Cuddling Made Easy

This gem has made the rounds online, so forgive me if you’ve seen it before. But the Love Mattress is clever enough to deserve another look. Anyone who’s tried to fall asleep cuddling knows the routine: a few lovely minutes followed by a numb arm and a desperate search for somewhere to put it.

Industrial designer Mehdi Mojtabavi came up with a solution that looks suspiciously like a mattress sliced into giant pieces of toast. The center remains solid, while foam modules at the head and foot flex apart to accommodate an arm, elbow, shoulder, or foot. That gives the unlucky limb somewhere to go without asking your partner to relocate to the other side of the bed.

The slat-like sections are meant to separate just enough for you to tuck an arm beneath your partner while keeping the rest of the sleeping surface supportive. Mojtabavi also considered people who sleep on their stomachs: the gaps near the foot of the bed offer a place for toes to settle rather than bend awkwardly against the mattress.

In the design’s later development, individual modules offered softer and firmer sides, and specially fitted sheets addressed the obvious question of how you’re supposed to make a bed full of gaps. It’s a thoughtful answer to a problem that’s usually solved with a shrug and some vigorous arm-shaking.

From Concept Bed to Actual Mattress

The Love Mattress first drew attention in 2007, when Mojtabavi’s concept won a Red Dot design award. It was also a finalist in the Industrial Designers Society of America’s 2008 awards. For years, though, the idea seemed destined to remain a very cuddly concept. As NPR reported in 2013, an effort to raise $75,000 through crowdfunding hadn’t met its goal, and Mojtabavi was still looking for a way to bring the mattress into production.

There was eventually a happy ending for the design itself. In 2014, the first limited run of 50 Cuddle Mattresses, as the product came to be known, sold out after being assembled in Portland. By 2016, the mattress was being offered for about $1,300. That’s considerably more than a bottle of massage oil, but at least it was a real bed and not another Internet invention that vanished after the first round of headlines.

We couldn’t confirm a current place to purchase the original Love Mattress, so consider this an appreciation of an unusually practical bit of design rather than a shopping tip. Still, there’s something charming about an invention that asks one simple question: Why should a little cuddling require sacrificing all feeling in your arm?