Futon vs Air Mattress

The published figures, side by side

Two rows deserve a second look. The air mattress is the deeper surface by ten inches, which is why people are often surprised that it is the less comfortable one - depth of air is not depth of support, because air transmits load across the whole bladder instead of resisting it where the load is. And the futon is the only one with a daytime job.

When the air mattress is the right answer

Three situations, and in all three it is not a compromise.

When there is no room for furniture. If the guest sleeps in a living room that has to be a living room, an 18-inch airbed that lives in a cupboard is the only product that leaves the room unchanged. Intex publishes 600 lb for the 18-inch queen and about four minutes to inflate with the built-in pump.

When guests are rare. Three or four nights a year does not justify a piece of furniture, and it does not expose the airbed’s weakness either, which is that pressure drifts over a long night and across a cold room.

When the guest is a child or a group. Two airbeds cost less than one futon and both go away afterwards.

The sofa-bed version of this argument, with the same Intex figures, is in sleeper sofa vs air mattress.

When the futon is the right answer

Once anyone is sleeping on it regularly, the futon wins and it is not close. An air mattress has no internal structure: a seam fails, a valve weeps, a cold night drops the pressure and the sleeper ends up on the floor. A pocket-coil futon mattress has independently encased coils in it and will be the same surface in year three as in week one.

The DHP 8-inch mattress is 75 by 54 by 8 inches - a standard full - with coils under foam and polyester layers. It drops into any standard full futon frame and bi-folds with it. 39 lb is the honest cost: stiff for the first dozen folds, and a light tube-steel frame will feel it.

And the futon has a second job. On a frame it is seating for 360 days of the year, which is the argument an airbed cannot answer at all. If the room needs a sofa more than it needs a bed, the field is the best futons for small spaces; whether a futon is a fair nightly bed is answered in is sleeping on a futon bad for you.

The option that splits the difference

There is a product that stores like an airbed and sleeps like a futon, and almost nobody in the American market shops for it: the Japanese floor futon. MAXYOYO’s padded floor mattress comes in 4, 4.5, 6 and 8-inch thicknesses, 80 inches long in every width, and it rolls up and goes in a closet.

At 8 inches it is as deep as the drop-in coil mattress, it has real foam structure rather than air, and it needs no frame, no pump and no electricity. What it does not do is sit at bed height - you are on the floor - and it is not seating. For an occasional guest in a room with a cupboard, it is frequently the best answer on this page.

The field is in the best Japanese floor futons, and the three different sizing systems these products use are untangled in futon mattress sizes.

The verdict

Pick the air mattress if the bed must disappear, guests are rare, and the room cannot give up any floor permanently. 18 inches of depth, 60 by 80 inches, 600 lb published, four minutes to inflate, and a bag in a cupboard the rest of the year.

Pick the futon if anyone sleeps there more than a few times a year, or if the room needs seating anyway. 8 inches of pocket coil at 75 by 54 inches does not deflate, does not need power, and earns its floor space every day rather than four nights a year.

Pick the floor futon if you want both. It rolls away like the airbed and has the structure of the futon, and the only thing you give up is bed height.

If this comparison is really about a sofa rather than a mattress, the two neighbouring decisions are futon vs sofa bed and futon vs mattress.