The best time to buy a mattress
Mattresses go on deep discount around major holidays and never need to be bought at full price. Here's the calendar and the tactics.
- Holiday weekends (Memorial Day, Labor Day, July 4th) bring the biggest mattress sales.
- New models arrive in spring, discounting last year's beds.
- Never skip the sleep-trial period — it's your risk-free return window.
- Online-brand prices are negotiable via chat and near-constant promotions.
- You almost never need to pay a mattress's full sticker price.
Shop the holiday weekends
Mattresses are a holiday-sale staple. Memorial Day, Labor Day, and the Fourth of July bring the deepest discounts, often paired with free bedding bundles or accessory credits.
These weekends are so reliable that paying full price for a mattress at any other time rarely makes sense — if you're not in a rush, wait for the next holiday event, which is never more than a couple of months away.
Catch the new-model transition
Manufacturers refresh lineups in spring, clearing prior models at a discount. For most sleepers, last year's bed is functionally identical to the new one — the same materials and construction with a different cover or name.
Ask specifically what's being discontinued or replaced; those are the beds with the deepest markdowns and the least meaningful difference from the current lineup.
Protect yourself with the trial
Online mattress brands offer long sleep trials — often 100 nights or more — with free returns. A mattress genuinely takes weeks to judge, so this turns an expensive, hard-to-evaluate purchase into a risk-free one.
Always confirm the trial length, whether returns are truly free, and any break-in requirement before buying. A great price on a bed you can't return if it's wrong isn't a good deal.
Negotiate and stack
Mattress pricing is soft. Online brands run near-constant promotions, and their chat agents will often apply an extra discount or throw in bedding if you ask. In-store, the sticker is a starting point, not a fixed price.
Layer a promotion with cash-back and a rewards card, and don't be shy about asking for a better deal — the approach in our price-negotiation guide.
Compare total value, not sticker
Bundled bedding, free shipping, old-mattress removal, and the trial and warranty length all factor into the real cost. A slightly higher price with free removal and a longer warranty can beat a lower one without them.
Compare the all-in package across two or three brands rather than the headline number alone — the total-value thinking that also applies to our furniture guide.