Moving a mattress isn’t easy. Mattresses are large, clumsy, heavy, stiff and require two or even more people to help navigate when moving. What you might be wondering, however, is that are you able to cheat and get away with bending your mattress?

We completely understand if you need to move a mattress around a corner or fit it through a doorway in order to get to a certain room of the home, making folding it seem like the best way to do so. But not so fast.

Here are some frequently asked questions about mattresses and trying to fold them in order to move them successfully from one place to another.

What Happens To A Mattress When It Is Folded?

Folding a mattress simply isn’t what we recommend to any mattress owner. A mattress is meant to always be flat so if can effectively provide you with support and comfort. No mattress is made so that you can bend it, because they are supposed to lay flat and parallel to the floor.

Doubling a mattress over, meaning that you fold one side over another like a Christmas card, is possibly the worst fold that can be done compared to just a slight bend. If you double a mattress over, you would be extremely lucky to be able to have it lay flat on the boxspring again, even if you attempt to bend it the other way.

There are many parts to a mattress like the foam layer, coils and border rods that will become damaged if you attempt to fold the mattress. Any damage that comes with folding the mattress is permanent, and cannot be fixed whatsoever. Due to the outer upholstery of the mattress, none of a mattresses inner parts is accessible for you to try to fix by yourself.

What Mattresses Can Be Folded Without Damaging?

Traditional mattresses have steel interior parts such as the aforementioned coils and rods. These parts in side the mattress, while won’t break when you try to bend the mattress, will sure bend regardless.

There are other types of beds, however, that do not have any steel or metal inside them at all, making them more flexible. Mattresses constructed of polyurethane foam and memory foam provide more flexibility over traditional mattresses, so they should be slightly easier to move. These types of mattresses are even folded up when they are shipped to make them easier to transport from the factory to your home.

Latex rubber mattresses are also a thing, but not quite as common as memory foam. Latex rubber comes from the same materials that are used to make super balls, latex gloves and tires. These mattresses definitely feel different from boxspring and memory foam mattresses, but the flexibility should also be similar to memory foam. While we did state that mattresses weren’t made to be bent, you can get away with bending ones that do not have metal coils.

Can Bending a Mattress Void My Warranty?

Depending on the manufacturer, mattress warranties can greatly vary in length and in terms, and it is very important that you read and review the warranty before you try to do something with the mattress that you are not completely sure about. In most cases, a mattress warranty lasts for 10 years.

Most warranties are not honored due to any action done from a consumer. Instead, warranties are mostly honored because of a factory defect or a mishap from shipping. By having you or another person damage or modify the mattress intentionally will tend to make the warranty on it null and void. With that said, you will not be able to get a free replacement if you bend your mattress and damage it permanently.

What Kind Of King Mattresses Can You Bend?

You may think that a bigger bed means it is harder to move, but that cannot be further from the truth. Basically, any mattress that doesn’t have metal or steel in it can be bent. As mentioned earlier, rubber latex and memory foam mattresses are available in king size, and should be just as easy to flex through doorways and through narrow passages.

Conclusion

Even for mattresses that can be bent, we deem that bending your mattress should be a last resort if you want to move your mattress to a new RV or another room in your RV. Instead, try to fit the mattress through the doorway as straight as possible, with both ends of the mattress travelling through opposite corners of the doorway.

We also advise against disassembling the mattress in order to fit it through a doorway or around a corner; not a traditional mattress, anyway. You or somebody you know likely doesn’t have the skills or resources to upholster the mattress again, and taking the mattress apart will unquestionably void your warranty. For beds that you can assemble and disassemble, we recommend a modular bed kit.