Your weight affects how soft or firm you perceive a mattress to be. The same mattress will feel ____ to a heavier person and ____ to a lighter person
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A heavy person would compress any mattress more than a light person would, so it would definitely feel firmer to a heavy person than it would a light person.
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Google says light people experience mattresses as firmer, my brain can't handle this
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Take the ultimately firm mattress. None.
Who feels the ground as more firm, a light person or a heavier person? Certainly a lighter person can tolerate sleeping on the bare ground better than heavier one - but does that mean it feels "softer"?
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I went mattress shopping as a very pregnant person. I like firm mattresses and even medium felt too firm to me. Sales person recommended going with something that felt a little too firm then. A few weeks after having the baby, same “firm” mattress felt too soft for my taste.
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If a person's perception of softness is how much the bed contours to their body then a very light person would feel most beds are "firm".
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This has really messed with my head. On the one hand, a heavier person will exert a greater force on the mattress, causing a greater compression thus it should feel softer to them. 1/?
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For the same person, all mattresses will stop ‘sinking’ at the point where they are pushing back with equal force on the body. How much the mattress has sunk at that point is your perception of relative softness. So firmness is held constant and we perceive sunkness as softness.
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Firmness is just what it feels like when something resists pressure from your body, and softness is just what it feels like when something accomodates pressure. Lighter people will apply less pressure and thus the mattress will resist it more easily - so it will feel firmer.
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A lighter person won’t sink in much, the mattress will contact a smaller area of their body, like hip/shoulder, feels firmer.
A heavier person will sink deeper, so the mattress will contact their body over a larger area, feels softer.
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