How Often Should You Turn or Flip a Mattress?

Mattress Flipping

• Turning and flipping your mattress are key steps you can take to prolong the time you can comfortably use it. Over time, the weight of your sleeping body compresses the material inside your mattress. This compression breaks down the internal support within the mattress. The places you sleep most often get soft and start to sag, creating depressions that trap you while you are sleeping, preventing you from changing positions during the night.

New Mattress

• When you purchase a new mattress, institute a turning and flipping schedule for the first year you own it. Every month, rotate the mattress so the head and foot of the bed are reversed. Every three months, flip the mattress, turning it completely over. By shifting the bed around like this, you distribute wear across the surface of the mattress, instead of immediately starting to create a dip in your favorite area to sleep.

Older Mattress

• After your mattress is over a year old, you can relax your schedule of flipping and turning. You’ve broken it in and now your focus should be on moving it often enough to continue to spread wear around and prolong the useful life of the mattress. Rotate your mattress every three months and flip it every six. You can keep the schedule by remembering to turn the mattress when the seasons change and flip it at the beginning and midpoint of the year.

Considerations

• If you have a pillow top mattress, you won’t be able to flip it. Instead, keep to the schedule of rotating it regularly to help prevent compression of your mattress. If you have an older mattress you haven’t been flipping or turning, start doing it now. No matter how careful you are, your mattress will eventually stop being as firm and supportive as you want it to be. Once it is no longer comfortable, replace your mattress and begin the routine of flipping and turning with a new one.