Make a good night’s sleep a great one with the right mattress topper. Photograph: Jane Hoskyn/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Make a good night’s sleep a great one with the right mattress topper. Photograph: Jane Hoskyn/The Guardian Guardian journalism is independent. We earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more .
Whether you’re looking for memory foam, wool, cooling or firm, we reveal the toppers we rate – and whether they can really rescue a bad mattress
The best mattresses – tested The best mattresses for side sleepers
Jane Hoskyn Fri 18 Sep 2026 11.07 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A mattress topper is like a slice of cheese in a burger: not strictly necessary, but potentially transformative, especially if your bed has all the cosiness of stale bread. Strap a comfy topper on to a hard mattress, and it could transform the quality of your sleep at significantly less cost than a new mattress .
That’s the promise, anyway. In my neverending quest for a decent night’s kip, I slept on 13 bestselling toppers – not all at once, Princess and the Pea style, but for a few nights, each on top of a firm mattress. I was surprised to find so many topper types available, from thick slabs of memory foam to airy cloudbanks of hollowfibre, with some even containing springs.
Most of my test toppers went to charity straight after testing, but one improved my sleep so much that I hung on to it for weeks like a teenager refusing to acknowledge that the alarm went off hours ago. Here, I’ll reveal which topper turned me into a duvet-hugger and which one I kicked out of bed at 4am.
Best mattress topper overall Simba Hybrid Topper (double)
Best budget mattress topper Silentnight Airmax 1000 (double)
Best cooling mattress topper Panda Bamboo (double)
Best firm mattress topper Origin Contour (double)
Why you should trust me I’ve spent three decades reviewing products from smartphones to hay fever remedies , so I’m naturally sceptical of manufacturers’ claims to improve our lives by buying their stuff. I also have a solid background in napping, insomnia and swearing at alarm clocks, so I welcomed the chance to sleep on the job – which has become something of a speciality for me at the Filter.
View image in fullscreen The mattress toppers were scored by a panel, slept on, and tested using weights and thermometers. Photograph: Jane Hoskyn/The Guardian Testing mattress toppers is not unlike testing mattresses – it just swallows up less space in your house – so I followed a similar methodology to that for the best mattresses . First, I sourced double-size toppers from the manufacturers (or from Mattress Online, in the case of the Silentnight), then allowed them to fully expand. Most of my test samples contain memory foam, so they needed a couple of days to reach the ideal consistency.
Then I sought feedback from people with assorted mattress preferences and sleep styles. I asked my dad (85), my niece (24), my sister and our husbands to join me for a topper-tasting session where we sat, laid down and rolled over on every test sample to compare them side by side. I collected everyone’s scores out of 10 for firmness, breathability and overall comfort, then worked out averages to draw up an initial ranking.
Next, ably assisted by my husband, Alan, I ran tests with weights, a heat pad, a thermometer and a glass of water to measure sinkage, temperature regulation and motion isolation. Mattress toppers vary les…