{bed + mattress}

tah-dah! i'm happy to share the news for you -- i just ordered a bed frame. i know, it's not about to change your life but it certainly contributed to a little happiness for me today. it's our first piece of furniture so i'm excited. ordering furniture not experienced in person is a tough hurdle for my brain to jump but when my apartment is 5,500 miles from where I now live what are my options? then again, it's just a white slipcovered bed frame but still. hurdle jumped! now it's time to order the mattress and this is where i need your help. but first, why i selected this bed out of the 30,000 options out there.

• i wanted a frame high enough to slide (and hide) storage containers beneath.
• no wood exposure, the floors are a light honey-ish pergo as it is, i want to tone them down.
• nothing contemporary or sci-fi looking, as most bed frames i found online, at least in germany, seem to ooze ultra contemporary with lots of faux wood accents. i think we left the 80's decor styles behind for a reason. i don't think i'm ready for flashbacks.
• it needed to be larger than my current queen sized bed at home. this one is 180 x 200 so it's almost a king. right? i have not yet mastered the metric system.
• pure white and simple. clean lines. nothing ornate, carved, iron, wood, patterned... just white. but not white leather, or white pleather, nothing tufted, no white wood, etc. just white cotton so this slipped look with a little kick pleat on the bottom corners totally works.
• not overly feminine but girly enough. :)
• the bed needed to have slats because box springs are not common in germany but slats are (these slats are called lattenrost). thing is, i wanted slats that fit the frame so buying both frame and slat together eliminated screwing things up on my part by and ordering slats that didn't quite fit the frame. plus it's cheaper to order a bed with slats. at least from what i noticed after browsing a zillion german furniture stores online.
• it needed to be available online and the shipping fee needed to be reasonable. i purchased it at octopus in hamburg and delivery down to hannover was only 50,-€!

now for the mattress. buying something as important to my health without first laying on it freaks me out a bit. but in the next few days i need to order it so that we have a bed with mattress by the time we're there, 10 weeks from now. can you help? i have a question about the Sultan Hasselback mattress from ikea, does anyone have one and how is it? we currently have a memory foam and find it very hot and a bit too squishy. i really don't like it although it's extremely comfortable it's a bit overly soft. how is the sultan? we need a 180 x 200, and this one is 409,-€ so i think the price is okay. i wouldn't mind finding one a bit cheaper since the bed was $499,€ but as I mentioned already, it included lattenrost. any suggestions on an ikea mattress since i won't be able to try before i buy?