Furniture, cost per night
Cost per night: what a mattress really costs
A mattress uses no electricity, needs no consumables and is used every single night for the best part of a decade. That makes it the purest cost per use question there is, and the one where the number in the shop is least like the number that matters.
Some links on this page are affiliate links, which earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it never changes which option comes out cheapest here, because the ranking is arithmetic. How this works.
The answer, in pennies
Every option on this page costs between 10.3p and 32.9p a night. The entire argument people have in mattress shops, between a £300 mattress and a £1,200 one, is worth 22.6p a night.
| Option | Running | Cost per night | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget, kept eight years£300 | 0p | 10.3p | |
| Budget, replaced every four years£300 twice | 0p | 20.5p | |
| Mid range, kept eight years£700 | 0p | 24p | |
| Premium, kept ten years£1,200 | 0p | 32.9p |
That framing is not a trick to make you spend more. It cuts the other way just as hard: if a £300 mattress genuinely suits you, the premium one is not worth 22p a night to you and you should buy the cheap one and stop feeling bad about it.
The row that actually matters
Look at the last line, because it does not say what the received wisdom says. A £300 mattress replaced every four years costs 20.5p a night, which is still less than a £700 one kept for the full eight. Buy cheap, buy twice, and on cost per night you are somehow still ahead.
What that arithmetic cannot see is the state of the mattress in the last year of each cycle. You are not comparing eight years of good sleep against eight years of good sleep. You are comparing eight good years against six good ones and two spent on something that has already gone, and there is no honest way to put a price on that. The real question is not what a mattress costs, it is how long it holds its shape, and that is the one thing no showroom can tell you.
A ten year warranty usually covers manufacturing defects and a specified depth of permanent sagging, often 25mm or more, measured with nobody on the bed. It is not a promise that the mattress will still be comfortable in year eight. Read what depth triggers a claim before treating the warranty as a lifespan.
Why the per night figure is the honest one
A mattress is bought roughly six times in an adult life and used around 2,900 times per purchase. Almost nothing else you own has that ratio. A sofa gets a few hours a day, a car sits still most of the time, and a kitchen gadget might get used weekly. This is used every night without exception, which is why dividing by nights is the only sensible way to look at it.
What we are not counting
Sleep quality, which is the entire reason anybody buys an expensive mattress and is not a number this site can produce. If a better mattress means you sleep properly, the pennies are irrelevant and the calculation is beside the point. What the arithmetic can tell you is the size of the bet: at 32.9p a night, upgrading is one of the cheapest experiments in the house.
The verdict
Cost per night is nearly flat across the entire mattress market, from 10.3p to 32.9p, so price is close to useless as a way of choosing. Buy the one you sleep best on, keep it until it sags rather than until a warranty expires, and stop treating the number on the ticket as though it were the number that matters. It is worth about twenty pence a night either way.
Put your own numbers in
Prefilled with a mattress. Set the energy to zero, put your own price and expected years in, and the per night figure falls straight out.
Cost per meal
Set the purchase price to zero for the running cost alone.
Questions
How much does a mattress cost per night?
Between 10.3p and 32.9p a night depending on price and how long you keep it. A £700 mattress kept eight years works out at 24p a night.
Is an expensive mattress worth it?
The price difference between a £300 and a £1,200 mattress is about 22.6p a night over their lives. Whether that is worth it depends on sleep quality, which is not something arithmetic can settle.
How often should a mattress be replaced?
Commonly quoted as around eight years, at which point support rather than comfort is usually the issue. Replacing a cheap mattress every four years costs more per night than buying a mid range one and keeping it for eight.
Does a mattress have any running cost?
None. No electricity, no consumables, no maintenance beyond turning it. That is why the whole figure is just the purchase price divided by nights.
Is it cheaper to buy a cheap mattress?
Only if it lasts. A £300 mattress kept eight years is the cheapest option here. The same mattress replaced after four is dearer per night than a £700 one that went the distance.
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More furniture and sleep costs, or read how we work these out.
Prices used on this page
- Electricity, 26.11p per kWh. Ofgem price cap, direct debit, average of England, Scotland and Wales, including 5% VAT.. Ofgem energy price cap unit rates and standing charges. Checked 22 August 2026.