The Best Futon Brands

First, which futon are you buying

The two halves of this market barely overlap, and the brands that are good at one are absent from the other.

If you have a futon frame, you are shopping the first row and the question is depth - the answer is in how thick a futon mattress should be. If you do not, you are shopping the second row and the question is the open bed size, which most of those brands do not publish.

Royal Sleep Products: the only brand making a real mattress

Ten inches of pocket coils, CertiPUR-US certified memory foam and cotton batting, in a full at 75 by 54 inches, flippable, hand-tufted, made in North America, 39 lb. That is the closest a drop-in futon mattress gets to a bedroom mattress, and every clause of it is a statement the maker has published rather than implied.

Pocket coils are the specification that matters. A bonded or continuous coil unit transmits movement across the whole surface; pocketed coils move independently, which is why the construction is standard in bedroom mattresses and rare in futons. Combined with the flippable build, this is the only futon mattress we cover that is plausibly a nightly bed rather than a guest surface - the full case is in the best futon mattresses for everyday sleeping.

The honest limit is the one the depth creates. Ten inches is a lot of mattress to ask a folding frame to bi-fold over, and many metal futon frames top out at eight - so check the frame’s maximum before ordering, because this is a mattress that can be the right choice and still not close. It is also spot clean only, and the brand publishes no weight capacity. The frame-side constraints are set out in futon frame types explained.

MAXYOYO and Milliard: the brands built around storage

Two brands make futons whose whole argument is that they disappear, and both are honest about what that costs.

MAXYOYO makes the traditional article: a 4-inch quilted Japanese floor futon, 80 by 54 inches in full, that weighs 13 lb and rolls into the storage bag it ships in. Polyester layers over a high-density base support foam, with a dustproof cover included. The brand is unusually straight about the maintenance: it states that the futon has to be aired in the sun or it holds moisture, which is exactly how the format is used in Japan and exactly what Western buyers do not expect. Four inches on a hard floor is four inches - side sleepers will feel it. The full treatment is in the best Japanese floor futons.

Milliard makes folding foam, and it makes two different products that get confused. The 6-inch tri-fold is 78 by 38 inches flat in twin XL and folds to roughly a third of its length in seconds - the closet guest bed. The 4.5-inch sleeper sofa replacement is 73 by 52 inches, which is a sofa-bed full rather than a bedroom full, built as 1.5 inches of soft memory foam over a 3-inch firm base in a waterproof washable cover.

Milliard’s weakness is disclosure rather than construction: it publishes no weight capacity on either, and no folded dimensions for the tri-fold, which is the figure you need to know whether it fits the closet. And the two fold lines are findable through six inches of foam if you sleep on your side.

Serta and Best Choice Products: the convertible sofa side

On the frame side of the market the two brands worth naming are good at opposite things.

Serta is the only brand in our entire registry whose listings name the frame as solid hardwood rather than leaving it as “wood”, and the only one that says anything about the pinch point - both the Rane and the Terrell state FingerGuard pinch-point protection on the three-position back. The Rane is 66.1 by 33.1 by 29.5 inches and 55 lb, the smallest and lightest convertible we cover; the Terrell is the same chassis with Dream Coils under the foam. Both publish no weight capacity and no open bed size, and the warranty is one year.

Best Choice Products is the opposite: three convertibles in our registry and all three publish a capacity - 500 lb, 500 lb and 550 lb - which no other brand here does consistently. The mid-century linen model is 65 by 37.5 by 29.9 inches, 66 lb, with three back positions, removable armrests and a pull-down armrest holding two drinks. None of the three publishes any open dimension at all, and at 29.9 inches the back is low enough that a taller person gets no shoulder support sitting up.

HALLYBEE deserves the honourable mention it gets on the sofa side of the site, because it publishes the number both of the above withhold: an 85 by 38.2 by 23.8 inch open bed from a 76.4 by 31.5 inch sofa, with no tools needed to assemble. The brand comparison in full is in the best sleeper sofa brands.

Judging a futon brand we have not covered

Four questions, and they work on any listing in either half of the market.

What is inside it? “Pocket coils and CertiPUR-US foam” is a specification. “Premium comfort filling” is not. On a drop-in mattress, the fill is the entire product.

What depth, and will it fold? A futon mattress has to close with the frame. Depth is the single most common mismatch in this category, and a maker who publishes the depth but not whether it folds has answered the easier half.

What are the real dimensions? Futon sizing does not follow bedroom sizing reliably - MAXYOYO’s full is 80 inches long where Royal Sleep’s is 75, and Milliard’s sofa-bed full is 73 by 52 rather than 75 by 54. Check inches, not size names. The documented sizes are in futon mattress sizes.

Is there a washable cover? A futon gets more use as seating than as a bed, and a mattress that is spot clean only - the Royal Sleep Products one is - is a mattress that needs a separate cover you have not budgeted for.