Best Soft Mattresses of 2025
These seven beds have a cloudlike feel and earn marks for great support and durability
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A soft mattress isn’t for everyone, and yet the term “soft” has long been associated with a comfortable, luxurious bed. In fact, words like “fluffy,” “plush,” and “puffy” are more often marketing buzzwords than true descriptions of how a mattress feels.
Adding to the confusion is the inconvenient truth that soft is subjective. One person’s “best” soft mattress could be another’s “too soft” or “not soft enough.” And it’s hard to compare soft mattress options across brands because each manufacturer uses its own firmness scale.
That’s why CR doesn’t simply take a mattress maker’s word when it comes to firmness levels. We assess each mattress ourselves, using an objective industry test standard that entails applying a load of up to 1,000 newtons (4.4 newtons equal a pound) to each mattress. We then plot the results on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the softest and 10 being the firmest.
Best Soft Mattresses
The seven soft mattresses highlighted here received a firmness rating of 3 or lower on our firmness scale. All seven are innerspring mattresses. For more options, see our comprehensive mattress ratings, where you can filter for your desired mattress type, firmness level, price, and more. For strategies on how to assess and choose a mattress in a store, check out our mattress buying guide.
How CR Tests Mattresses
The mattresses in our ratings are tested with both lab equipment and human subjects. In addition to the 1,000-newton load to test firmness, we ask sleepers of petite and large/tall sizes to lie on their side and back so that we can measure how well their spines stay aligned on each mattress. We then average those numbers to get a value for an average-sized sleeper. We also measure how easily sleepers can shift their weight and how well the mattress keeps its shape over time with the help of an almost 310-pound roller pushed over the mattress 30,000 times to simulate eight to 10 years of mattress use.
Our comfort and owner satisfaction ratings provide further insights. They’re based on data from recent surveys on CR members’ experiences with nearly 67,000 mattresses purchased within the past decade. We asked them to rate the comfort of their mattress and used the information to generate ratings by brand and type of mattress. Owner satisfaction incorporates a member’s overall judgment of such factors as firmness/softness, value, quality of sleep, and more.
The results of our tests and surveys are tabulated in our comprehensive mattress ratings chart, which includes more than 270 models. CR members can filter for the features that interest them most, whether they’re looking for, say, the best soft mattresses, the most durable mattresses, or both. They can also explore our mattress selector tool for recommendations customized to their needs, including sleep position, firmness preferences, and budget.
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