The best cooling mattresses for hot sleepers in 2026

While you might associate cooling mattresses with summer heatwaves, year-round temperature regulation is vital for restorative sleep. The human body needs to drop 1°F to 2°F to signal to its circadian rhythm that it's time to rest.

For hot sleepers dealing with night sweats — from medical conditions, menopause, or general body heat — cooling accessories and lowering the room's ambient temperature are only part of the solution. Truly regulating your sleep space requires the best mattress designed to pull heat away from your body.

Let’s get to the root of your sleep space to help you sleep cooler with the best cooling mattress for hot sleepers. The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling has held its own in the industry for years, and a supremely chilly cooling cover for relief all night long. For budget-friendly cooling (and help with your AC bill, too), the Glacier Summit Hybrid delivers advanced cooling right at the $1,000 mark.

Find out more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and reviews home products.

Our picks of the best cooling mattresses

Best overall cooling mattress: Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling - See at Brooklyn Bedding

Best value cooling mattress: Glacier Summit Hybrid - See at Glacier Sleep

Best cooling mattress for back pain: Bear Elite Hybrid - See at Bear

Best cooling mattress for combination sleepers and couples: Bedgear H Performance - See at Bedgear

Best hybrid cooling mattress: Casper Dream Hybrid Mattress - See at Casper

Best memory foam cooling mattress: Tempur-Pedic ProBreeze - See at Tempur-Pedic

Best latex cooling mattress: PlushBeds Botanical Bliss Organic Latex Mattress - See at PlushBeds

Best organic cooling mattress: Avocado Green Mattress - See at Avocado

Cooling technologies to know

Passive cooling: This term refers to cooling materials that feel cold when you first touch them, intended to help your body temperature drop so you can fall asleep. The overall sensation eventually dissipates as the bed’s surface absorbs more of your heat. Passive cooling materials are what’s most commonly used on mattresses, and take a variety of forms.

• Phase change material: This material absorbs heat and releases it as a cool-to-the-touch sensation. The science behind it involves turning PCM particulates into substances that can melt, like a gel, from solid to liquid. In other words, microencapsulated PCM is woven into fabric like cooling covers or infused into memory foam, and will liquefy when coming into contact with body heat. This change triggers a cooling sensation, but it usually hits a threshold once an area has reached its maximum cooling effect, making it feel more like room temperature.
• Polyethylene: This fiber is a high-thermal-conductivity material, meaning that it pulls in heat like a magnet and spreads it out so it’s not concentrated around you. In doing so, it gives off the impression of cooling. Find it in the Brooklyn Aurora Luxe Cooling hybrid’s proprietary “GlacioTex” fabric, a blend of polyester and polyethylene. Bedgear also uses this fiber in its proprietary Ver-Tex cooling cover.
• Celliant: This cooling material uses bioceramic minerals engineered to absorb heat and transform it into infrared light. The idea is that this infrared energy has restorative properties for the body and boosts overall circulation, but just feels cool to the touch while doing so.
• Copper: This is most commonly infused into memory foam layers. Copper is a natural thermal conductor, meaning it pulls in body heat to direct it away from you. It has the added benefit of preventing bacteria buildup. Copper is a naturally antimicrobial material, which is useful for long-term material integrity. However, a higher number of copper particles in the foam provides better cooling and germ prevention.
• Graphite: Like copper, this mineral is also classified as a natural thermal conductor, able to distribute heat across a mattress's surface and dissipate it, rather than letting it build up around you.

Active Cooling: Active cooling maintains a consistent temperature throughout the night, so the cooling sensation never fades. For advanced cases of night sweats and overheating, this can be an invaluable tool for some. Water is a leading thermoregulating agent, as it absorbs body heat when it’s pumped into a cooling topper and then carries it away from you. Air is another, as many turn to fan-based systems like BedJet for consistent surface temperature control. Active cooling requires separate add-on toppers or external units rather than built-in mattress layers.

Best overall

Built to keep you cool all night long. The Brooklyn Bedding Aurora Luxe Cooling first hit the market in 2017, and since then has been a longstanding crowd favorite because of its cooling capabilities—and one of ours. TheGlacioTexcooling cover features cool-to-the-touch fabric that absorbs body heat. With breathable sheets, you feel that floating through. GlacioTex technology involves high-thermal-conductivity fibers made of polyester and polyethylene. Think of the cool side of the pillow, but across the entire surface of the bed.

Foam is quilted beneath it to create a thinner cushioning layer, followed by a 1.5-inch layer of copper-infused foam. The copper infusion does the heavy lifting for absorbing body heat. Keep in mind that memory foam tends to trap heat to provide pressure relief; the copper helps mitigate that. Two more layers of foam follow, designed to move with you while providing a buffer between the upper layers and the pocketed coils beneath. Coils may not seem flashy, but they’re integral to internal airflow and customized pressure relief as each coil separately adapts to your body weight across the surface of the bed.

Before you upgrade to the pillow top…The Aurora Luxe Cooling is available in three firmness levels: soft, medium, and firm. We’ve tested the firm, which yielded very little sink, but a lot of spine support. It’s the best fit for heavy body types, stomach sleepers, and people with back pain. Anything softer than this — including adding a pillow top — works for side and back sleepers, but likely won’t feel supportive enough for these categories of sleepers. Apart from cooling, of course.

Best value

Top-to-bottom cooling design. We're always on the lookout for budget cooling mattresses, but have yet to find a sub-$500 option that is truly peak. But for very close to $1,000, a yearlong sleep trial, and lifetime warranty coverage, there was no contest that the Glacier Summit Hybrid mattress was performing on par with not just the options on this list, but also luxury mattresses.

This includes key materials you'd see in standard cooling mattresses, such as a cooling cover, cooling foam, and pocketed coils to promote internal airflow. Interestingly, it also appears in features reminiscent of those of luxury competitors, such as the Saatva Classic. This includes a pillow top for pressure relief and lumbar support via reinforced stitching at the center, plus a targeted lumbar-support foam layer under the pillow top to lift your lower back. The biggest difference is that the Summit's lumbar zone layer uses graphite foam to pull heat away from you, followed by a gel-infused foam comfort layer.

The medium firmness worked well for nearly every sleep position; however, some stomach sleepers may need something a bit firmer for spine alignment. Additionally, edge support showed some serious sink around the edges, but only while sitting.

Doesn't hold on to heat. What quickly became apparent in testing wasn't just the solid motion isolation and spine-alignment support for combination sleepers. When measured with a temperature gun, it was one of the fastest beds to release heat after sleeping on it, returning to a baseline temperature of 70℉ within 2 minutes in every test we ran. The cover and internal materials were truly breathable, promoting cooling and preventing heat retention.

Best for couples and combination sleepers

Finding a mattress for couples is usually easier said than done. Many markets that they'll keep both sleepers cool, supported, and from feeling each other's movements. That's not always the case. But after trying Bedgear's recently revamped H Performance series, the mattress delivers on cooling, edge support, and motion isolation.

Bedgear's approach to staying cool relies on a polyethylene-based Ver-Tex cooling cover, pocketed coils, and air vents covered with mesh on both sides of the mattress. The cover itself is very cool to the touch at first contact, but it faded pretty quickly once I settled into the bed. As time went on, it became clear that it was working to regulate surface temperature, keeping things even-keeled rather than frigid. Still, if that's the essence you're going for, definitely use cooling sheets here.

It took about three days for the bed to truly feel medium-firm, but that tracks with how mattresses-in-a-box typically work. The foam needs time to fully inflate after being compressed. Once the intended firmness was achieved, I found it comfortable to sleep on my side, back, or stomach. You generally want a firmer feel under your lower back to protect your lumbar zone and prevent sinking. I got that with the H4, and the cushiness of the overhauled pillow top didn't detract from that by causing overt sinking around the hips and torso. Instead, I felt a good amount of pressure relief. For side sleepers, sleeping with a body pillow also helped keep weight off my hips and shoulders — altogether, between the bed and accessories, I felt pretty weightless.

The real surprise was how well the motion isolation was. In testing, even when dropping weights onto the surface, the seismic vibration meter app I used detected very little motion transfer. This bodes well for couples who move around on their respective sides of the bed. Plus, the edge support was excellent, as I could sit or lie on it and felt like I wouldn't budge. Sometimes, with silkier-feeling covers, like the H4, sleepers may feel as if they will slide right off. That wasn't the case here, as the pillow top kept me firmly in place during testing. For couples who insist their partner stay on their side of the mattress, edge support comes in handy.

Best for back pain

Maintaining spine alignment through a firmer feel. Sleepers who have dealt with back pain — about 80% of US adults at any given point in their lives — will tell you how disruptive it is. If you are also dealing with overheating, it's a miserable experience.

While the Bear Elite Hybrid comes in three firmness levels, including soft, medium, and firm, the latter two are good fits for sleepers combating back pain. These two firmness levels will provide better weight distribution while maintaining pressure relief, so that the spine does not curve out of its natural alignment when heavier areas (like the hips and shoulders) sink in more than the other areas of your body. Side sleepers and smaller-stature body types may gravitate toward the softer medium, while stomach sleepers, heavyweight sleepers, and those with more advanced back pain should opt for firm.

How the cooling features help you hibernate. There are several cooling components at work within the Bear Elite Hybrid that also subsequently help with back pain. The Celliant cover uses a bioceramic mineral infusion that has been studied for its effects on tissue recovery. It works by absorbing the body heat it comes into contact with, converting it into infrared energy. Through that contact, the energy reflects back to the body to promote recovery while giving off a cool-to-the-touch feel. These are big claims, but we can verify that the bed provides a refreshing, cooling feel. There's also the option to add on a "CoolForce" layer, which adds a PCM within the quilted comfort layer designed to help you sleep up to 4 degrees cooler, but it costs an extra $185. The bed also doesn't retain heat; in testing, it dropped 10 degrees within 2 minutes.

The Bear Elite Hybrid also involves two layers of copper-infused foam and responsive foam to promote even pressure relief and reinforce balanced weight distribution atop the mattress. Pocketed coils are also a deliberate choice for back pain support, as firmer coils placed under the midsection prevent that area from sinking in too much. Plus, they add internal breathability to let the other cooling materials optimally perform.

See our full review of Bear Elite Hybrid. For more options, read our guide on the best mattresses for back pain

Best hybrid

Balancing act. The Casper Dream Hybrid takes a well-rounded approach to cooling and support, combining breathable foams with pocketed coils. While the standard cover isn’t cool to the touch (the QuickCool one is, but for an additional fee), the standout feature of this mattress is airflow. With a breathable cover, open-cell foam dedicated to air circulation, and pocketed coils that generate said airflow internally, it’s an even-keeled recipe for successful temperature regulation. The bed stayed 2 degrees cooler than our average and dropped by 12 degrees within 2 minutes, demonstrating excellent heat dissipation.

Apart from keeping you from overheating, the Dream Hybrid has a firmer-than-average feel that our tester suggested as best for back and stomach sleepers. Though we think heavyweight stomach sleepers may find it slightly too soft to keep their hips elevated. The zoned support helps keep the center third from sinking too low.

If you really wanted to amp up the cooling, the Casper Snow Hybrid uses a near-identical design but adds a QuickCool cooling cover, phase-change material, and aluminum-graphite heat-dissipation bands between the foam layers. It also swaps classic foam for memory foam comfort layers.

Read our Casper Dream Hybrid Review and check out our guides to the best mattresses for back sleepers and stomach sleepers.

Best memory foam

A memory foam bed that defeats heat. Historically, memory foam has fallen short of delivering a truly "cooling" feel. Memory foam requires heat absorption to provide pressure relief, but as a result, it's unable to let air flow through. Heat gets stuck, and as a result, you feel overheated. The Tempur-Pedic ProBreeze is one such bed where you don't have to worry about this, as it has one of the most impressive cooling covers I've come across to date. It's designed to feel five degrees cooler; while that can vary from case to case, and I can't readily prove that claim, I did feel it provided a cooler-than-most feel, on par with the Aurora Luxe Cooling. If that wasn't enough cooling, the LuxeBreeze is supposed to amp things up to a 10-degree difference—again, I can't prove that readily, but it did feel a smidge cooler than the ProBreeze, and makes bedding feel cold

Pressure relief is fundamental here. The all-foam medium uses several materials to absorb and dissipate body heat, including a heat-diffusing layer, "Pure Cool" absorption material layer, and a base of ventilated foam. Altogether, it still accomplishes the essence of what the Tempur-Pedic brand is renowned for: pressure relief. It molds around your body like one leaves a footprint in the sand — a near-exact impression. This helps give your pressure points the exact level of pressure relief they need. To that end, it still may feel too soft for those with back pain, given the sink-in feel here. Shifting between sleeping positions, or for couples with different sleeping positions, can also require more effort, as it takes a minute or two for the foam to return to a flat surface. If shifting positions is a concern, or you prefer something a little firmer, our tester, who tried the medium hybrid version, thought it ran a little firmer, making it better suited for stomach and back sleepers.

See our guide to the best foam mattresses.

Best latex

Relies on all-natural materials rather than human invention. Cooling materials used in mattresses, accessories, and sleep tech are always evolving and improving. While these are exciting developments, some still prefer organic materials over manmade ones, due to health concerns or general eco-friendliness. Latex mattresses offer benefits typically associated with materials like memory foam, such as pressure relief and support, without retaining heat.

The PlushBeds Botanical Bliss is outfitted with three ventilated layers of Global Organic Latex Standard and Eco-Institut certified latex. In other words, it's the real deal, top-of-the-line latex being used here. The mattress also implements both Global Organic Textile Standard-certified organic cotton in its cover and wool serving as the topmost padding. Candidly, none of these materials will offer the same cool-to-the-touch feel as man-made cooling fabrics. However, they regulate temperature and remain breathable, letting body heat pass through and dissipate, so no heat builds up around you. Plus, there are zero chemical components involved, whether that's cooling treatments, pesticides, or other chemicals.

Pressure-relief first and foremost. Aside from temperature neutrality, pressure relief is arguably the most notable feature of latex. It has natural buoyancy and responsiveness, so you feel consistently supported as you move, while pressure points are gently bolstered. Depending on your body type and sleep position, you can opt for either the medium or slightly medium-firm setting, as well as heights of 9, 10, or 12 inches.

This height and firmness customization is helpful, as it makes the bed an option for multiple sleeping positions and body types. Stomach sleepers should lean towards the firmer 9 or 10 inches. On the other hand, thicker latex slabs give more to sink into, which works well for side sleepers and heavy body types.

Edge support isn't its strongest suit. A common pitfall with latex mattresses is that, given their flexibility, they don't do so well at maintaining strong edge support—something testers and I immediately noticed with the PlushBeds Botanical Bliss. If you often sit or sleep on the sides of the bed, you may not feel super secure on it. Also, be careful while unboxing and moving this bed, as latex is very floppy and incredibly heavy. Reinforced handles aid in moving it when needed

Best organic

Certified organic. Many mattresses can claim to be all-natural, organic, and cooling. Very few have the receipts to back that up. The brand's signature Avocado Green Hybrid mattress takes its eco-friendly claims seriously, with six third-party certifications to ensure it's truly organic, includingGlobal Organic Latex Standard (GOLS),Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS),OEKO-TEX Standard 100,EWG Verified,Made Safe, andGreenGuard Gold. While the first two point to organic materials, the rest ensure that any off-gassing fumes upon unboxing and the materials you interact with are free of toxic chemicals.

Naturally cool and pressure-relieving. Latex is impervious to trapping heat, and the ventilated layer of firmer Dunlop latex paired with pocketed coils works together to help air circulate. The organic cotton cover is a naturally breathable material, too. Altogether, you get a mattress that feels lightly bouncy to help you move with ease and keep pressure points from feeling burdened.

The Avocado Green comes in three firmness levels: the base firm offering, the medium tight-top, and the plush pillow-top. The latter two involve a softer type of latex, Talalay, which increases the overall cost. We've noticed that the Avocado Green isn't the best at reducing the rocking motion from the bed, which may not appeal to couples. Additionally, it suffers from another pitfall of latex: weaker edge support. If you sleep or sit at the edge of the bed, you may not feel the most secure.

Check out our guide to the best organic mattresses.

What else we considered

Brooklyn Bedding ThermoBalance Elite: One of Brooklyn Bedding's newest offerings in its extensive fleet, the ThermoBalance Elite Hybrid features a cooling "ThermoCool" cover, phase-change material-infused foam, copper-infused foam, and coils for maximum temperature regulation. The ThermoPhase foam involved a separate box and a more involved setup. While it provided an undeniably cool feel, compared to the Aurora Luxe Cooling, which doesn't require this, the latter seems like the easier and on-par-performing option.

Tempur-Pedic ActiveBreeze Smart Bed: Not just a luxury cooling mattress, this bed is wildly cool, in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Built-in fans on the base connect to internal tubing within the mattress, providing active temperature regulation along with the pressure relief the brand is known for. The smart bed capabilities also provide comprehensive sleep tracking. However, the $10k price tag is simply not doable for many.

SweetNight CoolNest 14-Inch Hybrid: We were hoping the under-$600 SweetNight CoolNest would be a great budget recommendation, and it's loaded with technologies found on pricier beds like gel- and phase-change-infused foams, zoned support, and pocketed coils to help with temperature regulation. While we stayed comfortably cool enough on it all night long, its heat dissipation lagged behind our top picks. The edges also never fully expanded.

PurpleFlex:At $1,299, the PurpleFlex is the brand's most affordable mattress, featuring 2 inches of its signature GelFlex Grid. It dissipates heat on contact and provides excellent pressure relief. The firmer bed, however, is best suited for side and back sleepers, and many will consider the eight-inch design to be too thin. It's also an online-exclusive, meaning that while you can often try Purple mattresses in store, this one is not in the showroom.

The best cooling mattresses, compared

What to look for in the best cooling mattress

Finding a true cooling mattress comes down to understanding how internal construction and surface textiles handle body heat and keep you comfortable through the night. As mentioned at the top of the article, the best cooling mattresses rely on passive cooling to regulate temperature. Unless you plan to add a separate active cooling unit (like a water- or air-chilled topper), evaluate a mattress based on its core construction factors and consider your individual preference for firmness and support.

For more insights, our explainer about how to choose a mattress goes into detail about all the factors to consider, from everything from pressure relief to firmness.

Hybrid versus all-foam construction: In most cases, hybrid mattresses outperform all-foam beds in temperature regulation and in maintaining an overall cooler feel. Foam was invented to absorb heat, with microscopic air bubbles that hold it in place, making the material more malleable. This is what makes it first-rate for pressure relief, but infamous for heat retention.

Ventilated foams that allow air to pass through are infused with cooling treatments, such as phase-change material or gel, to dissipate heat buildup. While these things do help, they still need to be incorporated with other materials, such as coils that generate internal airflow and cooling covers, to maximize performance. Pocketed coils are better for pressure relief than traditional innerspring ones, but don't have the soft feel memory foam is revered for. Their movement inside the bed when you move creates the actual airflow, and while it's not a torrent, it prevents heat from stagnating within.

Surface fabrics: Cooling covers can go a long way toward regulating perceived temperature. They feel cool to the touch while absorbing excess body heat to help you sleep better. Look for covers that include phase-change material and cooling fibers such as Celliant or polyethylene, as they help achieve this effect.

How we tested

Cooling mattresses are our focus here, but we also have to keep in mind the holistic experience of buying (and sleeping on) a mattress long term. To ensure you're getting the best possible investment for your sleep, we also take the following into account in our testing.

Setup and usability

In this test, we assess the ease of setup from the moment a bed arrives at our home until it's fully ready for sleep. We note how big and heavy boxes are to move, if setup involves more than one person (or if in-home setup options are available), and how long we need to wait after unboxing a bed before using it.

Cooling performance

Using an infrared temperature gun, we collected precise data to assess how well each bed dissipated heat, especially relative to its claims. We take the baseline temperature before going to bed, get another reading after we first get out of bed, and then come back two minutes later to gauge how quickly it dissipates heat.

Overnight comfort

Support, pressure relief, edge support, responsiveness, and motion isolation are all vital to a good mattress performance and bode well for better sleep. We have specific tests that measure how much we sink into the bed when sitting on the edges of a mattress, as well as a motion-isolation test that uses weights to jostle the bed as best we can to simulate couples moving. From there, a seismic vibrometer app measures how effectively we shook the bed and, more importantly, how well the mattress did at stopping it.

Coverage and policies

Mattresses are a long-term investment that you use nightly — you want to ensure you are getting exactly what you need, and have the assurance of assistance if something goes wrong. We also look for shipping policies, such as whether setup is handled by you or included in the bed's cost, a lengthy sleep trial so you can try out the mattress for yourself within a set time window, and the ability to return it for a full refund. Warranty coverage is essential for safeguarding the mattress's construction. If any defective parts interfere with its performance, companies can step in to repair or replace them as part of your purchase.

Meet the expert behind the guide

Julia Forbes, contributor: Julia is a mattress tester with over 6 years of experience, having tested more than 160 beds to date. She's a double-certified Spencer Institute sleep science and brain health coach. During her time as a consumer product journalist, she visits mattress factories, meets with industry experts, and researches new technology entering the mattress industry. Plus, she really, really likes sleeping. With the help of the Business Insider testing team, she contributed her insight for these cooling mattresses that made the cut.

Cooling mattress FAQs

Do cooling mattresses actually work?

Yes, cooling mattresses work, but they function by absorbing and dissipating body heat rather than actively chilling you like an air conditioner. They rely on specific materials and structural design to prevent heat trapping, so you stay at a comfortable, neutral temperature.

What cooling bedding and accessories can I use with my cooling mattress?

Cooling mattresses can be a game changer for many, but consider these accessories to help it perform optimally—and you sleep cooler.

• Bed cooling systems: These go atop your existing mattress or cooling mattress, and use either air or water to regulate temperature throughout the night. Using sensors or presets, they can gauge body temperature fluctuations to run at a consistently cooler temperature or adapt to perceived dips or increases in your body temperature.
• Cooling sheets: Cooling mattresses benefit from breathable sheet sets, which allow them to deliver cool-to-the-touch covers that absorb body heat to work effectively. Plus, they can help amplify the bed's cooler feel. Materials like cotton, eucalyptus, bamboo, and linen are all airy, breathable, plant-based sources that make for great cooling sheets. Look for weaves like crisp-feeling percale or satin-like sateen for optimal cooling performance. Phase-change material sheets also exist, which absorb sweat to keep night-sweat sufferers cool and dry. I like Lusomé, which is among the coolest sheet sets available, and weaves a special bio-based PCM material through the percale cotton.
• Cooling pillows: The same cooling fibers and materials used in mattress covers, such as polyethylene and phase-change materials, can also be incorporated into pillows. Look for ones that also use gel-infused memory foam for further pressure relief and temperature regulation, or natural materials like organic latex and cotton for breathability.
• Cooling comforters: Fluffier comforters are very cozy, though they can trap heat. While this could be helpful for cooler seasons and climates, it's not conducive for hot sleepers to use. Look for ones that use cooling outer shells, such as Tencel, cotton, or bamboo, to provide a breathable, cooling feel.

What is the ideal sleep temperature?

The reality is that the "ideal sleep temperature" will vary from person to person. However, it's about 65 degrees, said Alon Y. Avidan, MD, MPH, director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center. "We find that when it's greater than 70 degrees, people have more disrupted and interrupted sleep. Between 60 to 65 degrees seems to be ideal," he said.

Are cooling mattresses worth it?

Maybe. If you would buy a new mattress anyway, consider a cooling mattress to help with overheating. If your mattress still has some years left, consider one of the best cooling mattress toppers instead.

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