A custom-created luxury mattress, made by hand and tailored for individuals, can be made equally comfortable for two people to share by creating either a zip-and-link configuration, with two mattresses joined together, or with a split-tension mattress that is crafted with different degrees of support and firmness, internally, in each half of the mattress. And for those who wish for an adjustable mattress, both types of mattress can be configured with their own adjustable bed base.
The luxurious bespoke beds tailored by the sleep experts of The Luxury Bed Collection, and handmade by the old European firms of Vispring and Hästens, are created to individual style, and measured and fitted to those individuals who will sleep in the bed, each precisely matched to individual, perfect sleep.
Zip and Link Luxury Mattress
A zip and link configuration consists of two half-width mattresses that join together, with a seamless feel, into a larger mattress. With recessed side fasteners crafted below the top of the mattress, and with reinforcing hand side-stitching, the center seam is essentially undetectable, especially with a topper that covers the joined mattress.
Zip and link mattresses are ubiquitous throughout America. Anyone staying in a hotel or similar accommodation may well have slept on a king-sized bed that consisted of two twin beds held together as one unit. Hotels love them for their flexibility, giving the option to configure a room at will, for children or different group sizes. That same flexibility is often required by our own clientele, who may have growing children, or who wish to furnish guest quarters. And since a luxury bed from Hästens or Vispring will last for decades and generations, it is practical to plan for children growing into adults and remaining with the same heirloom bed.
People will often choose a zip and link style of bed to make it easier to get mattresses up narrow stairways in historic homes, or into lofts, or from other challenges of delivery and installation. The Luxury Bed Collection provides a white-glove concierge service that excels in these logistics, and installation becomes our solution, rather than a client’s problem. Even so, zip and link can sometimes be the only suitable design, especially with yacht and plane cabins, for example.
Split Tension Luxury Mattress
A split-tension mattress is the alternative way to offer a tailored sleeping experience for different partners. The age-old challenge is to provide a mattress comfortable for two people who are usually of different size and weight, and often with different sleep patterns or schedules. In a split-tension mattress, each side is compartmentalized with personalized support, with subtle buffering woven in between the two, so as to present no discernible separation if one person rolls over to the other side—the change in support or firmness is barely noticeable, except through a night’s sleeping.
With hand placement of each spring, and each spring coil gauged with a determined tension, and with layers and inclusions of materials such as wool, horsehair, cashmere, and cotton, each side of the mattress in such a dual-tension arrangement perfectly represents each individual body. So successfully is this done by master craftsmen that motion on one side doesn’t disturb the other side.
A dual tension bed could be thought of as two mattresses in one, and it takes much care and skill to create a successful sleeping experience, such that two people can equally enjoy effortless, luxurious sleep. It is the epitome of a custom requirement, a true bespoke creation.
Luxury Adjustable Beds
A split-tension mattress can be mounted on an adjustable bed frame, and the entire mattress can be elevated or reclined at the head or foot. But the single mattress cannot be adjusted as separate halves. This means that most fully adjustable beds that are intended to be shared will be of the zip and link style. This can be achieved with either two divans, each housing its own adjustment engine for ultimate standalone capability, or in one complete frame containing a dual-adjustment mechanism.
With an adjustable design, both studios typically fine-tune some of the spring tensions to accommodate the flex in the mattress. The art and craft of matching the sleeper’s body with the tailored placement of spring coils always extends from the mattress into the underlying divan, and an adjustable bed mechanism becomes part of the overall fitting.
Both zip-and-link and split-tension beds offer similar choices for the bed frame. Like the mattress, the underlying divan is also handmade to custom requirements, and can consist of two frames that either fasten together, or stand separately as two twin beds. Alternately, one single divan can be made to hold both mattresses.
For an adjustable bed configuration, Hästens caters to a king size, while Vispring includes a queen size as well. Vispring was the world’s innovator in pocket-spring placement, and still today excels at precision-calibrated, pocket coil tension, scaling from soft to firm. The British atelier custom-orders its steel wire, and then performs the tempering and spring-forming exclusively itself.
Hästens, the world’s oldest bedmaker, has long adopted the Vispring pocket design, and leans slightly more to its skill with fabrics and fills to complement the tension, drawing from its earliest associations with horsehair, from its very beginnings in saddlery. Drawing from all the skills and experience of their beguiling histories, here in the present day, both ateliers will spend some 600 hours of handcraft to create one custom mattress and bed for each client.
The Luxury Bed Collection, as America’s oldest purveyor of luxury sleep, serves as guide, tailor, and concierge to help its clientele select the perfect bespoke mattress, bed, and accessories for that most important one-third of life—on which depend health, happiness and sheer, blissful comfort.
