Emma Premium mattress review – tried and tested

Looking for a mattress that will improve your sleep for good? This Emma Premium Mattress review is a deep dive into what makes the most advanced offering from this brand one of the best mattresses out there, after testing it out for myself at home. 

Though the price may seem initially daunting, you can almost always find Emma Sleep mattresses on sale. For your money, the Emma Premium promises to deliver a breathable, pressure-relieving mattress, that has built-in support for your entire body. It's a medium-firm mattress, like the Emma Original, but it has a longer list of sleep-boosting features and five layers as opposed to three. It utilises both memory foam and pocket springs, where the Original is solely memory foam. 

Finding the right mattress to change your sleep quality can be a real revelation, which is why I put the Emma Premium to the test for several months to see if it lived up to the hype. Here's how I got on. 

Emma Premium Mattress review: the details

• Type: Hybrid
• Construction materials: Pocket springs, airgocell foam, halo memory foam, high-resiliency foam
• Number of springs: 2000
• Memory foam: Yes
• Sizes: Single, Small Double, Double, King, Super King
• Comfort level: Firm (6.5/10 firmness, according to Emma Sleep)
• Height: 25cm
• Side handles: Yes
• Manufacturer sleep trial: 200 nights 
• Manufacturer warranty/guarantee: 10 years

Emma Premium mattress review: what the brand says

The tagline for the Emma Premium is 'the best of both worlds'- it's a mattress that should be able to mould to your body with memory foam whilst also providing breathability thanks to tall pocket springs. 

This combination is designed, in theory, to balance out pressure disparities and create what the brand feel is one of the signature benefits: precise support tailored to your body. Even though it's medium firm, Emma Sleep says it should be comfortable in any position and for any type of sleeper. 

With the Premium, Emma Sleep believes five body zones are targeted (head, shoulder, lumbar, pelvic and lower leg). That's one more zone than the Emma Hybrid, and two more than the Emma Original, which only targets three. 

All in all, this mattress is sold as the very best you can buy from the brand (excluding the Premium Plus, which just means you're picking up the brand's mattress topper too). It's the only mattress that features built-in temperature regulation and has the highest brand-awarded scores when it comes to body support, comfort and breathability. 

After using the chat function on the Emma Sleep website to find out more, a customer service agent told me that the Premium is most suitable for those who weigh between 50kg to 130kg, with extra support in the springs designed to make this mattress more inclusive for heavier people too. 

Emma Premium mattress review: Ideal Home testing

Molly Cleary

Sleep position: side and back Tension preference: medium firm Sleep problems: lower body aches Height & weight: 5ft 6 & 70kg (myself) 6ft 1 (my partner) Average sleep time: 8 hours Molly is the Ecommerce Editor for Ideal Home covering appliances and cleaning. For this Emma Premium mattress review, she's branching out into the world of sleep to see if this much-hyped product lives up to expectations. 

She prides herself on being able to sleep almost anywhere and through anything, though she has to have a solid eight hours a night to avoid crashing and burning the next day. She's a side sleeper usually but also sleeps on her back.  

By comparison, her partner sometimes has difficulty getting to sleep and more regularly gets up during the night, which is good for reasons of comparison, but proves a bit difficult when sharing a sleeping space. He's also a side sleeper who sometimes sleeps on his back. 

Unboxing and delivery 

My mattress was handily delivered across the threshold of my first-floor flat, so no lugging upstairs was needed. From there, I just needed to shuffle it into my bedroom by balancing the weight across the corners, which was easy enough to do, though I wouldn't have been able to lift it on my own. 

Emma Sleep is a mattress-in-a-box company, which means that they deliver your new mattress in a compacted form, and then you're left to unravel it and wait for it to get to its full size. I liked using the QR code on the top of the box to get directions rather than having to go through an instruction manual that you would probably throw away afterwards. 

There was minimal fuss with the packaging of this mattress- the rolled-up mattress comes in plastic, but I don't think there's really a way around this without potentially damaging the product.

My flat is only small, so I set the Emma Premium to unravel on top of my old mattress, just in case it wasn't ready to sleep on that night and I needed to defer back to my old mattress underneath. As you can see from the photos, you can notice a real difference in the mattress when first unfurled as opposed to when you return a few hours later. All of those creases were smoothed out, and the height of the mattress was much higher. 

The inflating process only took four or so hours, which is less than the five hours that the brand recommends you leave. That meant that by the evening I was fine to say my goodbyes to my old mattress.

The mattress is a good height at 25cm - it felt higher and more luxurious than any other mattress I've slept on straight out of the box, especially compared to my previous second-hand mattress, which had a traditional spring design and look. 

The top cover has handles, which came in very handy when shimmying the mattress onto my bed frame as it's pretty heavy. I got it into place with the help of my boyfriend, but I think I could've managed it on my own with a bit more of a struggle. The top cover the mattress comes in is also machine-washable, which is great. 

I didn't notice a smell with the Emma Premium either in the wrapping or out of it, but I am admittedly not at all sensitive to smells after a few bouts of Covid. If you're really sensitive to plastic-y scents then it's probably best to air the mattress out by opening up your closest windows.

Emma Premium Mattress: first impressions

I've never slept on a brand-new mattress before and neither had my boyfriend, so I was a little nervous as to how both of our sleep patterns would be during the adjustment period. 

Maybe because I was so conscious of it, I found the first few night's sleep on the Emma Premium a bit difficult. It was a lot firmer than our previous mattress, and my body seemed resistant to the change. Sometimes I get pain in my hips when I sleep on my side on a mattress that is too firm, which means I need to switch sides a lot in the night, and I did have this for the first few nights. 

I also found for the first few nights that it was a hotter sleep than I'd had previously (even though it was in the wintertime, and I'm usually a cold sleeper). 

Thankfully after the first week, the mattress felt different, and a lot more comfortable. Instead of feeling too firm, it felt supportive and cushioning, and the aches I had were gone. 

I found it easier on this mattress to get to sleep in one position too, rather than switching around in that first stage of sleep to find a good one. I also didn't feel overly hot after the first week which I was very glad about, as there's nothing worse than waking up feeling frazzled and a bit clammy.

How comfortable is the Emma Premium mattress?

After adjusting to it, sleeping on the Emma Premium was straightforwardly good, and the best I've had at home. One noticeable difference is that when my boyfriend now gets up in the night, I find my sleep is less disturbed. Emma Sleep says that's down to the motion-isolating properties within the six layers and I'm happy to believe it. These are my other thoughts after sleeping on the mattress for a good few months now:

Comfort: I was under the impression that firm or medium to firm mattresses are most suitable for back sleepers, and was worried I would find the Emma Premium uncomfortable as I slept on my side, and so does my boyfriend. 

Thankfully, the Emma Premium is really comfortable on my side as well as my back, and my boyfriend agrees. I've not woken up with any sleep-related aches or pains in all of these months, and I feel generally more restored after sleeping on the Emma Premium. 

I also think that's due to the help of a new Hybrid Bamboo Pillow (I know, I thought I'd really commit to good sleep) from Panda, which is the only pillow I ever want to sleep on from now on. Together the Emma Premium and the pillow make for a delightful night's sleep, and seeing as we only have one nice pillow between us, we've been thinking about investing in the Emma version to complete our set up. 

Motion transfer: There have been times since we've been sleeping on the Emma Premium that my partner has gotten up and gotten back into bed without me realising, which I didn't really think was possible before. I'm not a light sleeper by any stretch, but I just always thought that I'd be able to notice -so this impressed me a good deal.

I did a non-scientific but still impressive test with a glass of water, seeing how close I could get without tipping the glass. I came very close and the glass stayed upright, and from a bit further away, such as a sleeping distance away, there was a lot less impact.

Temperature regulation: After an initially hot period, I have found that I don't notice myself getting too warm any more at night, but I wouldn't say that the mattress is as cooling as it sounds. My boyfriend is a hot sleeper and finds he sometimes needs to stick his feet out of the duvet to regulate his warmth. 

The real test for us will be when London gets very hot in the summer. Our previous mattress was not up to the task and made us overheat even more during the 40-degree weather, so I'll be sure to update this review with my findings in the hotter months.

Final verdict: Is the Emma Premium worth the money?

Now that I've experienced what it can be like to sleep on a real top-quality mattress like this, it would be impossible to go back. A good night's sleep is pretty much guaranteed now that I sleep on the Emma Premium, and I'm confident thanks to the quality of materials that it'll stand the test of time too. It's also nice to have the 10-year guarantee in case anything goes wrong.

Issues that I accepted as a given with my previous mattress (motion transfer and sagging) are now non-existent, and that's considering that I find myself to be very easygoing when it comes to sleep anyway. If you have more pressing issues when it comes to comfort and disturbance, you'll probably feel the benefits even more acutely than I have. 

If I was to buy a mattress again, I'd definitely opt for Emma Sleep. The prices of the mattresses are a lot more reasonable in a sales period, and by taking advantage of nifty Emma Mattress discount codes. Plus, customer service is excellent. Any queries I had when writing this review were answered pretty much straight away by using the Emma chat function, so I'm confident that if you had issues, then you could get help pretty quickly.