Shopping for your new best mattress is a once-a-decade kind of affair, which means you probably don't know what the best mattress store options are off the cuff. Mattresses do, after all, fall into that unfortunate category of necessity engendered by urgency or discomfort. Can you honestly say you're mattress shopping just for the hell of it? Most of us only consider buying a new mattress when we’re moving house, struggling to get a good night’s sleep, or having back pain.

Pair that with the fact that mattresses tend to be a pretty substantial investment (with many costing above £1,000) and it's clear that doing your research is essential for figuring out which mattress stores you should be shopping at. While you may have heard of some of the bigger bed-in-box names in the mattress world thanks to their extensive marketing campaigns (we’ve all seen Simba’s bowling ball commercials and Emma’s London Underground posters), that doesn't necessarily mean they're the right one for you. And it's not like these online stores have a box store you can roll up to on a Saturday afternoon to see how their wares feel.

Bottom line is, you're going to need to put some research in. Or, as is the case here, read ours. Welcome! To help you navigate the world of online mattress shopping we’ve compiled a list of our favourite online mattress stores and shops to start browsing – many of which our editors have all shopped from ourselves and had great experiences with.

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