My Casper Mattress Is the Best Thing in My Home

From Delish

I got my first official Big Girl Job (this job I have now) at the very end of 2015, and by the following year, I made my first official Big Girl Purchase: my very own queen-size mattress.

Like many 23-year-olds, I was sleeping on a full-size thing that my roommate passed down to me, after his roommate passed it down to him. Before that, I had one from Ikea that I flopped around on through college, also known as the four years when I hardly slept.

I am but one woman without superhuman strength, so I decided my mattress should come in a box delivered directly to me. The Casper met this qualification; plus, I'm a sucker for all those very enticing subway ads, and so that's what I chose. Fast-forward to nearly three years later, and my Casper is still going strong (despite surviving two moves for which I did not hire professional movers, whoops).

I wish I knew how much I'd love this bed before I bought it, because it would've helped assuage some of the big purchase-anxiety I felt at the time. To help alleviate yours, here's literally everything you need to know about the mattress I will never, ever part ways with.

Like I said, big-time purchase anxiety. I have the queen-size version of the OG Casper, which costs $995. A twin is $595, and a full is $895-so my rationalization for the queen (aside from wanting a bed I could share with a partner, reasonably) was that it was only $100 more-mere pennies in mattress land. I used a discount code from a podcast I listen to and saved $50, bringing my total to $875 with tax, shipping included. Pro tip: There are literally always promo codes available for Casper, so you should never pay full price.

Casper Cost Breakdown

Something extremely cool about Casper is that you can schedule your mattress delivery time within a one-hour window. I chose between 9 and 10 a.m., before I headed into the office, and it arrived closer to 9. Perfect.

I buzzed in the delivery guy, and there it was: my mattress, all curled up like a burrito inside a box that looked way too small to fit a bed. I lugged it up my stairs without a problem. In the box, it's not impossible to lift on your own. I let my Casper sit in its packaging and headed to work.

Have you ever opened one of those Pillsbury crescent-roll tubes? You crack it open a teensy bit, and then soft dough comes puffing out at you? That's how I expected opening the Casper would be-and it kinda was. I pulled the mattress out of its box and, using the little tool included inside to cut it out of its wrapping, watched as it grew before my eyes.

Unboxing definitely has to be done in the area where you plan to put your bed, unless you want to hoist a bulky unrolled mattress around your home. Once I freed the Casper from its tiny box, I gave it about an hour to "inflate." It comes out a little flat but puffs up (just like those delicious, delicious crescent rolls) pretty quickly. There are no rules here, but I opened mine a few hours before my bedtime to play it safe.

Something uncouth (to me, at least) about the Casper is that it doesn't require a box spring. Casper sells a foundation to put under the mattress for added height and support, but otherwise this thing can be slapped down on a bed frame with wood slats, no problem.

Paranoid about screwing up my big purchase, I made sure to buy a frame with slats that are pretty close together, which Casper recommends for providing proper support. I swear by mine-this minimal, 10-inch number by Zinus that I got on Amazon. It's super easy to assemble yourself.

I enlisted my roommate's help to flop my inflated Casper onto my sparkly new bed frame, lugged my old, decrepit mattress to the curb, and surveyed my new kingdom, ready for a deserved night of what I assumed would be perfect sleep.

Wrong. I tossed and turned all night and woke up every time I did. I felt like I was sleeping on a wood floor instead of on a mattress that cost me nearly a month of Brooklyn rent. The Casper is incredibly firm right out of the box.

I woke up the next morning feeling panicked and sleep-deprived. I remembered that Casper has a 100-night trial-you can sleep on your mattress for 100 nights, and if you don't like it, Casper will take it back and refund you. I calculated how difficult it would be to return the firm behemoth taking up most of my bedroom and decided to give it a few more days.

Thank God I did. Yes, the first few nights on the Casper were a bit rough and tossy-turny, but I could feel it softening ever so slightly within about two weeks. The mattress stayed supportive, which is what I wanted, but it started to give a bit more when I rolled around, so I didn't wake up so much. It still feels firm more than two years later.

Compared to the hand-me-down and Ikea mattresses of my youth, the Casper is a complete game-changer. Where you sort of sink into others, the Casper pushes you back up to keep your body more or less aligned.

My typical day consists of a morning workout, like a run or a gym class, followed by nine hours of uninterrupted slouching like a creature at a desk-which is to say that my back has been put through the ringer by the time I collapse into bed. When I lie down on my Casper, I can literally feel my little back muscles moving and shifting back into the right places. By the time I wake up the next morning, it's like I got a massage in my sleep. (Yes, it's that good.)

I was worried a foam-based bed would be hot or sticky, but this really isn't. I live in an apartment that, like many others in NYC, lacks central AC. So in the summer, it gets very hot in my room. The Casper uses something called "open-cell" layers that basically create little holes to whisk away heat through the mattress. I don't understand that science but I do know that it works.

Something I did not account for when I bought a Big Girl Bed was moving it. I refuse to pay $1,000 for movers when I'm capable of carrying things myself, which means I've moved (with the help of friends and boyfriends) my Casper from a second-story apartment to a first-story and, finally, to my current home on the third floor.

Each time, I wrap it in a plastic protector to keep it from getting banged up and I've never had a problem. The mattress has handles on the long ends to make picking it up easier. Is it something you can do alone? If your bed is smaller than a queen, probably, but mine is too unwieldy for one small person to move.

I flip my mattress every few months because, once again, I'm paranoid about ruining it, and I want to make my Casper last as long as possible. It has a 10-year warranty, and I have no intentions on replacing it before that decade is up.

The good:

👍 Casper couldn't make the delivery process any easier. Scheduling a time, right down to the hour, was a life-saver.
👍 It's incredibly easy to lug out of its box, which is great for people who live alone or simply like doing everything themselves.
👍 The handles on the long ends make the Casper easy to move and shift around on your bed.
👍 It's tall, but not too tall for sheets to fit around it.
👍 Two years in, with proper care, my Casper still feels brand-new (minus the firmness issue).
👍 Thanks to this bed, my back is probably a million times less mad at me.

The not-so-good:

👎 At nearly $900 for a full, this thing isn't cheap. There are less-expensive mattress-in-a-box options available. But I can say I've never regretted a single penny spent on this bed.
👎 The first few nights are rough. The Casper starts out extremely firm.

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