I can’t wait to show you my bedroom but most of all, to tell you all about MATRI by Fennobed. What a gem I found! But first, a little background… I travel often enough to say that the best bed in the world is truly your own! There is nothing like coming home to sink into your cozy nest, with your familiar surroundings, linens, and the wonderful feel of your own mattress beneath you. Sadly though, a lot of people (including me until last year), don’t find their bed so cozy or their bedroom so nice to be in. Some prefer a 4 or 5 star hotel over their own bedroom because it’s so well designed and the mattress always feels so wonderful. People travel to be comfortable. Travel at home, I say!

Don’t you just want to sleep like a 5-year-old? Like my little boy shown below?

Isn’t that sad, to think about this, that people escape home to be in a nice surrounding, to feel good?

Shouldn’t YOUR HOME be better than any hotel, spa, or “retreat”? YES! Even if you aren’t rich (who really is!), it’s so important to put aside money until you can afford the bed of your dreams and the bedroom style and design that you love because you know what - WE HAVE ONE LIFE! It’s not to be wasted or to sit around hoping for “some day I will…”. It’s also silly to take vacations when your own bedroom isn’t a personal oasis. Stay home and skip the summer vacation if it means you can use the same money to make your sleep room amazing.

The time is now. Always NOW.

OH, LATTENROST

For several years, since I left the states and my boxspring bed system behind, I have been sleeping on the famous German lattenrost system. It’s a mattress about half the thickness of a US one, on top of wooden slates. They snap at times, and you have to replace the slates. You can break them from all sorts of things, your child decides to jump on the bed, you have a really wild night with your partner (!), you simply get into bed too fast or fall in on the “wrong” angle, like with your knee, and CRACK.

Sure, you can get varying degrees of "lattenrost”, the cheap college version are ones you can order at IKEA or Amazon, but you can level up to get systems that are not made of wood at all but of flexible plastic lattenrost. And okay, those are fine and lots of people are having great times on the high quality lattenrost. BUT, at the end of the day, they are still NOT a boxspring with a mattress on top which is, to me, the ultimate, superior, sleep system. Plus, when you grow up used to a boxspring, there is no going back.

WHY LATTENROST?

Funny fact, in Germany at most hotels, it’s always a boxspring system that you sleep on. Why? I asked around and found out that it is because they last the longest, are the most durable and definitely give the best sleep. So why are German homes filled with lattenrost? Honestly, I think it comes down to affordability FIRST and what you’re used to using SECOND. It’s cultural, like beer and currywurst, and you usually don’t question something that people have been doing and using for a million years because, well, it works.

MY “DUH” MOMENT

But for me, this sleep system did not work for my back or my posture. I woke up a lot of mornings with numbness in my legs or feet. I thought I was getting some major illness. I dealt with back pain on and off since I moved to Germany but it didn’t occur to me that it was the support system BELOW the mattress. DUH. I bought new mattresses several times, blaming the mattress over and over again. It wasn’t ever the mattress. It was the lattenrost system in general. I started with the wooden ones and graduated to the plastic, more designer kind… But it still didn’t do anything. My back health still suffered.

Last year, I was in Finland at a big design fair called HABITARE and I saw a bed by MATRI that I loved and noticed it not only had a gorgeous headboard called LEMPI but an actual BOXSPRING system. I got a little giddy and definitely, excited. I stood there thinking, “Why don’t we have this brand in Germany, and why don’t I have a boxspring system in my home, how do I get one!?”. You can import them, at least last I checked, or buy them in Germany at some stores, but they are usually like 6 figures and that is, well, expensive even for someone like me who will save for months or years for something that I truly love or need.

PLEASE SAVE ME, FINNS!

Anyway, I loved the bed so much that I wrote to them to ask for a collab. They wrote back and before I knew it, they accepted. Matri is an original Finnish bed brand founded in 1986 and the beds are made in mainland Europe by skilled workers but, the best part for me is that the model I wanted was 100% eco-friendly, no harmful glues or anything at all, so completely allergy-free. I have allergies to glue and all of the stuff most beds are packed with (harmful chemicals, etc.) so I was so happily shocked. But the biggest shock was when they told me that they have a store IN HANNOVER under the name MATRI by Fennobed which is the name the company goes under in Germany. In Finland, they are just known as MATRI.

And yes, what are the chances that their shop where I could giddily bounce on mattresses (to test them), was only 5 MINUTES BY CAR FROM MY HOUSE.

I missed this store somehow in my daily life, but instantly I went and was greeted by the most caring and kind store manager, Basil Mahjoub, who explained all of the bests to me and what was best and what to look for and then we decided on a topper and a headboard… I could even pick the type of legs that I wanted and the height of the legs, and the bed skirt (length, style and color!). And only a few WEEKS later, the bed was IN MY HOME, installed by their team, looking better than I had imagined. But most of all…

GOODBYE FOREVER, LATTENROST

The medieval horror, the lattenrost system, is gone from my life forever. POOF. Never again will I have a bed that makes me sick.

MY HONEST TO GOD REVIEW

I sleep like an angel now. I feel great when I get into bed at night, I read books in bed again, I cuddle my son and read to him there, I even chat on Whatsapp in my bed while using one of those sheet masks on my face while I’m waiting for my toes to dry (pedicure). My room is my cuddle zone, my day spa, it’s where I love to be! I think the danger with loving my bed so much is that I don’t always want to LEAVE IT and “adult” each day, but that’s not a bad problem to have. Getting up each day refreshed and energized feels great, versus with sore legs and a headache or a bad shooting pain in my back like before. And those days of horrible sleep nights and waking up sore are gone now and I’m so happy.

WANNA SEE?

Here is my bedroom below. I want to paint the walls and change the colors and the pendant and add blinds and change the rug, you know because I am ready to imagine the room differently now that I have a new bed to sleep on. I love my nightstands, lamps and my bed - those elements will stay for years and years. Especially that bed, OH YES. It’s all MINE. Travel at home!

PLEASE REPEAT AFTER ME…

If I can say anything about having a quality bed it is this, repeat after me, SAVE UP AND BUY A DAMN GOOD BED. Don’t settle. Even if you have to save up for a year, do it. It’s an investment, because you can keep a good mattress and boxspring like mine for 10 years - maybe more if you take good care of it.

Make your home, and especially your bedroom, a haven. And with a bed like this, you really can. The downside is… 4 and 5 star hotels don’t impress me anymore because I prefer my own bedroom better. That’s rather nice though, isn’t it?

MY BED RECIPE:

• HILJA Continental 180x200 cm / FIRM / Matratze + Unterbett

• Lempi headboard 190x65 Rattan, Massiv Esche

• Mio Plus Topper 180 x 200 cm

• ALASKA skirting - HALF - 180 x 200, 100% Baumwolle, Farbe 11311, Höhe 33 cm

• Bed feet - Quader light, Birke, 15 cm

Thank you Matri by Fennobed for giving me a 5 star sleep system at home, I love it!

(Photographs: Holly Becker)

This post is sponsored by Matri by Fennobed. All words, photos, thoughts and the review is my own opinion. Everything that I selected for my bed was 100% my choice, and everything I said about the bed is the truth, you can believe it! I would never partner with or share a product that I don’t love. Thank you!