What To Consider Before Getting A Smart Bed For Your Home

Did you know people spend approximately 1/3 of their total life sleeping? If you calculate it out, it averages to be an average of just under 9,500 days. Since this is a considerable amount of time, you want to make every effort to lie somewhere comfortable — not only for physical comfort, but also for optimal sleep. Sleeping on a bed that lacks proper support can negatively affect your health by causing neck and back pain. And if you have a partner who sleeps with you, trying to compromise on what the ideal support level is can be tricky, since each person may require a drastically different level of firmness or feel. Luckily, smart beds have made it easy to customize comfort for both partners — with adjustable firmness and even temperature control, both sleepers can find their perfect sleep environment without compromise. While this is just one way to make your house a smart home, it's most certainly one of the most impactful for your long-term health and wellness.

Before purchasing a smart bed for the perfect night's sleep, there are a few things to keep in mind. The price point of a smart bed is one of the most significant factors to consider — with costs ranging from $1,500 to well over $5,000, it is significantly more expensive than a traditional mattress and box spring. It's also critical to understand what a smart bed can do for you and your comfort. Smart beds offer essential comfort features for personalized support, even with more than one person in the bed. They also feature advanced sleep tracking and biometric technology, which can help you identify and improve disruptive sleep patterns. While these benefits can be life-changing for restless sleepers, it's also worth noting some drawbacks, particularly regarding privacy and practicality.

Smart beds give you complete control over your sleep and offer plenty of options across many price ranges. They provide adjustable firmness and support via a remote or smartphone app, and some higher-end models even offer automatic adjustments based on your movements and pressure points. Many smart beds offer dual-sided customization, allowing for separate firmness if you share a bed with someone. Besides adjustable firmness, smart beds can also adjust their base by raising the head, and in some models, raising the foot of the bed. This gives users complete control of their body position and optimizes the bedroom for the best night's sleep.

Smart beds also provide sleep and health metrics on things like movement, heart rate, breathing, and sleep stages. This added feature can provide data-driven insights and personalized recommendations to help users improve their sleep quality, making every night the most restful it can be. Some models offer temperature control options, allowing users to set a heating and cooling schedule for their side of the bed. This can automatically adjust throughout the night for optimal comfort and deeper sleep, or to compensate for extreme heat or cold.

While a smart bed might be the key to a good night's rest for years to come, it does come with some drawbacks that you need to be aware of. One thing to keep in mind when buying a mattress is the cost, both upfront and ongoing. When purchasing your first smart bed, you need to buy both the mattress and the base. Depending on what options you want from your bed, you could spend as little as $1,500 or as much as $5,000 for the bed with the most features. Remember, too, that the mattress should be replaced every seven to 10 years due to loss of support and hygiene issues, and the electrical components might not last that long. Many people purchase an extended warranty, which can be expensive, to cover the repair or replacement of expensive electronic and mechanical parts. Finally, while you might be able to use the app to move the bed up and down as you'd like or adjust the firmness, some advanced features like sleep tracking might require a subscription to use, adding to the long-term cost.

When considering your purchase, remember that this type of bed requires a stable WiFi connection and electricity. Your bed must communicate with the app on your smartphone — if any one of these experiences an issue (like WiFi being down), the smart functions of your smart bed will be unavailable. Additionally, the application must be working correctly, the mechanical components of the bed must be fully operational, and the wiring must be intact and correctly connected. If any one of these elements is not working perfectly, the bed will not operate correctly. If it's a hardware issue, you might be without a properly working bed for days or weeks until a technician can repair it.