Coming to terms with visco-elastic foam
David Perry -- Furniture Today, July 26, 2004
High Point — It's becoming a household word, but visco-elastic foam still is a strange-sounding product to some in the home furnishings industry.
Everyone has heard of Tempur-Pedic, the fast-growing producer that markets beds and pillows cushioned with its proprietary Tempur material. That material is a visco-elastic foam.
It's that adjective that can throw the home furnishings retailer for a loop.
Here's what visco-elastic means:
-
Visco means the foam is resistant to a change of shape.
-
Elastic means the foam is able to return to its original shape after it is forced to change.
Ordinary foam features irregular cell shapes that simply compress under weight, according to Tempur-Pedic. But visco-elastic foam is comprised of billions of spherical, open cells. Those cells sense a sleeper's body temperature and weight and then shift and reorganize their position to conform to the exact body shape.
Visco-elastic foam becomes softer in warmer areas — where your body is making the most contact with the mattress surface — and remains firmer in the cooler areas, where less body contact is being made, Tempur-Pedic says.
"Imagine a mattress that's firm where you need it and soft where you want it," the company says in its promotional materials. "It's like having a mattress custom designed to fit your body."
Visco-elastic foam is just one term for that type of foam. It also is increasingly being called memory foam, which reflects the fact that it holds its shape for a moment before it returns to its original shape. Tempur-Pedic refers to its beds on occasion as Swedish mattresses, a nod to the country that perfected visco-elastic foam for the consumer marketplace.
