Maybe it’s because we’re all working harder, or maybe it’s all that Tim Hortons coffee we’re downing, but suddenly getting a good night’s sleep appears to be an obsession across Canada. Walk into any good mattress store and you’ll see more models lined up in rows than anywhere outside the set of Deal or No Deal.

There are the classic innerspring versions, of course, which have cores of steel coils and cost you $500 and up. Then there are space-age foam mattresses that promise to mould to your precise body shape ($4,200 for the queen-size EuroBed model from Tempur-Pedic). Finally, there are the true luxe models, such as the $22,000 Hastens 2000T, stuffed with horse hair and so heavy that it requires four strong men to hoist the bed up a flight of stairs.

Which of these options is best? That’s where things get tricky. Picking out a mattress is a matter of taste — and just to make things complicated, there’s no guarantee that who you sleep with will share your taste in what you sleep on. Since a good mattress will last you eight to 10 years, it pays to devote several hours to trying out options. The best time to do so is on a weekday afternoon when showrooms are less crowded. Remove any heavy coats, shoes or sweaters before lying down. Most important, bring your partner with you to make sure you both get a comfortable fit. Then apply these tips:

Ignore brand names

Mattress shops brag about offering the lowest prices and will challenge you to compare deals. The truth is that they can do so with confidence because mattress makers have an annoying habit of renaming identical products for different retailers. This, of course, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for you to see how one store’s price stacks up against another’s. Maybe one chain’s Wot-A-Sleeper is identical to another chain’s ZZZZZ-King — but you never know for sure.

The one fact that you can take to the bank is that most innerspring mattresses have similar innards. The steel coils that give them their bounce nearly all come from a single company — Leggett & Platt Inc. of Carthage, Mo. “This is especially true in Canada,” says Margery Walker, executive director of American Innerspring Manufacturers, a trade group based in Memphis, Tenn., that represents both Canadian and North American manufacturers of innerspring mattresses. “About 90% of mattress coils are made by Leggett & Platt.”

Since most mattresses use identical coils, you might as well ignore brand names. They’re meaningless. And while we’re at it, so is most of the nattering about coil counts and wire gauges. The technical specs are designed to impress consumers with a mattress’s heavy-duty construction, but any mattress from a reputable manufacturer should give you at least a decade of good service. Far more important than a coil count is how the mattress feels to you.

Know your options

Unless you’re one of those poor souls who is still listening to the Bee Gees and yearning for a water bed, you have three choices when it comes to the type of mattress you’ll buy. The first is the classic innerspring design from makers such as Serta and Sealy. This design still makes up close to 85% of mattress sales and is usually the cheapest option.

A second choice is an air chamber mattress from makers such as Select Comfort. Instead of steel coils, these mattresses use internal air chambers to create firmness and bounce. Some models allow you to select a different firmness for each half of the bed through handheld remote control units. They’re very high tech and not a bad choice if you and your sleeping partner have radically different preferences when it comes to firmness.