- 365-night sleep trial, 15-year warranty, and free bedding bundle with purchase
- Upgraded cooling
- Great motion isolation
Best Mattress for Side Sleepers
If you’re a side sleeper, the right mattress should cushion your shoulders and hips while keeping your spine properly aligned to reduce back pain, says Dr. Brianna. A mattress that’s too firm can create painful pressure points, while one that’s too soft may allow your hips to sink too deeply, leading to poor spinal alignment and morning stiffness.
After evaluating more than 120 mattresses using third-party engineering testing (commissioned by us), we selected the Douglas Alpine mattress as our top choice for the best mattress for side sleepers in Canada. It earned a high overall rating of 9.8/10 because it combines excellent pressure relief, balanced medium-firm support, advanced cooling features, and strong motion isolation, making it a great fit for most side sleepers.
Whether you’re looking to relieve shoulder or hip pressure, sleep cooler, or simply wake up more comfortably, this guide will help you compare the best mattresses for side sleepers and choose the one that best fits your needs.
Douglas Alpine is our pick for the best mattress for side sleepers in Canada, according to our scoring methodology that factors in performance results from third-party APEGA-certified engineers (commissioned by us).
By providing cushioning to relieve pressure around the shoulders and hips, while maintaining the support needed to help keep your spine aligned throughout the night, Douglas Alpine provides the balance most side sleepers need.
Beyond its sleep performance, Douglas Alpine also comes with a 365-night sleep trial, a 15-year warranty, and a free bedding bundle with purchase, helping reduce the risk of buying a mattress online.
When you sleep on your side, your shoulders and hips take on most of your weight, which can lead to morning stiffness. At Mattress-Reviews.com, we evaluated the cushioning, spinal alignment, and temperature control of Canada’s leading mattresses so you can confidently choose one that lets you rest comfortably all night long. Below are our top 4 recommendations for the best mattresses for side sleepers in Canada.
Side sleeping, also known as a lateral recumbent position, is one of the most common sleeping positions. Many sleep and medical experts recommend side sleeping with a proper mattress and pillow support to help alleviate symptoms of sleep apnea and acid reflux, and to provide greater comfort during pregnancy.
As Dr. Brianna explains, “left-side sleeping is effective for digestion concerns, as it uses gravity and the stomach’s larger surface area to help prevent acid reflux. Side sleeping is also effective for pregnancy to optimize blood flow, circulation and comfort.“
However, sleeping on your side also places more pressure on your shoulders and hips than other sleeping positions, making your choice of mattress especially important.
To sleep comfortably on your side, your mattress needs to do three things well:
Douglas Alpine performed well across all three areas, combining pressure-relieving cooling foam that’s enhanced with Polar® phase-change material with a balanced medium-firm feel that supports healthy spinal alignment while helping reduce heat buildup. If you often wake up sweaty or toss and turn from the heat, the Octave Mirage is built to help with even more advanced cooling.
If you want to see how these mattresses performed in third-party testing, scroll down to explore our detailed reviews for each top pick.
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Our Top Pick For a Good Night’s Sleep
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Upgraded Canadian Hybrid Mattress
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Canada’s Best Affordable Mattress
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All-Foam Mattress with Lots of Bounce
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Foam Mattress From Wayfair
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In-Store Only Canadian Foam Mattress
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Memory Foam with Limited Cooling Features
Mattresses come in a variety of types, each offering different benefits depending on your sleep preferences and budget. Side sleeping can place most of your body weight on your hips and shoulders, so you should find a mattress that distributes it effectively. Here’s a quick look at the best options for side sleepers:
Foam mattresses usually come in poly foam or memory foam varieties and are excellent at pressure relief. Memory foam and high-quality polyfoam contour closely to your shoulders and hips, helping distribute body weight more evenly and reduce pressure that can lead to soreness or numbness.
For most side sleepers, a medium-firm foam mattress like Douglas Alpine is ideal. It offers an excellent balance of pressure relief, spinal support, and cooling, all at an accessible price of $999 for a queen size, making it suitable for a wide range of side sleepers.
Hybrid mattresses combine pressure-relieving foam comfort layers with a supportive coil system, giving you a more responsive feel while still cushioning your pressure points.
If you prefer the feel of a traditional innerspring mattress with more bounce and stronger edge support, Logan & Cove Frontier is our top hybrid recommendation, which combines coils with foam layers to deliver the right balance of support and softness without being overly firm. At $1,499 for a queen, its zoned pocket coil system provides targeted support while maintaining excellent pressure relief around the shoulders and hips.
Your sleeping position is only one part of choosing the right mattress. Here are a few other factors that can influence which option is best for you.
We use third-party engineers (commissioned by us) to test every mattress using a standardized process in a controlled environment to evaluate key performance areas like firmness, edge support, motion isolation, and bounce. Their APEGA-stamped engineering report is publicly available, and all mattresses are scored on a 10-point scale against others in the same category, such as foam or hybrid models.
We also assess cooling features based on a mattress’s materials, construction, cover technologies, and cooling infusions. This category-specific approach helps ensure fair, accurate comparisons so you can better understand how each mattress performs relative to similar options.
These third-party engineers apply a consistent testing process to every mattress using a detailed framework. Every mattress is tested the same way, whether it’s foam or hybrid. Because these types perform differently, we rate them on separate scales to ensure the scores are fair and meaningful.
We believe independent testing is essential to producing reliable and meaningful comparisons. That's why all test results are reviewed and signed off by an APEGA-certified engineer, operating under a strict code of ethics.
We use the testing results and over 40 criteria to build our scoring methodology.
Tests and reviews without this level of professional oversight may be more prone to errors and unintended bias.
Douglas Alpine is the best mattress for side sleepers, according to third-party engineer testing that we commissioned.
Alpine is a combination foam mattress designed to give side sleepers proper pressure relief and spinal alignment. It’s also built with cooling materials that help regulate temperature while you sleep, including cooling gel foam and phase-change material.
Alpine’s foam layers contour to the body for cushioning comfort and it has a sturdy base for lower back support. It has an above-average edge support score (6.8/10) and a great motion isolation score 8.5/10. At only $999 for a queen-size, Alpine also comes with one of the longest sleep trials in Canada (365 nights), and a 15-year warranty.
Both can be excellent choices. A foam mattress is usually the better option if your priority is maximum pressure relief and motion isolation. A hybrid mattress is often better if you prefer a more responsive feel with stronger edge support.
For most side sleepers, Douglas Alpine is our top pick as the best foam option, and Logan & Cove Frontier is our best hybrid pick.
A medium-firm mattress is ideal for most side sleepers. If you’re a lighter-weight person (e.g., you weigh less than 130 lbs and are average height), you might like something a bit softer (more on the medium side), which lets you sink in a bit more and eases those pressure points.
Heavier sleepers, on the other hand, often benefit from a bit more firmness and responsiveness.
Logan & Cove Frontier is our choice of the best mattress for heavy side sleepers. It combines layers of foam with up to 1,200 individually wrapped pocket coils in a 3-zone support system. This design helps provide targeted pressure relief and promote good spinal alignment. Hybrid mattresses are a good option for heavy sleepers, as they include a robust coil support base that enhances durability, since coils are resistant to sagging and pressure than traditional foam.
The Frontier mattress has cooling gel and open-cell foams, a 365-night sleep trial, and a 15-year warranty. At $1,499 for a queen, it's priced lower than many other hybrids with similar features.
Douglas Alpine is our top pick for the best mattress for side sleepers in Canada, and costs just $999 for a queen-size. For that price, you get a medium-firm feel, great motion isolation, and advanced cooling features like gel foam and phase-change material. Alpine also comes with a 365-night sleep trial, a 15-year warranty, and a free bedding bundle with your purchase, which includes a cotton sheet set, a duvet cover, a down alternative duvet, pillow(s), pillow protector(s), and a mattress protector.
Yes, the wrong mattress can cause or worsen shoulder and hip pain. A mattress that’s too firm may create excessive pressure around your shoulders and hips, while one that's too soft may allow your body to sink too deeply, placing your spine out of alignment. If you regularly wake up with shoulder or hip discomfort, switching to a mattress with better pressure relief and support may improve your comfort.
If you have lower back pain, we recommend Octave Mirage. This mattress is on the softer end of medium-firm, and has features like pressure-relieving foams and zoned support. As Dr. Brianna notes, features like these will provide additional support to your spine and hips when you sleep on your side.
Octave also has aerated latex foam and premium Elastex® foam which are responsive foams which provide pressure relief without sinking too much, as they're durable. It also has CopperGel™ memory foam infused with phase change material which helps to contour the body and its pressure points, helping regulate the temperature of the mattress so you can stay cool at night. You can buy a queen-size Octave Mirage for just $1,299.
READ MORE: Best Mattress for Back Pain
Dr. Brianna notes that for the average sleeper with minimum pain complaints, it likely won't matter which side you sleep on. Whether you sleep on your left or right side, if you're sleeping on a suitable mattress, pressure points will be relieved and your spine should be aligned with good sleeping posture.
Pregnant people and those with heartburn or acid reflux issues will find that sleeping on their left side is beneficial. However, left-sided sleeping may contribute to shortness of breath for those with heart issues, in which case, right-sided sleeping may be a safer and more comfortable option.
The best way to sleep on your side is to use a supportive pillow for your head and neck, a pillow between your legs, and a supportive mattress. A soft yet lofty pillow is best as it fills the gap between your shoulder and ear. A pillow between your legs helps reduce knee strain and maintain a neutral spine.
A supportive mattress, with a medium to medium-firm feel, like the Douglas Alpine, is ideal, as it needs to provide support while also being pressure-relieving.
Finding the right affordable mattress takes more than just testing it out. Keep these key factors in mind to get the best value without compromising on comfort or quality:
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Douglas mattresses are Canadian-made and award-winning, with a free bedding bundle, 365-night sleep trial, a 15-year warranty, and cooling gel foam for comfort.
The product details in each review reflect how the mattress performed at the time we purchased and tested it, as shown by the “Published” date.
Since brands can update their materials, pricing, or availability over time, we also note when the product was originally purchased, either directly in the article or on our disclaimer page, to maintain clarity and transparency.
If you see an “Updated” tag on a page with a more recent date than the published date, it simply means we’ve made editorial changes. It does not necessarily indicate any update to the mattress or its test data.
Finally, unless otherwise stated, any mention of where a mattress is made refers specifically to the product we received and tested.
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This article was written in partnership with Dr. Brianna Perruzza, a dual-licensed Chiropractor and Manual Osteopathic Practitioner dedicated to personalized, whole-body wellness. Holding a B.Sc. in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario and a Doctorate from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, she integrates spinal health, exercise, and nutrition to treat both acute and chronic conditions.
Driven by evidence-based practices and patient education, Dr. Perruzza empowers individuals to overcome injury and enhance their quality of life. She’s currently expanding her expertise by completing a degree in Osteopathy, further bridging the gap between chiropractic and osteopathic care to provide a comprehensive, integrative approach to health.
Cary, D., Briffa, K., & McKenna, L. (2019). Identifying relationships between sleep posture and non-specific spinal symptoms in adults: A scoping review. BMJ open, 9(6), e027633. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-027633
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