DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: Review in brief
- Excellent support for back and stomach sleepers
- Has the luxurious feel of a far more expensive mattress
- Side sleepers may find the DreamCloud a little unsupportive
Note: we're reviewing the UK model here. For the US review, toggle the flag dropdown in the main navigation bar.
UK sleepers might not be aware of the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress, which is better known in America (the brand's range is larger there too). But this sister brand to Nectar Sleep sits highly in our best mattress guide, and its Luxury Hybrid is well worth exploring if you’re a back or stomach sleeper, or you’re a couple looking for a comfy mattress with excellent motion isolation.
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is sold directly by the brand online and comes with a 365-night trial – you get a whole year to test it out – and a Forever Warranty. It's the same for the Luxury Hybrid US, priced from $799. According to the brand: ‘If DreamCloud becomes damaged from normal use anytime during your ownership, we will replace your mattress at no charge.’
By comparison, the average mattress in a box trial is 100 nights and the average warranty is 10 years (read our feature on how do mattress warranties work for guidance). You can also buy the DreamCloud as part of a bundle, wherein you get the Luxury Hybrid plus either furniture, bedding or both, depending on the bundle (there are four to choose from, with RRPs starting at £871.50).
Described by one of our review team as like sleeping on a ‘firm, supportive marshmallow’, the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is the best of both worlds. The hybrid mattress design adds firmness with its pocket springs and layer of support foam, but gives a softer hug via a top layer of gel memory foam. We think the mattress is aptly named, with a cloud-like contouring effect that keeps you supported while lulling you into a restful night’s sleep. For that reason, we also rate it amongst the best mattresses for back pain.
Best for: back sleepers; stomach sleepers; couples; restless sleepers
Type: bed-in-a-box
Firmness: medium-firm (6.5/ 10)
Materials: memory foam, foam and innersprings
Depth: 28cm / 11 inches
Weight: 46.2-88lbs
Sizes: single to super king
If you’re a dedicated back or stomach sleeper, the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is excellent to snooze on. Back sleepers will find support in all the right places, with the mattress keeping your spine aligned and providing great support at the neck and shoulders. Memory foam isn’t always a natural choice for stomach sleepers, but the hybrid nature of the DreamCloud means that your head doesn’t compress the foam enough to sink in, face-first. Eve Sleep's luxury hybrid (£978 for a double size) is another excellent choice for back sleepers, so check out our Eve Premium Hybrid mattress review too.
Combination sleepers should also appreciate the bounce of the coils, which make it easy to change position throughout the night. However the softer feel of foam may be a little too soft for heavier side sleepers who risk sinking too far into the DreamCloud and aggravating pressure points. For lighter side sleepers though, this bed is an excellent choice.
We think the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is also well-suited to couples. How come? Because it uses ActivEdge pocket springs right to the edge. This means couples can spread out and sleep up to the edge without the danger of sliding out onto the floor. Our weight test further into this review showed that this is indeed accurate, with there being far less sinkage at the edges than you’d expect from a mattress with a top layer of memory foam.
The superior edge support also helps cut down on motion transfer, which is a godsend if you’re sharing with a restless sleeper - the foam does an excellent job of stopping movement transferring from your partner to you and vice versa.
DreamCloud describes its mattress as a Luxury Firm, giving it a rating of 6.5 on a firmness scale of 1-10. We’d describe it as a medium firmness. The mattress has an extremely ‘plush’ feel, but the pocket springs are not quite as firm as those found in some other hybrids we have tested. And although the RRP is slightly higher, you certainly get what you pay for. Best of all, there are regular DreamCloud mattress sales and deals to vastly reduce the price - often by as much as 50%, depending on the time of year.
Our only bugbear with the Luxury Hybrid is that the cover isn’t washable or removable, so make sure you invest in the best mattress protector you can afford to keep it safe from spills and stains. It was the same issue we had when compiling our Brook + Wilde Lux mattress review. But overall we’re big fans of the DreamCloud, and we’ll go into more detail as to why in the rest of our review.
(opens in new tab)DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: Materials
- CertiPUR certified foams for non-toxic sleep
- 15cm ActivEdge pocket spring coils for firmness
- Gel memory foam for contouring and cooling
With five individual layers, there’s a lot packed into this luxury hybrid. The top cover is made of quilted foam and cashmere, which does a great job of keeping sleepers cool at night. Next up is a gel memory foam layer, designed to contour your body and minimise pressure. The gel also acts as a cooling agent and prevents heat retention; something commonly found in cooling mattresses.
The ‘hug’ of memory foam used to be notorious for retaining heat, so it’s good to see DreamCloud focusing on breathability here, just as the best memory foam mattresses on the market do. The polyfoam support layer beneath this adds to the cradling of your body, with both layers of foam being CertiPUR certified as toxin free. 15cm ActivEdge pocket spring coils provide firmness and minimise motion transfer all the way to the edge. The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is rounded off by another polyfoam layer, which acts as support for the innerspring layer.
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: Price
- Competitively priced compared to other premium hybrids
- Often discounted by up to 50% on every size
- DreamCloud mattress bundles offer even bigger savings
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is the brand’s only mattress available for the UK market at present, with the RRP starting at £1,199 for a twin. A double size retails for £1,399 and the RRP for a king size is £1,449. That's pricier than its sister brand, the all-foam Nectar mattress. (See our in-depth DreamCloud vs Nectar comparison.)
When compared to its nearest competition, which we’d class as the Simba Hybrid Pro and the Emma Premium, the DreamCloud is slightly cheaper than the Simba with its RRP of £1,499 for a double but more expensive than the Emma Premium at £1,099 for a double. Like DreamCloud, Simba and Emma run regular mattress sales.
For the latest offers, see our guide to the best Simba mattress discounts, as well as the biggest Emma mattress sales and deals. Those two brands do offer a wider range of mattress sizes compared to DreamCloud’s four (single, double, king and king size) and are worth considering if you need something more specialist, such as European sizes. For more on Emma, read our Emma Original mattress review.
Here are the official prices for the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid:
- Twin: £1,199
- Double: £1,399
- King: £1,449
- Super King: £1,499
Note that the DreamCloud has risen in cost in recent months by up to £200. That's not unique to DreamCloud, as the ongoing cost of living crisis and recent supply chain issues have forced most mattress brands to raise their RRPs.
In addition to big savings on the Luxury Hybrid when purchased by itself, DreamCloud offers some massive savings on its bundles, with up to £1,218 off select mattress and bed frame bundles.
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: Firmness, comfort
- Delivers a medium-firm feel (6.5 out of 10)
- Superb pressure relief, particularly for back and stomach sleepers
- Cosy cushioning plus firmer springs create the perfect balance
Our testers loved the cosy and cushioning feel of the DreamCloud, saying that it had the perfect balance between a soft ‘hugging’ top and a supportive base. One of our main testers did feel it was too soft overall, although they also admitted that their preference is for a mattress only slightly softer than a rock. Goes to show how subjective this is.
During the review period, we found the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid to have the perfect firmness for back and stomach sleepers, providing enough gentle sinkage to support and contour the body, while gently relieving pressure points. The layer of pocket springs underneath the foam layers stops you from sinking too far in.
We did feel that the Luxury Hybrid wasn’t quite as supportive for side sleepers, as the softer ‘hug’ of the memory foam didn’t keep the shoulders and hips as well aligned as needed. But as with any mattress, body weight makes a difference. Our testers were all of a light or medium build and we did feel that the bed might have too much give for heavier sleepers over 16 or 17 stone, perhaps.
We found the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid slightly softer overall than some other hybrids on the market that we have tested, yet it still provided a great level of support and comfort from the first night.
We had a hot sleeper on our review panel and a cold sleeper, among others who had no obvious temperature preference. Our hot sleeper felt cool throughout the night, whilst our cold sleeper felt that the Luxury Hybrid worked wonderfully with an electric blanket. Overall, temperature regulation on the DreamCloud mattress is excellent.
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: Performance
- Quick to spring back into shape after being slept on
- Very minimal motion transfer - good news for couples
- Excellent edge support - as comfortable to sit on as to lie on
We tested the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid in a double size for around five weeks before writing this review, so two weeks longer than the recommended three week period wherein your body gets used to a new bed. We tested it in all major areas of performance, rating it on pressure relief, motion isolation, edge support, cooling and ease of set up.
Durability is hard to comment on for such a short review time, but we were highly impressed with the quality of the materials used in the Luxury Hybrid and encouraged by how well it sprang back into shape after being slept on. The DreamCloud is a relatively new product in the UK so there aren’t as many user reviews on it yet, although we have analysed those available to us (see below).
Set-up
Score: 4 out of 5
Set-up is the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid’s weakest point. Although we were testing a standard double, the mattress still felt heavy in its box and was a two-person job to carry upstairs. The handles in the box also collapsed and tore when we picked it up (we’ve often thought that handles in the interior vacuum pack would work far better). However, once out of the box, the DreamCloud was much lighter and easy to lift onto a bed single-handedly.
Overall though, a bed-in-a-box is still considerably easier to manoeuvre than one that arrives flat. There was a lot of packaging, but this meant our DreamCloud was well protected during delivery.
The manufacturer recommends leaving the Luxury Hybrid for at least five hours before sleeping on it, but we noticed that it inflated far quicker. As with most boxed mattresses, complete expansion can take a few days - in our Nectar Memory Foam Mattress review we noticed that it took up to 72 hours.
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid can also be placed directly on a bed base from its packaging. Our test mattress arrived directly at our front door, although the delivery team did take it into a specific room when asked. For an extra £35 you can also have your old one removed (read our guide on how to dispose of a mattress for other options). Remember as well that the DreamCloud is 28cm deep, so make sure your existing bed base can cope with this depth. If not, the brand sells a range of bed bases and frames, with prices from £334 at DreamCloud (opens in new tab).
Off-gassing
Score: 4 out of 5
When you buy a bed-in-a-box, a certain amount of off-gassing is to be expected and is nothing to worry about (just open a window until it passes). DreamCloud’s website suggests that there will be minimal off-gassing with the Luxury Hybrid and we can confirm this is true. Upon unboxing there was a faint whiff of fresh foam, but this dissipated within 15 minutes.
Rest assured, these smells come from new foams being vacuum packed and do not come from any chemicals. The DreamCloud mattress is made from CertiPUR approved foams that are made without mercury, lead and other heavy metals, carcinogenic chemicals and phthalates. This makes the DreamCloud a healthy sleeping surface.
If you’re interested in a bed made with certified organic materials, also take a look at our guide to the best organic mattresses for natural sleep.
- Read more: What is mattress off-gassing?
Pressure relief
Score: 4 out of 5
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is rated as a 6.5 out of 10, a medium firmness. When testing sinkage with a 20kg weight in the middle of the bed, the mattress sank by a fraction under 5 inches. This is around what we would expect from a hybrid, although there is a little more sinkage with the DreamCloud compared to some other brands.
What was impressive was how the Luxury Hybrid didn’t sink any further when the same weight was placed at the edge of the bed - the DreamCloud really does have excellent edge support.
Translating this to sleep, the gentle ‘hug’ and sinkage of the Luxury Hybrid provides excellent support for back and stomach sleepers. We woke with no aches or pains and our spine felt supported. Although the layer of memory foam is soft and plush, it doesn’t sink enough to make it uncomfortable to lie on your front – your head is still supported and doesn’t sink too far in. However, our main testers were back and combination sleepers, so these were the positions that received the most testing.
If you want an alternative in terms of good all-round pressure relief in a similar format to the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid, take a look at the Simba Hybrid Pro (priced from £1,089 at Simba Sleep (opens in new tab)).
Motion transfer
Score: 4.5 out of 5
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is a particularly good choice for couples as there is minimal motion transfer, even if you’re sleeping right up to the edge of the bed. The high-quality foam combined with pocket springs mean that movement is absorbed quickly, causing minimal disruption to your co-sleeper.
We tested the motion transfer of the DreamCloud with a series of drop tests by placing an empty wine glass on the bed and dropping a 6kg weight on the mattress at various distance intervals from the glass. The wine glass only started to wobble when we dropped the weight 10 inches from the glass and didn’t fall over until the weight was a mere 5 inches away.
We also found that there was little disturbance from an actual partner overnight, even when one of our testers was a restless sleeper who changed position a lot.
Temperature regulation
Score: 4.5 out of 5
We tested the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress with a winter duvet (tog rating 10.5) and a thick, faux fur throw. One side of the bed also had an electric blanket turned on for the cold sleeper on our testing panel, who reported being snug and comfortable all night without overheating. Our other main tester generally sleeps very hot but reported that they maintained a comfortable temperature through the night.
This is largely down to the DreamCloud’s combination of a cooling cover and a layer of gel memory foam. The gel in the memory foam is enough on its own to stop the overheating often associated with traditional memory foam. But the quilted cover also promotes airflow, helping to maintain a cool temperature and wick moisture away from your body.
Edge support
Score: 4.5 out of 5
We tested the edge support of the DreamCloud mattress using a 20kg weight, as well as a few members of our review panel. As we’ve already mentioned, the DreamCloud’s edge support is excellent thanks to the ActivEdge pocket springs that go right across the mattress.
Whilst the edge of the mattress didn’t sink any further than the centre with our weight, we did notice it compressing in a slightly different way and forming a small fold under the weight. This actually helped to keep the weight stable, with no danger of it rolling off the bed.
Sitting on the edge was extremely comfortable for both light and medium weight testers, with one using the mattress as an alternative to a chair. Sleeping right on the edge of the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is just as comfortable as sleeping further towards the middle, and at no point did we feel as though we might roll off.
Durability
Score: 4.5 out of 5
After only five weeks of testing the DreamCloud mattress, we can’t say with 100% certainty how it will perform in the years to come. However, based on our experiences so far, we can make an educated guess.
When pressed, the foam on the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid springs back into shape remarkably quickly. This demonstrates the support and the quality of the foam. It’s a similar story in the morning after a full night’s sleep supporting two people. Once you’re out of bed, the Luxury Hybrid regains its shape quickly, indicating that this mattress is well-built for long-term use.
DreamCloud advises rotating the Luxury Hybrid every three months and you need to follow this advice to make sure the Forever Warranty remains valid. For further guidance, read our feature answering, how often should you rotate your mattress?
The only thing that we think will age badly is the cover if you don’t protect it properly, due to the fact it’s not removable or washable.
- Read more: how to clean a mattress
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid mattress: User reviews
As mentioned earlier, the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is a fairly new addition to the UK shores and, as such, there aren’t a huge number of user reviews for it yet. Of the 410 reviews on DreamCloud’s website, the average rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars, with the vast majority of reviewers awarding the hybrid 5 out of 5.
Customers frequently describe the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid as “snugly and comfortable”, saying they’ve had the “best night’s sleep ever”. Other reviewers focus on pain relief: “No aches in my lower back”, and, “I have suffered from lower back pain for years but I’m now getting a decent sleep for the first time in years.”
Although reviews are mainly positive, there are some negative opinions expressed as well. However, these are mainly to do with delivery and return issues – it would seem that there have been issues with delivery on some orders, although it’s unclear how many of these are down to shipping problems caused by the pandemic.
In addition, a few sleepers seemed to find the DreamCloud too hard, which is surprising as all our testers found it to be softer compared to similar hybrids. Again though, everybody is different and one mattress will not suit every single sleeper - that’s simply impossible.
Should you buy the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid?
The DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid is an excellent choice for back, stomach and combination sleepers. Made from non-toxic materials and being completely carbon neutral, it’s also an eco-friendly option. The mattress offers superior pressure relief for the above sleeping styles and enabled our testers to bounce out of bed free from aches and pains.
Heavier sleepers of 16 or 17 stone plus and side sleepers may find the DreamCloud too soft for adequate support at pressure points. Overall, we felt that the DreamCloud was a slightly softer hybrid than some of its competitors. If you enjoy the ‘hug’ of memory foam, this is an excellent choice and the pocket springs, although feeling slightly softer than other brands, still offer a surprising amount of support.
Side sleepers may also want to consider the Simba Hybrid Pro, with its double layer of Aerocoil springs bringing superior body support. Not a fan of memory foam and want a bouncier bed? The Sealy Teramo Latex 1400 combines pocket springs with a latex layer for a responsive feel.
Overall we really enjoyed sleeping on the DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid and were pleasantly surprised by the level of support and comfort it offers. And with a 365-night trial period and Forever Warranty, you have plenty of time to try it out before fully committing.
DreamCloud also makes a range of bedding, including pillows, bed sheets, mattress covers and snug duvets for cosier sleeping. But ultimately, the Luxury Hybrid is the star of the DreamCloud show, and we can see why.
Read more:
- Saatva Classic mattress review: hotel luxury for less
- Otty mattress discounts and sales: the best offers
- Sleep calmer with the best weighted blankets
- Helix Midnight mattress review: the ultimate for side sleepers
- Nectar mattress sales and deals: what to shop
