Domestic vs Healthcare Mattress - What’s the Difference?

Published 16th July 2025

Redwood are well known and respected across the medical sector for our range of high performance, durable healthcare mattresses, such as our own brand Verituss range. We’re also a major mattress manufacturer in the domestic market, though you may be less familiar with our name, as we often work as a white label maker for many of the biggest mattress brands.

But what exactly is the difference between a healthcare mattress and a domestic mattress? Why are they made in such different ways from such different materials? And how do Redwood ensure the same high-quality standards whatever type of mattress we’re making?

What is the difference?

In the simplest of terms, with a domestic mattress, the focus is on comfort and getting a good night’s sleep. It’s all about quality and luxury, with exactly the level of firmness and support you want.

A healthcare mattress on the other hand, has to deal with so much more than sleeping. These mattresses need to be designed to help patients avoid pressure sores, to minimise the risk of hospital acquired infections, to be waterproof yet breathable, and to be built to withstand the most stringent of cleaning regimes in between the different patients who occupy the bed. 

What are they made from?

Here at Redwood, we have built extensive supplier relationships that allow us to source exactly the right materials for both domestic and healthcare mattresses. Our expert design team will be happy to advise you on the most appropriate and most cost-effective materials for each individual order. While they draw on decades of experience with requirements just like yours, they still create each product individually to ensure it meets your precise requirements.

For luxury at home and in hotels, we can provide superb silky fabric covers in gorgeous designs and a choice of top-quality mattress fillings. For a healthcare mattress, we can provide high performance technical textiles such as Xtreme and Reliance, along with precision cut multi-zone foams and memory foams for high quality patient care and comfort.

How are they made?

For domestic mattresses, Redwood offers a wide variety of skilled sewing techniques, including quilting, embroidery and edging, to create mattresses that are as good to look at as they are to sleep on. This is why so many of the major names are happy to trust their name and reputation to Redwood manufactured mattresses.

Manufacturing of a healthcare mattress means meeting a different set of challenges, including keeping fluids and the associated germs at bay. Redwood offers a range of specialist healthcare mattress manufacturing techniques, including ultrasonic and high frequency welding of seams to seal them tightly.

What are the similarities?

Although our domestic and healthcare mattress are radically different in design, material and manufacture, as Redwood products, they also share a great deal of similarities. 

All Redwood mattresses are made to the very highest standards from the best materials available from our worldwide supply chain. All Redwood mattresses are built to last, meaning they deliver even better value for money across the life of the product. And all Redwood mattresses come with free design, development and quality compliance before we even begin to make them.

What’s more, all Redwood mattresses can be supplied in whatever quantities you need, wherever in the world you need them, including just-in-time supply lines to minimise your need to hold stock on site.

Perhaps the question should not be ‘what is the difference between domestic and healthcare mattresses?’, but rather ‘what is the difference between Redwood mattresses and the rest?’. Because our quality and customer service are as different from our competitors as our two mattress types are from each other.

To find out more about domestic and healthcare mattress manufacturing from Redwood, get in touch today, because the difference could not be clearer.