History of Bedding Business

From the Ground Up: A Brief History of Bedding

In the beginning, man slept on the cold, hard ground. It didn't take long, however, before he fashioned a mound of leaves, straw, and twigs into a more comfortable sleeping surface — draping an animal skin over it as a sheet and another as a cover. Over time, mattresses evolved from sewn skins or fabrics stuffed with cushioning materials, elevated off the floor on crude wooden frames cross-strung with rope. That rope would eventually sag and need tightening — which is exactly where the expression "sleep tight" comes from. This basic bed was called the pallet, and for thousands of years, very little changed.

Ancient Civilizations and the Middle Ages

In more advanced cultures — Egyptian, Greek, and Roman — ornate beds became symbols of wealth and power among the upper classes. Yet even the finest mattresses of the ancient world were still filled with organic materials: straw, animal hair, cotton, or feathers. Through the Middle Ages, the bed frame grew more elaborate, but the mattress itself remained largely primitive.

The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of the Innerspring

The industrial revolution brought a pivotal innovation: the steel coil spring. First patented for use in a chair seat in 1857, it was Heinrich Westphal of Germany who is credited with inventing the innerspring mattress in 1871. Tragically, Westphal never profited from his invention and died in poverty.

It would be more than 60 years before innerspring mattresses gained meaningful popularity. In the meantime, manufactured mattresses continued to be filled with cotton, hair, or feathers — with cotton variations being the best sellers. Raw cotton was packed into sewn mattress ticking, beaten flat with a stick, then hand- or machine-tufted to hold its shape. Foundations were typically open coil boxsprings or flat metal springs.

Sanitary Standards and the Early 20th Century

In the early 1900s, the bedding industry lobbied hard for sanitary bedding laws — and for good reason. Vermin-infested mattresses, even fresh off production lines, were not uncommon. Organic fillings of the era were vulnerable to bugs, bacteria, and mildew. The old saying "Don't let the bed bugs bite" was no mere figure of speech.

By 1927, bedding shipments had reached a record $100 million. Boxsprings with ticking covers were still a novelty, selling at roughly one for every 15 mattresses. By 1929, shipments topped $129 million — then the Great Depression hit. By 1935, sales had bottomed out at $49.7 million. Bedding has always been sensitive to economic cycles; consumers can easily delay replacing their mattress for a few more years. Even today, people replace their bedding only once every 12.5 years on average.

Cotton's Long Reign

Cotton mattresses remained popular well into the 1950s and 1960s, though they had a tendency to mildew in hot, humid climates before the widespread adoption of air conditioning. Price points were differentiated by the ratio of raw cotton to cotton felt — the latter being cotton combed into a fine, uniform layer by a garnet machine. Mid-range mattresses combined cotton felt on the outer layers with raw cotton in the center; premium mattresses were all cotton felt. One key drawback: cotton mattresses compacted and hardened with age, while innerspring mattresses tended to soften over time.

The Innerspring Takes Over

Innerspring mattresses began gaining market share in the late 1920s, but it wasn't until after World War II that they truly caught on. The late 1940s and 1950s saw a wave of patents on new innerspring designs. The 1950s also marked the rapid rise of licensee groups such as Sealy, Simmons, Spring Air, King Coil, and Restonic. King and Queen super-size bedding made its first serious market impact during this era.

To sell higher-priced models, manufacturers promoted heavier steel coils under the banner of "firmer is better" — a concept that took hold and remains widely accepted today.

At their core, innerspring mattresses are not complicated. A spring unit consists of double-cone coils — the coil count referring to the number that fit in a full/double-size mattress. The most common counts are 252 and 312, though 368 and higher exist. Steel gauge varies from 13.5 to 12 gauge, with heavier gauges producing a firmer feel. The three main spring unit types are the Bonnell coil (circular ends), the offset coil (flat spots on the outer rings), and the continuous coil (formed from a single piece of wire). A fourth type — the pocketed coil — uses straight coils individually sewn into fabric pockets. Foundations follow a similar construction but use single-cone coils at lower counts (40–80) in heavier gauge wire, stapled to a wooden base.

Over the coils sits an insulator pad — typically a needle-punched pad of reprocessed material, ¼" or less thick — to prevent springs from pushing through the padding. A comfort layer of polyurethane foam or cotton is then applied before the ticking cover goes on. Manufacturers differentiate their products through varying combinations of padding materials and spring configurations, but the fundamental design has changed little since the innerspring was invented over 125 years ago.

Foam Enters the Picture

Foam was a byproduct of wartime innovation. Latex came first, born of a desperate need for a rubber substitute. After the war, tire companies sought new markets for their synthetic materials, and the bedding industry became an important customer. Polyurethane foam emerged as a challenger to latex in the mid-1950s — less expensive, but still costlier than innersprings when made well.

Unfortunately, cheap foam flooded the market, giving foam mattresses a poor reputation. Product differentiation was also difficult with a simple foam core — a salesperson had far more to discuss with an innerspring design. Combined with the industry's "firmer is better" bias, foam mattresses often felt indistinguishable from their spring counterparts. For all these reasons, foam never captured a large share of the market.

Style Over Substance

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, quilted tickings became fashionable. Simple striped ticking gave way to multi-needle quilted covers in a range of colors and designs — a style that dominates the market to this day. Major bedding brands lean heavily on aesthetics and brand recognition, making beds visually appealing and trusting that consumers will equate a familiar name with quality. In reality, the underlying technology is quite old, and significantly better alternatives exist.

A True Innovation: The Waterbed

In the early 1970s, waterbeds made their debut — and represented the first genuine innovation in bedding in over a century. Unlike coil springs, which can only cushion downward force, water displaces to conform precisely to the shape of your body and actually pushes up to support recessed areas like the small of your back. The result is even, all-over support, balanced pressure distribution, greater comfort, fewer backaches, and a more restful night's sleep.

Waterbeds were the only real breakthrough in bedding in more than 100 years — and they remain a compelling alternative to the spring-and-foam designs that have dominated the market for generations.