Nolah Original 10 Mattress Review

Nolah Mattresses is a great option to consider if you are looking for a high-quality, and affordable mattress.

The company was founded in 2015 with a team dedicated to creating innovative mattresses that provide a good night's sleep and aim to provide a comfortable, supportive, and cool sleeping experience that is better than traditional memory foam mattresses.

Nolah Mattresses offers a variety of mattresses to suit all needs, including all-foam mattresses, hybrid mattresses, and mattresses for kids. Their mattresses are made with high-quality materials, such as Nolah AirFoam™, graphite-infused AirFoamICE™, and natural Talalay latex. These materials have many benefits, such as providing pressure relief, cooling, and support. They are also CertiPUR-US certified, which means they are free of harmful chemicals and emissions.

In this review, we will test Nolah’s Original 10 Mattress, specifically regarding:

• Pros and cons.
• Unboxing experience.
• Feel and comfort.
• Construction and design.
• Performance test results.
• Warranty policies, company policies, and all the FAQs you might want to know.

Nolah Original 10 Overview

Pros

• Supports Neutral Spinal Alignment: This mattress is designed to keep your spine in its natural position while you sleep comfortably. This is important for everyone, but it is especially important for people who have back pain. That is because when your spine is in a neutral position, the muscles in your back are not working as hard to support your spine. This can help to reduce pain and improve your overall sleep quality.
• Breathable: The Nolah Original 10 mattress is designed to be cool and comfortable. The foam is moisture-wicking and temperature-regulating, and the cover of the Nolah Original 10 mattress is made with a breathable fabric that helps promote airflow. Which can help to keep you cool and comfortable throughout the night.
• Exceptional Motion Isolation: The Nolah Original 10 mattress is made with a proprietary foam called Nolah AirFoam™. This foam is designed to be soft, comfortable, and responsive, but it also provides good support. This helps reduce motion transfer, as your partner's movements will not cause you to feel the mattress moving.
• Long Lifespan: The Nolah Original 10 mattress is made with high-quality materials and construction, which helps to extend its lifespan and durability.

Cons

• May be too firm for some people: The Nolah Original 10 mattress is rated as a medium-firm mattress. This means that it is not too soft or too firm, but we found that it may be too firm for some people.

Who do we Recommend the Nolah Original 10 for

• For those with frequent back pain: The Nolah Original 10 has a layer of foam that is specifically designed to provide lumbar pressure relief. This layer is made of higher-density foam than the others, which keeps your lower back from sinking too far into the mattress. This can help relieve pressure on your lower back while also improving your overall comfort.
• Couples: If you share your bed with a restless partner, you may be familiar with the feeling of being woken up by their tossing and turning. However, if you are considering the Nolah Original 10 mattress, you may be relieved to know that this mattress is designed to minimize motion transfer. This means that you are less likely to feel your partner's movements, which can help you get a better night's sleep.
• Side Sleepers: The Nolah Original 10 mattress was designed with side sleepers in mind. This means that the mattress is designed to provide support and comfort for people who sleep on their sides. As mentioned before, the mattress is made with a proprietary foam called Nolah AirFoam™ that provides excellent pressure relief, which can help reduce pain in the shoulders and hips. This is why the Nolah Original 10 mattress is always included in roundups of the best mattresses for side sleepers.
• Hot Sleepers: The cover of the Nolah Original 10 mattress is very breathable, and the AirForm foam that the mattress is made of is designed to not trap heat. This means that the mattress is not likely to make you feel hot or sweaty while you sleep thus improving your sleep quality.

Unboxing the Nolah Original 10

The delivery and unboxing experience can be a make-or-break moment for some people. Nolah understands this, and that's why they ship their mattresses, including the Original 10, compressed in an eco-friendly box.

When your Nolah mattress arrives, you simply unbox it and place it on your bed frame. The mattress weighs between 44 and 87 pounds, so you may need help lifting it. There are handles on the side of the box to make it easier to lift.

Once the mattress was on our bed frame, we removed the plastic wrapping. The mattress expanded to its full size in less than 5 minutes. However, it’s best to wait a few hours for the mattress to fully expand. We found that the Nolah Original had great corner expansion all the way to the very ends of the mattress. This helps the mattress look good and provides excellent support throughout the whole surface area of the bed.

The Nolah Original 10 mattress gave off a slight initial off-gassing when we first unboxed it. This is a common occurrence with bed-in-a-box mattresses, as the foam used to make them can off-gas for a short period of time.

However, the off-gassing from the Nolah Original 10 mattress is not harmful and completely dissipates within a few days. This is because the mattress is made with non-toxic materials. You can help speed up the off-gassing process by airing out the mattress in a well-ventilated area.

Firmness, Feel, and Comfort For Nolah Original 10

Nolah Original 10 Firmness

The Nolah Original 10 mattress is a medium-firm mattress. In a firmness level test, it scored 6/10, this means that it is not too soft or too firm, providing a comfortable balance of support and pressure relief for most people.

A medium-firm mattress is a good choice for most types of sleepers, including side sleepers, back sleepers, stomach sleepers, and heavy-weight sleepers. It has a medium-firm feel that provides enough support for all three sleeping positions to ensure enhanced sleep quality by relieving pain and pressure.

Nolah Original 10 Feel

The Nolah Original 10 mattress has a balanced foam feel. The Nolah AirFoam is not only soft and pressure-relieving but also responsive. This means that it allows you to sink in a bit, but it also allows you to move around easily.

Nolah’s Original 10 mattress has a luxurious outer layer that is both breathable and stylish. The Tencel cover is snow-white and features a diamond pattern, giving the mattress a sophisticated look that is even better than some top-rated hotel beds. The cover is also highly breathable, allowing air to circulate freely through the mattress. This helps to keep the mattress cool and comfortable, even on hot nights.

Nolah Original 10 Comfort

We tested the mattress in a variety of sleeping positions to see how comfortable it felt. As expected, the mattress was comfortable in all sleeping positions. However, your individual sleep needs may vary depending on your body type and preferred sleeping positions.

The Nolah Original 10 is most comfortable for side sleepers. The soft top layer conforms to the shape of the shoulders and hips, while the firm bottom layer provides support. Heavy-weight stomach sleepers may feel their hips sink slightly. However, this is not to the extent that it would make the mattress uncomfortable. In fact, the mattress's luxurious experience and incredible performance make it worth considering even for heavy-weight stomach sleepers.

Constructions, Materials, and Design

Materials and Design

The Nolah Original mattress is a 10-inch, versatile, and well-made mattress that is designed to provide comfort and support for all types of sleepers and can be used on any sturdy foundation. The use of CertiPUR-US® foams ensures that the mattress is made without harmful chemicals and has a Tencel cover that helps to keep the mattress cool and comfortable. The diamond pattern also helps to improve airflow and reduce motion transfer.

To achieve exceptional performance, Nolah Original 10 has four layers that all come together to create a luxurious, and comfortable mattress.

Layers

Layer 1: Botanic Origin Tencel™️ Cover. - The Nolah Original 10 Mattress is covered in a cover that is made from a naturally-derived fiber that is soft, and breathable. This helps to keep the mattress cool and comfortable, even for hot sleepers.

Layer 2: Pressure-Relieving Nolah AirFoam™️ - A 2-inch layer of proprietary polyfoam that is designed to cushion pressure points without causing you to sink too deeply into the mattress. This is because the polyfoam is not made with heat-trapping viscoelastic chemicals, which are found in memory foam. Memory foam is known for trapping heat, which can make you feel hot and uncomfortable while you sleep. The Nolah Original 10 mattress is designed to be temperature neutral, which means that it will not trap heat and will help you sleep cool and comfortably.

Layer 3: Deep and Supportive High-Resilience Foam - A 1-inch layer that is more durable than memory foam and is meant to minimize sinkage while keeping the spine properly supported.

Layer 4: Reinforced High-Density Core Foundation - The base layer of the Nolah Original 10 mattress is a 7-inch foundation layer that is made with firm foam. This layer is designed to provide stability and prevent the mattress from sinking too much. The firm foam also helps to keep the mattress in shape and prevent it from sagging over time.

Performance of Nolah Original 10

Cooling

Keeping cool throughout the night is important for hot sleepers or couples. The Nolah Original 10 does an exceptional job of keeping the mattress cool all night long and is designed to be temperature neutral, which means that it will not trap heat. This is because the AirFoam comfort layer is not made the same way as the memory foam.

We conducted our standard cooling performance test on the Nolah Original 10 mattress. This test involves lying down on the mattress for 20 minutes and measuring the temperature of the mattress.

The Nolah Original 10 mattress remained cool throughout the entire test, and there were no significant hot spots or heat retention. However, people who weigh more than 230 pounds may find the mattress to be slightly warm.

This mattress seems to breathe and regulate temperatures very well despite it being a foam mattress.

Thus, we gave the cooling performance a score of 4.8/5.

Responsiveness

Responsiveness is a measure of how quickly a mattress reacts to pressure. A responsive mattress will quickly return to its original shape after you move on it. This allows you to move freely and sleep in all positions without feeling stuck or bogged down.

Traditional foam mattresses typically aren't very responsive because they tend to sink in too much, which can make it difficult to move around and can also lead to overheating. However, the Nolah Original 10 is a special case because it is made with a proprietary foam called AirFoam that is designed to be both soft and responsive. This means that you get the pressure relief and comfort of traditional foam without the sinking feeling.

We tested the responsiveness of the mattress by placing a 20-pound ball on it and then measuring how long it took the mattress to return to its original shape after the ball was removed.

The mattress had a fast response time. We measured that it took 0.4 seconds for the mattress to mostly recover and 0.6 seconds for full material recovery. This is notably faster than the average mattress recovery time, indicating excellent responsiveness.

That is why we confidently gave the Nolah Original 10 a score of 5/5 regarding responsiveness.

Motion Isolation

The Nolah Original 10 mattress offers better motion isolation than many of its all-polyfoam counterparts. This is because the AirFoam used in the Nolah Original has a fairly plush feel, allowing the mattress to absorb movement from sleepers and prevent motion from transferring across the surface of the mattress.

Motion transfer is a measure of how much movement is transferred from one side of a mattress to the other when someone moves on it. Low-motion transfer is important for couples or light sleepers.

We perform two tests to assess the mattress's motion isolation performance. The first test consists of placing a glass of water on one side of the mattress and a 20-pound ball on the other. The amount of motion that propagates to the glass of water on the other side of the bed is then measured. Our tests showed almost no motion propagation to the glass of water, indicating exceptional motion isolation performance.

The second test involves rolling on one side of the mattress and having partners report the motion they felt on the other side of the mattress. This test allows us to quantify the amount of motion that was transferred from one side of the mattress to the other. In this test, our partner was completely unable to tell when we were moving on the bed vs. staying still. Again, indicating excellent motion isolation.

With that being said, you definitely won’t feel your partner moving around at night. As a result, this mattress is a great option for couples who want to sleep peacefully without disturbing each other.

This is why we gave this mattress a motion isolation score of 5/5.

Edge Support

Edge support is another area where the Nolah Original 10 mattress performs better than the average foam mattress. This can be partially attributed to the bed's transitional layer and thick support core, which work together to reinforce the perimeter. It is a measure of whether you can sleep on the edges without sinking or not.

We did our usual edge ball sinkage test and found that there was a slight dip. However, The Nolah Original 10 mattress had fairly average edge support for a foam mattress. This means that you will feel supported when you are sleeping on the edge of the bed, and you are not likely to fall off.

The mattress scored a solid 4.8/5 in our edge support test.

Noise

To test the noise level of the Nolah Original 10 mattress, we performed a noise ball drop test. We dropped a heavy ball onto the mattress and listened for any noise through our highly sensitive microphones.

The noise ball drop test is a standard way to measure the noise level of a mattress. It is a good indicator of the noise a mattress makes when you move on it, such as when you get in and out of bed or when you roll over.

In our test, the Nolah Original 10 mattress made very little noise when we dropped the ball. We could only hear a faint thud, which is very good for a foam mattress. This is because the Nolah Original mattress is made with a foam that is designed to be quiet.

The mattress is silent when bearing weight. This means that you will not hear any squeaks, creaks, or other noises when your partner changes positions or gets in and out of bed during the night.

The Nolah Original scored a solid 5/5 in our noise performance score.

Sex

When evaluating a mattress for sex, we consider a number of factors, including bounce, cooling, edge support, and noise. Fortunately, the Nolah Original 10 mattress performs exceptionally well regarding those factors, so you can rest assured that you’ll find comfort.

The Nolah Original 10 mattress also provides great traction due to its gentle yet consistent contour. This means that you and your partner will not slide across the surface of the mattress, which can be helpful for couples who are looking to heighten the experience.

Despite the Nolah Original 10 mattress being designed to be comfortable for most people, depending on your and your partner's weight and preferences, you may experience slightly uncomfortable sinking and restricted movement.

Therefore, the Nolah Original scored a strong 4.7/5 in our sex performance score.

Pressure Relief

Pressure relief is a measure of how well a mattress distributes your weight evenly, reducing pressure on your body's sensitive areas. For example, side sleepers need a mattress that will cushion their hips and shoulders, while back sleepers need a mattress that will support their lower back.

Polyfoam is typically not as good at alleviating pressure as memory foam. This is because memory foam conforms to the shape of your body, while polyfoam does not. However, the AirFoam in the Nolah Original 10 is a proprietary polyfoam that can conform to the shape of your body and evenly distribute your weight while also resisting deep sinkage.

To assess pressure relief performance, we did our pressure relief test, which involves taking a 20-minute nap on the mattress and then measuring the pressure in different body zones.

The pressure map below shows how the mattress responds to each sleeping position.

In our test, the Nolah Original 10 performed adequately regarding pressure relief.

Back pain - The pressure map for the back is all blue, which indicates that the mattress is providing great pressure relief.

Shoulder pain - The pressure map for the shoulders shows that the mattress is doing a good job relieving shoulder pain. However, if you are a very lightweight sleeper and spend most of the night on your side, you may need a mattress that is softer to provide more cushioning for your shoulders.

Hip pain - The pressure map for the hips shows that the mattress has average hip pain relief. This will be satisfactory for the vast majority of sleepers.

The results of the pressure relief test show that the Nolah mattress provides excellent pressure relief for back sleepers and some side sleepers that weigh more than 130 pounds.

That’s why we scored the mattress a 4.7/5 regarding pressure relief.

Nolah Original 10 Warranty and Company Policies

Warranty

Nolah offers a lifetime warranty for their Original 10 mattress. This means that Nolah will repair or replace the mattress if it is defective. However, there are some limitations to the warranty.

Here is a table summarizing the warranty terms:

Trial

Every Nolah Original 10 purchase comes with a 120-night sleep trial and a 30-night break-in period. This means that you can try the mattress for 120 days and return it for a full refund if you are not satisfied. The 30-night break-in period is a time when the mattress will conform to your body and you will start to feel its full benefits.

Returns

If you are not happy with the Nolah Original 10 mattress during the initial 120-night sleep trial period, you can return it for a full refund minus the transportation fee.

Shipping

Nolah offers free shipping and real-time estimated delivery date updates. They also offer an optional Mattress Removal and Setup service for an extra fee.

Pricing

The table below shows the different pricing and size options for the Nolah Original 10 mattress. Note that the prices shown are before any discounts and are gathered from the company’s website.

Nolah has a very competitive price range for their mattresses, taking into consideration its exceptional performance and the variety of sizes.

The best mattress for you will depend on your individual needs and preferences. If you are looking for a mattress that is made with high-quality materials, offers great performance, and comes with a generous sleep trial, then the Nolah Original 10 mattress is a good option to consider.

That is why, the mattress scored a strong 4.9/5 regarding value.

Policies Overview

FAQs about Nolah Original 10

Should I flip my Nolah Original mattress?

No, you should not flip your Nolah Original mattress. The Nolah Original mattress is a uni-directional mattress, which means that it is designed to be used on one side only.

If you are not sure if your mattress is uni-directional, you can check the manufacturer's website or contact customer service.

Does Nolah use CertiPUR-US Certified Foams?

Yes, Nolah uses CertiPUR-US® certified foams in their mattresses. CertiPUR-US® is a third-party certification program that tests and certifies foam mattresses for emissions, durability, and content.

Nolah uses CertiPUR-US® certified foams in all of their mattresses, including the Nolah Original, Nolah Signature, Nolah Evolution, Nolah Nurture, and Nolah Natural.

CertiPUR-US® certified foams are made without harmful chemicals, such as ozone depleters, heavy metals, and formaldehyde. They are also made with low VOC emissions, which means that they do not release harmful gases into the air.

Is the Nolah original made of memory foam?

Nolah Original is not a traditional memory foam mattress. It is made with a proprietary foam called Nolah AirFoam™, which is designed to provide support and comfort for both side and back sleepers. The foam is also designed to be moisture-wicking and temperature-regulating, which can help to keep you cool and comfortable throughout the night.

Memory foam is a type of foam that is known for its ability to conform to the shape of your body. However, memory foam can also be too soft for some people, and it can trap heat, making it uncomfortable to sleep on.

Is the Nolah Original soft?

The Nolah mattress is considered a medium-soft mattress. This means that it is not too soft or too firm, providing a comfortable balance of support and pressure relief.

If you are not sure how soft the Nolah mattress is, you can try it out in a store or order it with a sleep trial. This will allow you to try the mattress out for yourself and see how it feels.

How long do Nolah mattresses last?

Nolah mattresses are designed to last for 10–15 years. This is based on the average lifespan of a mattress, which is typically around 8–10 years. However, the lifespan of a mattress can vary depending on the individual's weight, sleep position, and care routine.

However, keep in mind that Nolah offers a lifetime warranty. So if you do come across issues with your mattress, rest assured that you can replace it or repair it in the blink of an eye.