered “architecture” that is responsible for active heat removal. This bed keeps an ideal sleeping temperature, and it consistently earns top marks not just from myself but from testers.
GlacioTex Cooling Cover
The first aspect to the comprehensive cooling architecture is the top cover that’s woven with high thermal conductivity fibers, which keep it cool to the touch. I can attest that when you put your hands on this, or you sit down on the edge of the bed before plugging in all your devices and turning in, you’ll feel it draw heat away from your body. It feels like when you flip a pillow over the cool side.
CopperFlex Foam with TitanCool
While some options on this list use graphite infusions to regulate temperature, the Aurora Luxe’s “CopperFlex Foam with TitanCool” has 1.5 inch of top layer material infused with copper particles and a special phase change material. The copper naturally pulls heat away from the surface of the mattress and the phase change material actually absorbs and then releases energy so that you keep a regulated temperature on the mattress.
Gel Infusions
The mattress is also infused with gel, which works in conjunction with the copper layer. There’s gel-infused memory foam on the bottom half of the mattress, which not only keeps it comfortable and helps it contour to your body, but also removes heat.
8-Inch Ascension Zoned Coils
Finally, you have the more passive aspect of the cooling mattress, which is the zoned coils. The mattress has over 1,000 individually encased coils, and unlike other all-foam beds, this creates that hybrid airflow that’s key for hot sleepers. You basically have chimney stacks of coils around which there’s a lot of extra air in your mattress.
This extra air allows for heat dissipation and air movement, which keeps your mattress (and you) cooler. Think of hybrid mattresses as a way to buy temperature-regulated air inside your bed.
2. Helix Midnight Luxe
My second-place pick is the Helix Midnight Luxe. This is another powerhouse that’s very similar to the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe mattress, but it has a higher profile and a different specialized cooling system. The higher profile is not great for me because I don’t need a 13.5-inch mattress, given that I’m not six ft tall, but it’s certainly going to be good for a lot of taller people out there who’ll appreciate that they won’t have to do a deep power squat just to get into bed.
Upgraded GlacioTex Cooling Cover
The GlacioTex upgrade means you have an engineered cooling cover made from high-thermal-conductivity fabric. This is just a fancy way of saying it can move heat away from your body.
There is also an optional CoolForce Layer for hot sleepers that contains an extra layer of heat transfer.
Copper Gel Memory Foam
Like the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe, the top layer of the mattress is infused with copper, and not just copper in the springs or in a few sections here and there, but throughout the entire mattress. This, in addition to the gel memory foam infusion, means that you get a comfortable mattress without the thermal sink.
8-Inch Zoned Coil System
Just like the Aurora Luxe, you get over 1,000 individually wrapped steel coils that help move air flow. However, you also get thicker coils around the perimeter than you get with the Aurora Luxe, so that can offer better edge stability for people who tend to sleep right on the edge of their mattress, who like to sit on the edge of the bed, or who might be heavier.
3. Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-LuxeBreeze
The Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-LuxeBreeze is in third place. It has a multi-stage heat removal system in addition to a gel top.
SmartClimate Cover
For starters, you get the SmartClimate cover, which is a yarn cover, purportedly one with high molecular weight that somehow makes it feel cool to the touch.
Now, I’ve tried my hand at knitting, mostly when my grandma thought it would be a good bonding exercise for us and I don’t recall my yarn feeling very cool around my fingers on a hot summer day, but apparently the unique fibers used with Tempurpedic have long polymer chains of parallel orientation, which allows it to move heat away from the body much faster than traditional fabrics.
The yarn has also been knitted into a pattern that allows for better airflow to prevent humidity and dissipate sweat, with thermal effusivity tests confirming that it absorbs heat immediately upon contact. Basically, it doesn’t stay cool, but it keeps your bed cool by allowing heat to escape the bed.
Good to know the yarn I was using over the summer wasn’t somehow defective.
Other key features?
PureCool Plus PCM
The PureCool Plus PCM, which is a thick layer of material that’s called phase-change material because it helps absorb and store thermal energy so that you maintain a neutral temperature that isn’t excessively hot when you sleep.
The foam in this mattress is perforated, so like many of the “cooling” features you see marketed with other mattresses, this is the part that doesn’t actively remove heat but just allows air flow to sort of passively draw heat away from your body. If that were all that Tempur-Pedic was offering, it might be a major letdown, but obviously, it’s paired with that phase change material and the specialty yarn that my grandma was too frugal to purchase, so this is actually one of the better options for hot sleepers.
4. Purple RestorePremier
Purple caught my attention a few years ago, and it was definitely something I wish had existed when I was in college. They have a mattress that doesn’t have a foam support system but instead uses a high elastic polymer grid, which is different from any of the other options you see on this list.
GelFlex Grid
So, memory foam is a hot sleepers nemesis because it traps body heat. The Purple mattress does exactly the opposite. It has a GelFlex Grid, which is structured with a geometric pattern of thousands of air channels.
The way it’s designed means that your mattress is basically 80% air. A solid foam mattress is just a big fat thick insulator, and anyone who’s ever had to redo the insulation in their attic knows that the whole purpose is not to allow that kind of airflow. With Purple, that geometric design has thousands of open-air channels vertically and horizontally to facilitate maximum airflow through the mattress instead of a solid chunk of impenetrable sleep-disrupting temps.
CoolFlex Coils
The grid works in tandem with “CoolFlex Coils.” Basically, where there isn’t air, there are coils. And these coils create 13-inch chimney stacks throughout the mattress that help facilitate better airflow.
SoftFlex Cool-Touch Cover
Like Tempurpedic, you get more than just the mattress material; you get the SoftFlex Cool-Touch Cover, which is a breathable fabric designed to stretch with the grid. Purportedly, this works with the mattress grid to draw sweat from your body. This is another one of those passive aspects of the cooling mattress. I like that the stretchiness means that it doesn’t cling to you, which means it doesn’t trap heat against your body but instead sort of moves with you as you toss and turn throughout the night, reconsidering all of the ice cream you ate at 9:00 p.m knowing that you’re going to do the same thing tomorrow night. (Just me?)
5. GhostBed Luxe Hybrid
Some people like memory foam. I am not one of them, but I understand that there are plenty of people out there who really like the feel of it. So if you’re one of them, not only can you rest assured that I won’t be sleeping over in your guest room, also know that you still have cooling options with the GhostBed Luxe Hybrid.
Ghost Ice
Ghost Ice is the name for GhostBed’s proprietary phase change material, a layer that goes underneath the cover and (according to their marketing material) uses latent heat of fusion to absorb your body heat and move it away.
Graphite Infusion
The foam has graphite infused in it, and scientifically, graphite works as a natural heat conductor. The graphite is purportedly designed to move heat away from your body and toward the edges of the mattress.
Coils
In addition to the “Ghost Ice” layer and that graphite infusion, the mattress itself has 8 inches of individually wrapped coils to help with airflow. Not nearly as many as what you get with some of the other mattresses on this list, but they’re still there.
6. Sleep Number ClimateCool
Finally, I’m adding the Sleep Number climate cool on here. This is more than just a mattress; it has an active cooling option integrated into it. So instead of relying on air circulation or lots of holes poked in your mattress, it has an active air flow system. It’s last on my list because the full setup costs significantly more than just a mattress.
Dual Zone Climate Control
The active airflow system uses a dual-zone climate control system with built-in fans to keep temperatures different from one side of the mattress to the other. This is better suited for people who sleep much differently than their partner and need something with individual controls. Other than that, the main tech behind the cooling functions are the air chambers and the heat-absorbing layers.
Air Chambers
Heat-absorbing layers are basically the same as any other mattress, materials that pull heat away from you so that the mattress itself feels cool. However, the air chambers are actually a function of the adjustable firmness for which Sleep Number is well known.
If you’ve ever seen a Sleep Number commercial, you know that the whole idea behind the company is being able to customize the firmness of your side of the mattress, and that firmness is controlled through air chambers that can be filled for increased tautness (firm mattress) or deflated for decreased tautness (soft mattress).
Like Purple, this system relies more on air than dense foam, which naturally reduces heat retention.
My Top Pick
There might be a lot of mattress options out there with real cooling tech, but the Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe leads as my primary pick given its value and its purpose-built cooling architecture: GlacioTex cover, CopperFlex foam, gel infusions, and tall innerspring coils. If you want to be a cool kid and you want to be cool, kid, you can’t really go wrong with any of these mattresses.