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If you’ve shopped for a mattress in the last decade, you’ve likely heard repeated spiel on:
“5-zone support,” “7-zone pocket springs,” or “targeted lumbar zoning.”
With the more zones in the mattress, the higher selling price.
It sounds like precision engineering. It isn’t, and zoning is unfortunately one of the largest scams facing the bedding industry today.
Zoning was invented to address the “hammocking” or “trampoline effect” design deficiency associated with traditional, wire-tied innersprings, and has since been repackaged and used as a selling point on materials that never had that flaw to begin with – including natural latex.
When you understand how and why zoning came about in the first place, you would likely want to avoid having zones in your mattress in the first place.
Here’s where zoning came from, why it was always a compromise rather than a solution, and how mattresses that are made with excessive zoning are contradicting what the sleep research indicates how to design a properly supportive mattress.
The traditional innerspring system used in mattresses was developed in the late 19th century, and was the predominant support system used in mattresses up until pocket springs became the mainstream during the 1970-1980s.
To firstly understand the drawbacks of innersprings, it’s useful to understand how they are made.
The result when each coil is laced together with a helical wire is that the spring system acts as one connected surface. Herin lays the problem.
When your heaviest body part — hips or shoulders — exceeds the load-bearing capacity of the coils beneath it, the surrounding coils get pulled down too. The result is a hammocking or trampoline effect: your hips and shoulders sink and take on excess pressure, while your lumbar spine, which is comparatively light, is left floating unsupported above the sag (Figure 1).
Manufacturers’ answer was the first iteration of the zoned product. The three-zone innerspring: thicker-gauge (firmer) coils under the middle third of the mattress for hip support, with softer zones adjacent.
Figure 1. Illustration of the key drawbacks of a traditional, wire-tied innerspring support system. Body weight pulls down the springs which act as a connected surface, typically leading to severe hammocking at the hips. This causes excess hip and shoulder pressure, where the system is can’t accomodate the natural S-Shape curvature of the thoracic and lumbar spine when lying in a supine (back sleeping) position. The small of the lumbar spine is also left unsupported as the connected springs can’t conform to this area. Figure is Authour’s own.
Because wire-tied coils are interlaced, they can’t localise firmness because each connected innerspring cannot travel independent to one another. Making the centre third firmer to stop hip sag also stiffened the whole middle third of the mattress lumbar region, and connected coils don’t have much conformance once you’ve toughened the gauge. Sleepers on a three-zone innerspring often describe it as sleeping on a tabletop — hip sag was reduced, but at the expense of lower back conformance and increased hip pressure.
Naturally, the industry’s next iteration was the five-zone innerspring with the idea to have softer coils under the hips for pressure relief, firmer coils at the lumbar for support and alternating firmness adjacent.
This and the even more zoned seven and nine zone products are some of the common iterations of these phenomena seen on the market today.
Irrespective of the quantity of zones, they still all are flawed for several key reasons (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Illustration of the key drawbacks of a seven zoned pocket-spring system. Overly zoned, and increased firmness near the shoulders has overcompensated, leading to the shoulder arcing upwards. Inadequate conformance in the hip zone also has compounded the lower thoracic and lumbar spine contortion seen on the model. Figure based on a demonstration image taken from a manufacture’s website that ironically, tries to justify their excessively zoned products (with Authour’s annotation).
The ideal mattress should be conforming to your body shape and re-adjust in real time to support your neutral spinal position, irrespective of how you sleep.
If zoning is not the answer to achieving this goal, then what is?
The good news is that we have discovered the answer to this design challenge decades ago.
The first part of the answer is seen in our approach with our hybrid-latex mattresses. By moving away from using traditional wire-tied inner-spring systems and only using pocket springs, with each spring not being wired tied to one another; this lends the support system to be far more conforming to the natural body S-shape or side sleeping profile people have.
The second and more critical part of this solution, is in the quality of the padding we are using in our mattresses – which is in the form of 100% natural, organic & Eco-Certified latex cushioning. Unlike synthetic foam, natural latex has the ability to respond in real time to mechanical loading to help a person maintain a comfortable, neutral spinal position during sleep (Figure 3). Ultimately, the selection of spring type is moot if a manufacturer opts to pad out the springs with less resilient polyurethane foam or memory foam.
And thirdly, what’s even better than a conforming pocket-spring unit backed up by proper organic latex cushioning?
Full latex without any springs – which is the ultimate in terms of progression of feel, and deep, real-time body conformance (Figure 3). Natural latex as a cushioning doesn’t need springs for support; its pushback and simultaneous surface elasticity means that with full latex mattresses customers no longer need to put up with the traditional trade-off between comfort and support when going for a spring mattress.
Figure 3. Illustration of how natural latex automatically conforms to body position and contours responsively in real time to promote neutral lordosis (Authour’s own).
A red flag should immediately come up if a company is trying to sell you a zoned latex product.
This is a glaringly obvious indicator that they are not intimately familiar with natural latex’s mechanical properties and by extension – how to make proper latex bedding which is designed to promote responsive spinal support and comfort.
Zoning fundamentally was developed to compensate for materials that respond unevenly to load.
Natural latex doesn’t have that problem. Its defining mechanical property is what the industry calls a linear deflection curve characteristic (Figure 4).
What this means is that natural latex, unlike polyurethane foam or springs – responds with an elastic pushback force in proportion to the load applied. Combined with latex’s point elasticity– the ability to travel and conform to pressure in one small area without dragging down the material beside it — this means a single, unzoned slab of latex naturally gives more where you’re heavier (hips, shoulders) and less where you’re lighter (waist, lumbar), and it keeps doing this automatically as you move and change position through the night to maintain a neutral spinal position.
This is an inherent, mechanical property of natural latex which does the work that synthetic foam can’t achieve, or zoned springs can only do so artificially.
It’s also why we’re happy to demonstrate to customers our non-zoned latex mattresses in-store and show them, immediately, that neutral spinal alignment can be achieved without zoning latex.
Figure 4. Linear deflection curve summary result comparison between Natural Comfort specification organic natural latex (firm & medium densities) versus polyurethane foam & spring coils. Load is progressively applied at constant load intervals (kg) and deflection (cm) is measured at each interval for each material to derive the curve (Authour’s own).
The natural and reasonable follow-up question readers might have, is if we don’t believe in zoning – then why do we use a 3-zone pocket spring system in our hybrid pocket-spring latex mattresses?
We don’t consider that a contradiction, for two key reasons.
We’ve deliberately for these reasons designed our mattresses in such a way that suits most people instead of taking a stab in the dark guess at where your personal proportions fall — which is why we stop at 3 zones and don’t add the extra hip/lumbar/shoulder sub-divisions that 5- and 7-zone systems are sold on.
And, in our full latex range which isn’t shackled by having to use springs, we don’t zone at all. As covered above, natural latex’s own linear deflection curve characteristic naturally responds to maintain a neutral spine position without having to artificially create areas of less and more firmness.
Zoning was an imperfect answer to address a problem in wire-tied innerspring coils. It was never intended to solve a problem in pocket springs, let alone latex — because these systems don’t hammock the way tied coils do.
Today, the number of zones exorbitantly added in a mattress functions as a way for manufacturers and retailers to price gouge, yet the basic premises of zoning don’t hold up.
There is no consensus as to how to determine the spacing of the zones, and more glaringly: zoning directly contradicts the idea that a mattress should support you as you progressively move during your sleep, as indicated by decades of sleep research.
If a mattress needs to be cut into hip, lumbar, and shoulder sections to support your spine, that’s a sign the underlying material isn’t doing its job. Instead, a mattress should be made of materials like natural latex that respond responsively to load and pressure to promote naturally healthy sleep.
Our brand money shot – no zoned latex, yet a neutral spinal position is maintained!
Authors: Ethan Yap, B-MED(Hons), K.G. Yap, MBA
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