The UK’s biggest mattress retailers, compared on what matters

Six names account for most of what Britain sleeps on. Comparing them on price is nearly pointless, because something is nearly always discounted somewhere. Comparing them on terms is far more revealing, and almost nobody does it.

Everything below comes from each company’s own UK terms, checked on 29 August 2026. Where a figure could not be confirmed from a first-party page, that is stated rather than filled in.

Trials and guarantees at a glance

The two that sell other people’s mattresses

Dreams and Bensons for Beds are retailers rather than manufacturers, which changes what you are buying. The guarantee on a mattress bought from either usually comes from whoever made it, so the terms that matter are the manufacturer’s, not the shop’s.

Dreams has been owned by Tempur Sealy since 2021. Its 100-night comfort guarantee is a trial — a mechanism for changing your mind — and not a defect warranty. The two are separate things on separate clocks, and confusing them is one of the commonest and most expensive errors in this market.

Bensons bought the eve Sleep brand out of administration in 2022 after eve collapsed, which is why eve products now sit inside the Bensons range.

The four that make their own

Nectar

The longest trial in the group at 365 nights, and a warranty branded “Forever” rather than a fixed term: free replacement for ten years, then repair or re-cover with a shipping charge each way. Body impressions must exceed 4cm to count as a defect — the most forgiving threshold of the four, meaning a mattress must sag further before Nectar is obliged to act. The UK entity is Nectarsleep Ltd of London, and DreamCloud trades under the same terms.

Simba

200 nights, ten years, and the most elaborate small print in the group. The sag threshold rises with age: 25mm in the first six months, 30mm to a year, and 70mm from year five onwards. That is roughly the depth of a clenched fist. Simba also caps replacements at two per order, lists use by anyone over 18 stone (114kg) as grounds to reject a claim, and requires monthly rotation for the first three months and quarterly thereafter — with failure to rotate a listed exclusion.

Emma

200 nights and ten years, with the strictest sag threshold of the group at 2.5cm. Note where that figure lives: section 19.3(b) of the terms and conditions, not the guarantee marketing page, which publishes no threshold at all. Emma’s terms give 200 nights; one FAQ block on the guarantee page confusingly says 100. The terms govern.

Silentnight

The trial needs reading carefully. The much-advertised 365-night trial applies only to the just sleep range, requires a minimum of 28 nights first, allows one exchange per purchase, and is an exchange rather than a refund. Other Silentnight mattresses get a 60-night comfort exchange. The guarantee is five years on Silentnight-branded mattresses and ten on just sleep. No sag threshold appears on any Silentnight page we could reach.

What this comparison actually tells you

Line the four manufacturers up and the headline numbers invert. Nectar advertises the longest trial and the longest-sounding warranty, and has the most forgiving threshold before it will act. Emma advertises a shorter trial and a fixed ten years, and has the strictest. Simba’s ten years is really a sliding scale that gets harder to claim on every year you own it.

None of that appears on a swing ticket. It is all published, and none of it is secret — it is simply spread across six sets of terms that nobody has any commercial reason to put side by side.

The full set of figures, including TEMPUR’s pro-rata scale and the slat gap requirements that void cover, is collected on the UK bed facts page. The practical version is in twelve buying mistakes.