The ultimate symbol that you’ve “made it” used to be a mansion, or maybe a sports car. Now, there’s a curiously blue-checkered mattress floating around social media, rivaling these other vices for the top spot. It’s the Hästens mattress, a luxury buy that ranges from $10,000 to $600,000, that can only be sampled at select in person locations around the country.
You can find them in a few hotels, as well as “sleep spas,” as the company calls them, where you can try out the mattress that some claim feels like total weightlessness. Celebrities have jumped on board, as the value of a great night’s rest is the new fad diet. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Angelina Jolie have Hastens beds. (1) Swedish athlete Anna Magnusson made a post in 2019 about owning a Hastens (and noting that the best thing about being home after being away is sleeping in her own bed). And yes, we can’t forget about Drake, whose mattress is one of his favorite locations.
Architectural Digest elaborates: “Drake’s favorite spot in the house is his 3,200-square-foot master bedroom suite, with an additional 1,100 square feet of covered terraces. ‘The bedroom is where I come to decompress from the world at the end of the night and where I open my eyes to seize the day,’ he says. ‘The bed lets you float, the shower lets you escape and gather your thoughts, and the closet makes you want to talk to yourself while you’re getting dressed.’ As always, God is in the details. The bed and bed base, which weigh roughly one ton and cost more than many people’s entire homes, is from Rafauli’s new line for Hästens, called Grand Vividus.” (2)
Sleepopolis talked to Miami-based journalist Matthew Meltzer, a Miami-based travel journalist, who tried the mattress at a local store near him for this assignment with Matador Network.
“I don’t know what one expects a bazillion-dollar mattress to look like — was it going to be covered in gold leaf? But I don’t know, it just looks like a mattress. It didn’t look like it would be a hundred-whatever-thousand dollars, but it looks nice,” he says. The design is widely recognized for its blue and white checkered fabric, which was originally introduced in the 1970s. It was an “immediate hit” when it was first presented at Stockholm Furniture Fair in 1978, Country &Town House reports, where the pattern was a shocking change from the typical browns, greens, and oranges of the typical ‘70’s pallet, which is exactly what then-CEO Jack Ryde was going for. Since, the company has pushed to protect their checkered look, even disputing similar-looking products through legal disputes. Legal involvement has extended past the design as well, at times.
In 2021, the New York Post published an article about the Swedish mattress company’s controversial training processes, which were part of a lawsuit claiming that they used mind control tactics, grading employees based on “vibrations and frequencies,” for example. (3) Hastens disputed those claims. They’ve also been at the center of lawsuits around hypnotherapy, spiritual beliefs, sexist work culture, and wage disparities, the Daily Beast reports. (4)
Regardless of these oddities, the mattress itself is hard to compete with when it comes to ultimate comfort. Meltzer describes it as “floating a few inches under the water” as you sink into it, and he even dozed off during his five minute trial at The Sleep Spa in Miami, the U.S. franchise that sells the mattresses.
“You could tell the difference. At first, you’re like, this is good memory foam. But then it’s like when you bite into a really good piece of steak — at first you’re like, well it’s steak, but then you get a little bit more of the flavor,” he says. “Then you’re like this is fantastic. You start to feel your body sink into it, and it wraps around you, but not in that memory foam way where you know it’s memory foam. It’s very very cool…once you get in there, you can see why if I was Bruce Springsteen I’d have this brought out to me on tour.”
If you don’t live by one of The Sleep Spa’s locations, Kristofer Eriksson, Managing Director of the Hastens West Coast locations, says “we will always find a way.”
“We offer virtual consultations from our West Hollywood flagship sleep spa where we guide our clients to the correct Hastens model and firmness. We can also arrange for a complimentary hotel stay and plane tickets for a client that’s committed to Hastens for their sleep,” he says.
In spite of the celebrity following, and a cameo of the mattress in the Netflix show “Emily in Paris,” Eriksson says most of their clients are not what you would “normally consider wealthy.”
“We see that most of our clients just really care about their health in a holistic way where sleep obviously plays a large role. The American population has woken up to the fact that amazing sleep is one of the most important pillars of your health. Without great sleep you will never live your life to the fullest,” he adds. “About half of our clients utilize our 5 year, 0 percent interest financing program through Wells Fargo. They know that after five years the bed is paid off and they never have to pay for another mattress ever again.”
The Hastens website credits the “springy horsetail hair, cushioning flax, slow-growing pine, superior wool and long-fibre cotton.”
Eriksson explains that an investment like that starts at $10,000 for a queen, and $13,000 for a king. The mattresses are double-sided and handmade, contributing to the increased value over a conventional foam or latex option, he adds. “Most client’s invest somewhere around $25-80k in their sleep with us but a custom Hastens sleep instrument can however cost well over $600 thousand — like the famous Grand Vividus in the Viking size.”
Meltzer remembers the sales person similarly saying that you’d be surprised who buys the mattresses. “I think it’s kind of like buying a $100,000 car — there are people driving $100,000 cars that you wouldn’t expect to have a car that costs that much,” he says. “I did get the feeling it may be more common than you think… if you think about it you spend more time in your bed than your car.” He jokes that when he got home, his Serta mattress felt not too bad compared to dropping six figures, but then again, “You get what you pay for.”
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