When do mattresses go on sale in the UK?
Four main times a year, plus most bank holidays. Black Friday's the one where the big bed shops and the online-only brands cut prices at the same time. Boxing Day runs into January as one long clearance. Each bank holiday adds a short window of its own, from a long weekend up to the 12 days we watch over Easter.
Early offers turn up long before the Friday itself, so we start watching for Black Friday from 5 November. There's a catch with all of this, though. Plenty of mattress brands now sell to you direct online, and those brands discount on a rhythm of their own. Once you've got that difference straight, the calendar below is something you can plan around.
The 2026 mattress sale calendar
Every event is here, with the 2026 dates and the sort of shop that runs it. Bank holiday dates are the official England and Wales list. One will catch you out: Christmas Day is a Friday in 2026, so the Boxing Day bank holiday moves to Monday 28 December.
| Event | Typical window (2026) | Who usually runs it | Our page |
|---|
| Black Friday | 5 Nov to 1 Dec, the day itself 27 Nov | Store chains and direct brands together | Black Friday mattress deals |
| Cyber Monday | Mon 30 Nov, inside the Black Friday window | The same names, usually the same offer | Cyber Monday section |
| Boxing Day | 17 Dec to 5 Jan, headline day 26 Dec | Bed retailers and department stores | Boxing Day mattress deals |
| January sales | 1 Jan to 31 Jan 2027 | Bed and furniture chains, carrying on from Boxing Day | January mattress sales |
| Easter | 27 Mar to 7 Apr, holidays 3 and 6 Apr | Bed retailers and most direct brands | Bank holiday mattress sales |
| Early May | 30 Apr to 5 May, holiday 4 May | Bed retailers and most direct brands | Bank holiday mattress sales |
| Spring | 21 to 26 May, holiday 25 May | Bed retailers and most direct brands | Bank holiday mattress sales |
| Summer | 27 Aug to 1 Sep, holiday 31 Aug | Bed retailers and most direct brands | Bank holiday mattress sales |
| National Bed Month | All of March | National Bed Federation members: awareness, not discounts | None |
Don't wait for National Bed Month. It's a National Bed Federation awareness campaign, run every March with a marketing toolkit for shops, and no price comes down because of it.
How UK bed retailers discount
Direct brands: one sale that barely stops
Which? spent 8 weeks in 2023 checking prices at the brands that sell direct, and Lola, Nectar, Otty and Rem-Fit each had mattresses that seemed to be on sale for the whole 8 weeks. Some offers ran on past their own end date, while others closed and came back the same week looking almost the same.
That changes what a sale price means for you. If a brand discounts every week of the year, its Black Friday price isn't a rare thing, and waiting for it buys you less than you'd think. Judge it against what the mattress cost on an ordinary Tuesday in March rather than against the crossed-out number next to it.
Store chains: discounting in bursts
Bed shops with showrooms run something closer to a proper event. Dates get set, adverts go out, stock is held back, and prices go back up when it ends. So a showroom in the last week of December feels nothing like the same showroom in October.
Both patterns meet at Black Friday. That's why the window opens so early. Simba's own 2025 terms ran a single promotion across 21 to 30 November, timed to the minute, so a direct brand can treat 10 days as one event. Store chains work the same fortnight as a trading period and keep advertising it into December.
What the regulators have said
UK mattress pricing has a public record with the regulators, and it helps to know what's in it. On 1 August 2024 the CMA published discount and reference pricing principles for online mattress sellers. Its page now carries a notice dated 30 July 2026: the guidance is on hold while a High Court judgment is considered.
One court outcome sits next to it. In May 2026 the High Court confirmed, by consent, that Emma Sleep's countdown timers, "high demand" messages and discount claims had broken consumer law. Emma agreed not to repeat them.
None of that's legal advice, and none of it tells you whether the price in front of you is good. What it does tell you is which sales tactics have already failed a test. Keep that in mind the next time one shows up on your screen.
How much does an "up to" figure tell you?
Less than you'd hope. An "up to" claim describes the single deepest cut anywhere in a range, and often that's a size or a model nobody's buying. In 2024 the ASA looked at three issues over Origin Sleep's savings claims, including "Up to 45% off", and upheld all three. Read the figure as the top of a range, not as the offer on your mattress.
Should you buy now or wait?
Wait if you can, and not because of the size of the badge. Where you're buying from is the first reason. An event-led chain does hold its deepest cuts back for a window. A brand that discounts all year round has less room left to give.
Then there's the question of whether you want a current line or a clearance model. Clearance stock is a one-off by definition, so no January sale brings back the bed you were looking at. If you've found the exact bed you want and it's a run-out, the calendar isn't your friend.
Ignore all of this if your old mattress has already gone and you're sleeping badly on it. Buy the bed that fits you this week. 10 weeks of poor sleep costs you more than the gap between an October price and a November one.
Waiting can go wrong in one more way. Whichever sale you held out for can open with your size sold out.
How do you read a mattress discount?
Compare it against what the same shop charged over the last few months, and forget the RRP. An RRP's a number the maker suggests, and on a direct brand there's often no shop anywhere that ever charged it. You want the price this exact mattress, in your size, carried on a normal weekday earlier in the year.
Which numbers should you check instead?
The code's own terms come first: they often leave out clearance, bed frames, or the exact range you were about to buy from. Delivery comes next, since a sale price with a 6 week wait isn't the same purchase as one in stock. And look past the percentage to your sleep trial, since a bed you can send back on night 80 beats 10% off one you're stuck with.
Our mattress promo codes pages carry what's live at each retailer, in the retailer's own words, while our top mattress list is chosen on the mattress, not on whatever happens to be reduced this week. Those two lists disagree more often than you'd expect, and I find that gap the useful bit.
How we put these pages together
Dates on this page and its four event pages come from GOV.UK and from tracking windows we set ourselves. Codes come to us in each retailer's own wording, and I don't dress them up. We keep our own running record of mattress prices, so any price drop you see here is measured against what we logged, never against a shop's crossed-out figure. No countdown clocks, no "was" price repeated as fact, and no guessing at what a retailer will do before it publishes.
Sources
- GOV.UK, UK bank holidays (England and Wales dates for 2026). https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays
- Simba Sleep, Black Friday Sale Promotion Terms and Conditions 2025 (promotion window). https://simbasleep.com/pages/bf2025
- Which?, mattress pricing investigation, February 2024. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-urges-popular-mattress-companies-to-play-by-the-rules-aeIV45u7pHws
- CMA, Discount and reference pricing principles: selling mattresses online, published 1 August 2024, withdrawal notice dated 30 July 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/discount-and-reference-pricing-principles-selling-mattresses-online
- CMA, court endorses CMA action as Emma Sleep agrees to change sales practices, May 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/court-endorses-cma-action-as-emma-sleep-agrees-to-change-sales-practices
- ASA, ruling on Origin Sleep UK Ltd, 2024, on savings claims worded "Up to 45% off". https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/origin-sleep-uk-ltd-a24-1253221-origin-sleep-uk-ltd.html
- National Bed Federation, National Bed Month marketing toolkit (March campaign). https://www.bedfed.org.uk/nbf-releases-marketing-toolkit-ahead-of-2026-national-bed-month-in-march/
Questions about UK mattress sales
When is the best time of year to buy a mattress in the UK?
Black Friday and the fortnight around it, if you can wait that long and you're buying from a store chain. Showroom shops and direct brands both cut prices across those weeks, so you can compare the two on one weekend instead of guessing. Boxing Day into January comes next. That suits you better if you're after clearance stock than if you've set your heart on a current range.
How far do UK mattress sale prices drop?
Deep enough at the store chains to plan around, and harder to read at the direct brands. Where a brand discounts most weeks of the year, the November figure tells you less than the price you'd have paid in March. The CMA's own principles set the bar: a "was" price only means something if the shop charged it for long enough first.
Which window should you plan around?
Black Friday, when you want the widest choice. Showroom chains and direct brands discount together, so the model you shortlisted is usually still there. Plan around the post-Christmas run instead when you'll take whatever is good value, because clearance is where the one-offs sit. How that half of the winter works is on our Boxing Day page.
Do I have to wait for a sale to get a discount?
No. Codes run outside the big windows all year, and our promo codes section lists what's live today. Direct brands rarely sit at full price for long either. Seasonal events add scale: more retailers, deeper cuts at the showroom chains, and a fortnight where comparing them is easy because everyone's discounting at once.
How can I tell whether a sale price is honest?
Check how long the "was" price was charged for. A crossed-out figure nobody's paid in months is decoration, whatever it says next to it. Price history, trial length and the exclusions in your code's terms each tell you more than the headline ever will. If the shop's word is the only proof of a saving, it's marketing.
