This post is not sponsored by Cocoon by Sealy. Lilies and Loafers has affiliate relationships, so we may get a small share of revenue from your purchases. Items are sold by the retailer, not by Lilies and Loafers.

Welcome to our happy place. Living in New York City, we’re used to small spaces and high ceilings. When one thing is out-of-place in the apartment, the space feels like it’s a mess. Throughout the week, our living areas get cluttered with coats, shoes, laundry, and other items as we come and go. Our bedroom is a place where we try to balance keeping it stress-free and having to use it as our office.

Your bedroom should be a tranquil place to relax after a long day.

Over the last year, we started to notice we were not sleeping well. We couldn’t make it through the night without tossing and turning. Our backs began to ache. Even when we could fall asleep, we woke up tired. We bought our first bed when we moved in together; it was a great deal. Mattress and box spring for a couple hundred dollars. This was ideal at the time, but last year we started to feel like we needed to invest in a better bed. We had to do something.

By mid-2016, it seemed like everyone was making a bed-in-a-box. A foam mattress delivered right to your door in a box. When we started looking for a bed, we were open to the bed in a box. We spent a few months exploring the various options out there. One review that consistently popped up across each mattress site: “it was too hot.” We were already battling heat in our bed. I saw on the Today Show that you should stick one leg out to regulate your body temperature. That was working, but we felt like we were back at square one.

That’s when we discovered the Cocoon Chill by Sealy. It seemed to offer comfort and cooling. We were 75% sold based on the reviews. The fact that it’s one of Oprah’s favorite things got us closer to 100%. Doing a little more research, we found that this was a great option. Now, we just had to pick a comfort: soft or firm. I am on the firm side while Fatima wanted something soft. Reading more reviews, we found that many people found that “firm” was too firm. Knowing that we had 100 nights to try it out, we bit the bullet and ordered a soft Cocoon Chill.

100 nights to try it out. Here is our experience with our Cocoon Chill.

The order was in. We were so excited, but it wouldn’t be delivered for another two weeks. However, three days later, we got the shipping confirmation. The bed was scheduled to be delivered on January 18th. I took the day off from work and waited for it to arrive. It never showed. There was a shipping exception somewhere along the way, and it never made it to New York. We were so bummed. Another uncomfortable night, but it was our last on that old bed.

The next day I went to work and prayed it would be delivered later that day. I left work a little early and 10 minutes after I got home, the bed was delivered! I buzzed in the delivery guy and waited. Five minutes later, I run downstairs and there’s the bed, sitting at the foot of the stairs. While I was a little annoyed I had to bring the bed up myself, the adrenaline inside of me gave me the strength to carry it up. It was heavy, but manageable. However, the size of the box was a little awkward. It wasn’t so big I couldn’t carry it, but it was not small enough to feel comfortable walking up three flights of stairs with it.

I unboxed the bed and placed it on our box spring. I must have pulled the wrong seal or pulled more of the plastic when I went to roll it out because the bed began to inflate. It blew up so fast! I wish I videotaped this experience because it was hysterical. I was trying to remove the plastic and prevent the bed from thrashing around the room; it was a sight. It finally settled and I left the room.

In a nutshell:

• After about forty-five minutes, I went back in to see what it looked like. It was cool to the touch. I laid back and felt like I could fall asleep. I felt the chill, it was fantastic.
• The smell was tolerable. Many reviews on the Cocoon and other beds point out a latex-chemical smell. It did not bother us as much as reviews made it seem like it would. This smell goes away.
• For once, we were so excited to go to bed.
• We laid down and it was soft, comfortable, and cool.
• On the first morning, we woke up refreshed. We successfully slept through the night.
• Our 100th night was 4/28.

After about a week of sleeping on the mattress, the aches came back to us. It felt harder to sleep. In reading the material from Cocoon they said, like any bed, you have to get used to the new firmness. Or in our case, get used to a new bed versus the worn out one we were sleeping on. It said adjustments to a new bed could take up to thirty days. That was true. About a month later, we both felt used to the bed.

We are successfully sleeping through the night. We’re no longer groggy the next morning. Sometimes we get warm, but that’s mostly an apartment heating issue as we head into the summer. When our 100th night came, we decided to keep the bed. We are so happy with our Cocoon Chill.

Maintaining a stress-free environment:

To prevent any stains, we needed to invest in a new mattress protector. But how would we keep the cool-to-the-touch feeling?? We searched Amazon for a few protectors. We went through three protectors. They were practically made of plastic and made our mattress feel like hell. We reached out to Sealy via Twitter and they sent along a recommendation. It was for a cooling protector. We found another Sealy-branded one. It is perfect.

Another reason for our great night’s sleep: our blackout curtains. They block out all the light. Recently, we really started to notice how much we love these curtains.

Clutter-free. It can be a mess all over the apartment, but our bedroom needs to be less cluttered. I have a hard time keeping this up. But when the room is clean, we feel less stressed when we go to bed. We also took our bed off of our bed risers. We were able to clean out so much from under the bed. This made the room feel bigger and cleaner. I’m so happy we did this.

Plants. Since our apartment has two more windows than our last apartment, we have sunlight in all rooms! Fatima adopted these plants and two more larger aloe plants (pictured in the windows) to spread around the apartment. They bring so much life to the space.

And that’s our happy place. If you’re in the market for bed-in-a-box, like our Cocoon Chill, let us know! We’d love to hear what bed you end up getting!