Softness, engineered — beds and chairs from our Bristol workshop
Notes from the workshop
The Sleep Journal
We spend our days thinking about foam and nights testing it. Occasionally
we write things down. Everything here is free advice, whether or not you ever buy from us.
Seven small habits that beat any mattress upgrade
By the Onmin workshop ·
We sell mattresses, so you would expect this article to end with "buy our mattress".
It does not. A £300 mattress slept on well beats a £1,000 mattress slept on badly, every
time. Here is the order we would fix things:
Same wake time, seven days. The body clocks its sleep from when you
get up, not when you go to bed. A consistent 7:00 alarm — weekend included — does more
than any supplement on the market.
Light before screens. Ten minutes of daylight on your face within an
hour of waking sets the clock's anchor. A walk to the corner shop counts.
Caffeine has a curfew. It lingers for six to eight hours. If you
sleep at 23:00, the last coffee at 15:00 is not puritanism, it is arithmetic.
The bed is for two things. Not scrolling, not email. Your brain
learns locations as quickly as a dog learns commands.
Cool, dark, quiet — in that order. Body temperature has to drop for
sleep to deepen. A window cracked in winter is worth more than a fancy duvet.
Alcohol is not a sleep aid. It shortens the time to fall asleep and
then saws the second half of the night to pieces.
Give it three weeks. Any new mattress feels odd for ten to twenty
nights. Judge a bed on night twenty-one, not night two.
If all seven are in place and sleep still hurts, that is a GP conversation, not a
shopping one.
How firm is firm enough?
By the Onmin workshop ·
Firmness is the most misunderstood word in our trade. A mattress is not "firm" the way
a table is firm; it is a surface that lets some parts of you sink and holds others up.
The right question is: which parts of you, and how far?
Side sleepers need the shoulder and hip to sink far enough that the
spine stays straight when viewed from behind. Too firm, and the body bows around the
shoulder; too soft, and the spine collapses at the hip. This is why we describe the
Cloudform as "medium" — for most side sleepers under 110 kg, medium is the number
that keeps the spine honest.
Back and stomach sleepers need resistance at the hip and chest so the
heaviest parts do not win. Firm-to-medium-firm is usual; the Deeprest Hybrid was tuned
for exactly this group.
Body weight moves everything. The same surface feels firmer to a
60 kg sleeper than to a 100 kg one, because the lighter sleeper sinks less. Our
rule of thumb: under 70 kg, go one step softer than feels "right" in a five-minute
shop test; over 100 kg, one step firmer.
The five-minute test lies. In a showroom you lie down alert, on your
back, for minutes. At home you sleep for hours, mostly on your side, unconscious. Lie on
your actual preferred position, breathe out fully, and ask a partner to sight along your
spine — or take a photo of your back from behind. And that is precisely why every Onmin
mattress carries the sixty-night exchange: the honest test takes weeks, not minutes.
Your first ergonomic week: setting up the Wingback
By the Onmin workshop ·
The Wingback arrives with every adjustment set to its middle position, which is right
for almost nobody and a fine place to start. Plan to spend your first week adjusting one
thing per day — change everything at once and you will never know what helped.
Day one — seat height. Elbows at roughly 90° with your hands on the
keyboard; feet flat, or on a footrest if the desk is tall. This is the one adjustment
everything else depends on.
Day two — seat depth. Slide the pan until there are two to three
fingers of space behind your knee. A pan that bites the knee cuts circulation; one that
is too long makes you slouch to reach the backrest.
Day three — lumbar. Find your natural lumbar curve with your hands,
then move the pad to meet it. The pad should touch, not shove.
Day four — arms. Set them just below elbow height, close to your
body. Arms are for supporting forearms while typing, not for resting whole elbows while
you read.
Day five — back tension. Recline should feel like leaning on a
person, not falling into a hammock. One notch at a time until the return force holds
you without pushing.
Then leave it alone for a fortnight. Ergonomics is not a pose; it is the setup that
lets your body forget the chair exists. If something still nags after two weeks, write to
[email protected] with your height and what aches — we will tell you, honestly,
whether an adjustment or a different chair is the answer.
