The best mattress cooling pads can be an essential part of your sleep setup, especially if your mattress is retaining your body heat and leaving you sweltering in the early hours. While memory foam is a key component of most of the best mattresses, it's notorious for overheating, and you can't beat a cooling layer in between you and the mattress to keep temperatures down.
Fortunately, the mattress market has taken note, and now there’s a huge array of cooling pads or cooling toppers that work to regulate the temperature of your bed for optimum sleeping conditions. They're especially useful in summer, but they're often just as effective on the coldest winter nights, helping you sleep at a temperature that's neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.
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The best mattress cooling pads, such as our top pick the Gel Fusion Memory Foam Mattress Topper (opens in new tab) from Dunelm Mill (opens in new tab), use cooling gel to dissipate heat, rather than retain it, and still provide you with the support you need from a mattress.
Other than that, you’ll need consider the thickness of your cooling pad – you don’t want a princess and the pea effect going on in your bed, but you don’t want to compromise on comfort, either. Also consider firmness – the firmer it is, the more cooling it will be.
Investing in mattress cooling pad can be more cost-effective than purchasing a brand new mattress. If you like the idea of memory foam but you’re apprehensive about the heat factor, this gel fusion mattress is a great compromise. The gel particles absorb and disperse body heat while the tiny air holes in the topper increase airflow and breathability to ensure you remain cool and comfortable on even the hottest nights.
This cooling memory foam mattress topper from Sealy will give your bed an extra three inches of medium-soft comfort, and its gel-infused foam draws heat away from your body while responding to your body shape for an even better night's sleep. It comes in a washable, allergen-resistant cover so you can keep things nice and fresh, and there's also a five-year limited warranty for extra peace of mind.
If you fancy the look of the memory foam options above but you're on a budget, this three-inch topper from AmazonBasics is a great, cheaper alternative. It's infused with cooling gel to keep temperatures down at night, and it features open airflow channels for enhanced breathability. Like most memory foam mattresses, this topper comes vacuum-packed, so bear in mind that once it's delivered it'll need up to 72 hours to fully expand when opened.
Thin in comparison to our first pick, this gel pad is the perfect topper if you don’t want to override the comfort level of your existing mattress. The gel works to disperse the heat away from your body. It doesn’t retain heat in one spot, but redistributes it, so it should keep you cool all night. Doubling up as an ice pad for the injured and a heat pad for the cold, this is an incredibly versatile buy.
This mattress topper from Marks & Spencer doesn't use foam or gel; inside its sustainable cotton cover it's all polyester and cotton, created with M&S's own climate control technologies to help regulate your temperature throughout the night. It's received some great reviews and it comes with the added bonus of being machine washable to help keep things fresh, as well as providing an extra-comfortable top layer for your bed.
Another cooling mattress pad with a fibre filling rather than gel and foam, this 4.5cm topper from Slumberdown reduces heat build-up in the night and also gives your mattress an extra level of firm support and pressure relief. Its breathable fires allow air to flow freely and keep things cool and dry, it has elasticated straps enabling you fit it easily on top of mattresses up to 35cm deep, and its soft knit Coolmax cover is cool to the touch and designed to wick away moisture.
It may not be as attractive as our first pick but if you’re looking for all the support and coolness that a gel mattress can give you without the hefty price tag, this orthopaedic one from Gelify should do the trick nicely. In addition to contouring to your body shape, it retains less heat so its not radiating your own body heat back to you, keeping you cool and comfortable all year round.
The Panda Mattress Topper is designed to keep you cool in summer and warm in the winter, with a breathable (and washable) bamboo cover that keeps air flowing and which we assume is the inspiration for its name. It features a Hydro Foam layer: 3rd generation memory foam infused with minute capsules of cooling gel that works with the cover to help stop you overheating in the night, and crafted to relieve pressure points and support your entire body. And to keep things steady, as well as its elastic straps it has a silicone dot anti-slip layer to reduce movement between the topper and your mattress.
Not everyone gets on with the idea of gel, so it’s worth looking at this microfibre offering from Silentnight. This cooling pad or mattress topper won’t offer the same level of support as thick gel but it will provide that additional layer of comfort with coolness in mind, thanks to its breathability. If you do happen to get a bit sweaty one night, you can stick this mattress topper in the washing machine; all in all, a great way to a fresh bed all summer.
There’s nothing better than the cool side of the pillow on a warm night but when it’s so warm there’s just no cool side any more, at least you have this gel pillow cooling pad to rely on. Simply place it under your pillow case and the gel will disperse your body heat to ensure your head remains cool and dry. Apparently, it’s also pretty good to use when you’re suffering with a headache or a sunburned forehead!
