Apparently, they are with the Dodo bird as they are nearly impossible to find on any showroom floor. As of our last UN-official count there were 133 places in Lancaster County Pennsylvania where you can buy mattresses and only 1 still had waterbeds on the showroom floor – and I think that store is closing. What happened?
If we go into our Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine to the 70s and 80s you didn’t have many choices in mattresses. Well, you had two choices Firm and Really Firm. Mattresses were two-sided, built like a tank, and offered very little padding. Then along came the waterbed.
Waterbeds were priced very economically, lasted a long time, but most importantly provided a feel for the consumer that they couldn’t get in a traditional firm innerspring mattress. The waterbeds conformed to your body, put your spine in a natural, neutral alignment, relieved pressure, and provided you with enveloping support. You could get a very basic free-float waterbed set up for $100-200, or fancier more supportive models for over a $1000, while most innerspring beds were being sold for around $500. The mainstream mattress companies started taking notice.
Waterbed popularity started to leak away with the introduction of quality memory-foam mattresses like Tempur-Pedic, which provided all the contouring, enveloping support but without the inherent hassles of water: special sheets, needing to add conditioner, and ‘once it is in place fuhgetaboutit if you want to move it.
Gardner’s Mattresss & More was Gardner’s Bedrooms back in the 90s and were waterbed specialists, but the writing was on the wall that the waterbed was going the way of the Dodo. Gardner’s was the first local, independent store to carry Tempur-Pedic, which started taking much of that waterbed business. Today we have many options for mattresses that contour to your body while providing support including memory foam (Tempur-Pedic & iComfort), latex (Pure Latex Bliss, PranaSleep, Posh+Lavish and Savvy Rest), memory-foam/spring combo (iSeries), handmade coil inner-spring (Vi Spring, Hypnos & Gold Bond) as well as many traditional inner-spring mattress offerings.