Hi all!
Our house has sold, much of the furniture is gone and 3 months from now...so will I! My husband has to work until Feb and then we will be leaving to become Texans! My parents will travel with us for the first couple of months. They will have the bedroom which puts us on the sleep sofa. We tried it last winter...no way! So we put the mattress on the floor and added an egg-topper. It was doable, but a lot of set-up, take-down every night.
Does anyone have a solution for the awful sleep sofa mattress? Has anyone tried the "air dream" mattress...they are pricey and so I don't want to buy unless assured....
thanks,
Lee and Loralie

I’m not sure who makes them or where you can buy them but they started making a couch with an air mattress inside of it. I have not slept on one but I agree with you that anything has to be better than the traditional sleeper sofa mattress. There are a number of RV manufacturers now that are using these sofas with the built in air mattress. The air pump is built in and all you do is flip the back down and hit a switch. The demonstration video that I watched looked very neat. This might be an option. Hope this helps.

Originally we used a down mattress topper from Northern Nights, it is about 3 inches thick and helped eliminate the feel of the bars. However we still had complaints about comfort. So we purchased a queen size AERO BED mattress from Bed, Bath and Beyond ( I'm sure Walmart, Target or Kmart carry them) with a built in air pump (120 volts) to use on our sofa sleeper when guests are with us. It works well, fills up and deflates fast. It rolls up to the size of a sleeping bag for storage. Be sure to get just the standard aero bed, not the one designed for the floor or the model with a headboard. We put a heavy oversized blanket over the regular mattress to prevent any punctures from the springs and metal bed framing and then put the aero bed on top and fill it up. Regular fitted sheets work on it. You can fill it up to hard or soft for comfort. Very comfortable our guests like it. I imagine you could actually deflate it and fold it up in the sofa sleeper couch since the heavy blanket would protect it from damage. But we rarely have guests so I just roll it up and put it away in the morning. We've also found that if we have just one guest they prefer to sleep on couch instead of folding out the bed. Our couch (sofa sleeper) has big pillows instead of a back cushion, so when the pillows are removed it makes a single sized bed and is very comfortable.

Flair is who has the air mattress in the sleeper sofa. We have one in our Bighorn and it is comfortable, not as much as the one in the bedroom, but a whole lot better than the mattress type. Just google Flair and it should pop up.

Our Flexsteel sleeper-sofa came with an air mattress and an electric pump.  When we have guests, we give them the bedroom, and WE sleep on the sofa.  It's just as comfortable as the bed and uses the same regular queen sheets.  We leave the bedding on if we need it several days in a row and just deflate and reinflate as needed. (It does take up the whole "living room.").  I even slept on it several nights when hubby was ill without inflating it and it wasn't too bad with the mattress pad and blankets on it.                Cheers to you taking your in-laws along!  We had friends who had mother-in-law living with them for 5 years as full-timers-without an air mattress!

Mary

We tried several things to make the pull out bed more comfortable...no luck... We felt it was too much work to inflate a mattress all the time.. so.. while in Quartzsite last year we hauled it right out of the motorhome and sold it to the Gambler ( he buys and sells everything and anything !) Then we went to Ikea and purchased a great bed/couch/chair. We actually sold the uncomfortable tub chair and dinette ! For awhile there until we could get to Ikea, we had 2 lawn chairs in there. We bought 2 of Ikea's famous Poang chairs. Love them.....

Well I will say this about that...if you don't want any friends let them spend the week on your sofa and that should take care of that relationship. We too are looking for something more comfortable. I found the one at Bed Bath and Beyond too and it seems like it would be the best for easy up and easy down. If we find someone that wants to be our friends then we will order one. Joe and Sherri

Our sofa bed was so uncomfortable, we just got rid of it and replaced it with 2 Lazy Boy recliners. We bought a self contained blow up mattress which we put on the floor in the middle of the living room, for the occassional times we have overnight guests. It inflates quickly, take regular queen sized bedding and deflates and folds up quickly in the morning.

Well here is what we have decided to do...we bought a queen size aerobed (ebay) and we are going to take the sofa bed insides out of the coach, build a plywood top for the cushions, and store the aerobed inside. Then we will also have some additional storage - a good thing! Thank you all for your input and help, Loralie

We have an air mattress built into our couch.  It's great and much better than any other way.  It's comfortable. I usually use it at nite since my husband and my dog keep me awake lol. We are in Port Richey Florida in a great park.  This will be our homebase since we don't  want to pull our 5th all of the time.  It's a big unit and we have already damaged the bottom side of it trying to get out of a gas station after discovering there was no diesel.  Luckily it's in the bottom and didn't damage the fiberglass. This is our first triip with our new unit as well as being first in fulltiming.  We are meeting a lot of people and enjoying our stay here so far. Good luck.