We don't have room for a King, even though that's a good idea. Small apartment. We need a queen mattress, big time STAT. If we were ON the bed rather than falling INTO the crater IN the center of the bed, a queen is fine. After 6 mos there was a big crater in the center. Now at 18mos, it's even worse and we both wake up in a ton of pain, esp shoulder. This was the 3rd Ashley Furniture replacement. Worse than the previous 2 somehow.

Hubby: 5'6"/230lbs, 45, side sleeper due to pain, structural, neurological, adema, it actually hurts for him to lie on back although he'd prefer it. Lots of shoulder pain.

Me: 135 lbs 5'2", 43, back sleeper, ½ the time w cat on my lap or legs. multiple sclerosis, neck & shoulder pain, some lower back *need motion isolation as I am a light sleeper. Also decent edge support because I realize that's lacking and we're getting older, or at least our disability is, and need this to be as future friendly as possible.

(*Not asking for medical advice, some of the pain is caused by the bed, but I know a better mattress won't fix it, just looking to undo whatever this last Ashley has done to us)

I have been mattress searching for months. Back in the day (8yrs ago?) Inherited a free sleep #. Idk what type. It was awesome. That was before they were smart beds. Couldn't take it w us in the move. Also we live in Florida and it's WAY too hot/humid.

Memory foam is too hot, pillow top feels great for a short time, would love a flippable coil mattress or maybe latex mattress or a topper, haven't tried latex, but sounds interesting.

Before the interwebs rabbit hole of mattresses on Reddit, I had it narrowed to Dream cloud or Nolah. I have since learned from reading nearly everything on this sub that's not right either.

Now I'm looking at either Costco and possible return, or a DIY Mattress but need to get it right ASAP bc we need to sleep. We may have different needs for firmness/support/compression. Unless we do a DIY topper that has the comfort layers adjusted. He may need a zoned support to prevent the middle sagging crater but heard this isn't good for a side sleeper but it is for a back sleeper... yet worthy distribution creates the middle crater.

Would like to keep budget under 1k, as we're on fixed income and we need to replace our car right now as transmission died. A car and a bed, sucks to need both, but both vital to getting on w life at the same time.

The "foundation" from the 1st Ashley bed is way less supportive than some Amazon boxes I give my cat!! We need a bunkie board or boxspring.

Current set up is 32" h from floor. Prefer about 24". Current bed frame: 9.75" from floor where the bottom of the board/foundation/bed will sit. That gives us about 14-16" for both mattress and box spring unless we can do a bunkie board.

I'm sure better pillows would help too, at least 1/3 of what's going on. I hate mine. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading!

*** It doesn't need to be split queen or even air. In fact I just read on TMU why that is inherently bad and meant to fail. When I had the free sleep # bed, I was single and 100lb soaking wet. So there's that. So, depending, if I'm a lighter (average back sleeper) but hubby is heavier side sleeper, won't my medium feel soft to him? I'm looking at IDL and understand none of it! But would getting what he needs - super high density maybe 3-4" think latex top comfort layer to help him - would that be too much for me? Maybe we only need split toppers but the same core, either zoned coil or normal, or even latex. Idk?*