For a moment the Orford feels kind. The pad stitched over the top takes the edge off everything you feel in the first minute, and under it the wired-together spring unit is as hard as anything else in this range. It is the only pillow top among the Silentnight Aloe Vera mattresses Dreams sells online, graded Firm, and Miracoil is the maker's own trademark for a plain open coil.
It suits a narrow buyer: an average-weight back or front sleeper who likes a hard bed and only wants the first inch softened. Walk away if you're a side sleeper, if you're lighter than about nine stone, or if you want that soft top still soft in three years. Would I buy it? No. Pillow tops are the construction I talk people out of, and this is a textbook case of why.
The pad is what owners like, and it sleeps cool
The happy owners are all saying the same thing about that soft layer across the top: it turns a hard mattress into something they can lie down on. A few call it a topper, as though it lifts off for a wash. It does not. The cover is stitched on and was never built to come off, so keep detergents and cleaners away from it, because they wreck the fabric and the stitching.
Owners rate it for sleeping cool, and that counts with me, because heat is what wakes me and I hate being too hot. The mechanism is dull and real: an open coil with polyester over it has nothing in it to hold warmth, which does more for you than a trademarked fibre name. Several ended up using it in a spare bedroom, which is where an open coil belongs.
A centimetre deeper, and about six kilos lighter than it used to be
Most of the reviews are for the previous model, and here that matters more than it usually would. The double those owners bought weighed about 26 kilos. This one weighs about 20, at a centimetre more depth.
Depth tells you less than buyers think, and the extra centimetres are usually the cheap part. The depth went up while six kilos of filling went out, on the one mattress in the range whose whole pitch is the soft layer up top. Ask Dreams how thick that pillow top is before you order, because the pad is what your money buys and no one will put a figure on it.
The soft top settles, and there is no second side to move to
The softest layer in any mattress is the first to give, and when it does you have nothing underneath to move to. One sleeping side, so a head to toe spin is your lot. Silentnight's guarantee counts settlement of the fillings as normal wear, and on a pillow top the filling is the feature.
The unhappy owners are blunt about the firmness. Dreams grades it Firm and several say it goes well past that: one describes lying on a wooden board and waking with a bruised arm, another could feel the coils through the padding. Silentnight itself calls a connected spring system firmer and less responsive, so a soft pad takes the sting out of your first touch and does nothing under it. A couple go the other way, one finding theirs sunken and too soft at three years, one seeing wear inside two months. Same mattress, different ages.
Side sleepers should look elsewhere. Your shoulder and your hip need to sink, and this gives them an inch and then holds firm. Avoid it under about nine stone too. Buy it anyway and there's upkeep to do. Keep the label side up, and sleep on a protector from your first night, because Dreams' 100-Night Comfort Guarantee is good for a swap and not a refund, and a marked mattress can be refused.
What to buy instead
The Silentnight Aloe Vera Castleton in the same range gives you the construction I would have put under you to begin with. Individually pocketed springs take over from one wired unit, the top is flat quilting with no pad to flatten, and the grade is Medium for a little more money. Share a bed and those pockets keep your partner's turning over on their own side.
Liked the firm open coil and not the pad? The same spring unit sits under a flat-topped mattress further down this range, and it's cheaper and a grade firmer, which narrows it again. For most bodies it is the Castleton, and the pad is the bit you won't miss.
