Before Wright Bedding sold a single mattress, we ran a two-year sleep study, tracking real testers night after night with Jawbone UP sleep trackers, and built 27 prototypes of our first mattress. That's what the name means: the W1.27 is Wright mattress one, prototype 27. The headline result: testers averaged 51 more minutes of deep sleep per night on their Wright than on the mattress they'd been sleeping on before. This page is the story of that research and what it taught us about deep sleep.
Why start with a sleep study?
Our founder Dan Hauber came out of years in the mattress industry with a nagging problem: mattresses were designed around showroom impressions. You lie on a bed for 90 seconds under fluorescent lights and decide how you'll sleep for the next decade. Nobody was measuring what actually happened at night.
So when research began in 2012, we skipped the showroom entirely. We put Jawbone UP sleep trackers on real testers and recorded how they actually slept, night after night, for two years. Not how the mattress felt in a five-minute test. How much deep sleep people actually got, over months, on each version we built.
What did two years of sleep data show?
Two things mattered more than everything else for deep sleep.
Balance. The comfort-versus-support tradeoff isn't a preference question, it's a physics question. Too soft and your spine sags out of alignment; too hard and pressure points wake you up as you shift. The best deep sleep numbers came from the middle: enough contour to relieve pressure, enough support to hold posture. That's why both Wright mattresses are medium-firm, and why our testing found the W1.27 suits about 90% of sleepers.
Breathability. Temperature turned out to be a sleep killer that most mattress design ignored. When testers slept hot, deep sleep suffered, no matter how good the pressure relief was. That finding drove more of our engineering than anything else: the 3Below gel-infused foam, the crosshatch-ventilated layers, the mesh side panels. The full cooling system is laid out in How Wright Keeps You Cool.
The payoff showed up in the tracker data. In our tracked study, testers averaged 51 more minutes of deep sleep per night on their Wright mattress compared with their previous mattress. And those previous mattresses weren't budget no-names: they included Tempur-Pedic, Sleep Number, Serta, Beautyrest, Stearns & Foster, Casper, and Sealy. Better sleep is the mechanism. Better mornings are the point.
What do the product names mean?
They're honest lab notation, not marketing.
| Name | What it means | The product |
|---|---|---|
| W1.27 | Wright mattress 1, prototype 27 | Our all-foam memory foam mattress. It took 27 rounds of prototyping to get the layer recipe right |
| W2.15 | Wright mattress 2, prototype 15 | Our hybrid. It reached its final form faster, partly because it builds on everything the W1.27 taught us |
Twenty-seven prototypes sounds obsessive because it was. Each round changed something specific: a layer's density, an ILD rating, a ventilation pattern. Then testers slept on it and the trackers told us whether the change earned its place. The final W1.27 recipe, four layers, 11 inches, from a 4 lb gel memory foam top to a 1.8 lb base, is on the fact sheet, and the two finished designs are compared in W1.27 vs W2.15.
How does Wright do R&D today?
The study never really ended; it just got bigger. Wright runs a distributed R&D model built on three layers:
- In-home user testing at scale. Every mattress we deliver under the 120-night trial is, in a sense, a test unit in a real bedroom. Feedback from thousands of real homes beats any showroom.
- Continual R&D by the team. Our product designers and bedding experts keep iterating on materials and construction, the same way they did through 27 prototypes.
- Dedicated lab testing. Materials and finished designs are backed by dedicated lab testing for durability and performance.
Our hotel program feeds this loop too. With Wright beds in more than 40 hotels and nearly 200 partner properties signed, we get durability data no home tester could generate: different bodies on the same bed, every single night.
Frequently asked questions
What does W1.27 stand for?
Wright mattress 1, prototype 27. It took 27 rounds of prototyping, tested through a two-year tracked sleep study, before we had a design worth selling. The W2.15 is Wright mattress 2, prototype 15.
How was the Wright sleep study run?
Real testers wore Jawbone UP sleep trackers night after night for two years, sleeping on successive prototypes, so we could measure deep sleep on real data instead of showroom impressions.
What did the study find?
Two factors mattered most for deep sleep: balance between comfort and support, and breathability. Testers averaged 51 more minutes of deep sleep per night on their Wright mattress compared with their previous mattress, a list that included Tempur-Pedic, Sleep Number, Serta, Beautyrest, Stearns & Foster, Casper, and Sealy. Those findings shaped the medium-firm feel and the cooling systems in both Wright mattresses.
How long did it take to develop the first Wright mattress?
Research began in 2012 and the W1.27 launched in 2014, after a two-year tracked sleep study and 27 prototypes.
Does Wright still do product testing?
Yes. We run in-home user testing at scale, continual R&D by our team, and dedicated lab testing, plus real-world durability feedback from our hotel partners.
Prototype 27 is ready for your bedroom. Try the W1.27 or the W2.15 for 120 nights with free shipping and free in-home installation. Curious how they're built? Read How Wright Mattresses Are Made.