Have you tried to buy a new bed recently? If you haven’t, you may have forgotten all the gory details – the fact that sales people, even in the most allegedly user-friendly of stores, can quickly make one feel like a simpleton, and a cheese-paring one at that (after I’d looked rather aghast at the £5,000 I was being advised to spend).

We had needed a new bed for a long time. The iron bedstead we’d had for years was delightful to look at but unrestful to lean the head against. As for the mattress – ten years, the experts tell us, is all even a very good mattress should be expected to last, and I’m not going to tell you how long it was since we’d last bounced up and down in the bedding department of a major store. Suffice it to say it was more than due.

I inspected two major stores and came away with numerous leaflets but only one cast-iron piece of information – if I spent £5,000, I’d have a great bed. If I spent less… there’d be no knowing the number of unhappy nights we’d have. In desperation, I appealed to the White Company, which came up trumps – it had the perfect headboard (Pelham, upholstered in a chic, beige linen), a nice, simple divan base and, over the phone, it simplified the matter of choosing the mattress (not what the experts advise, but it worked for me). I wanted it firm but not as hard as a board. I wanted a really good one but didn’t want to pay silly money. “In that case,” said the friendly adviser, “I’d suggest you buy our Windsor (at £995 for a super king, the second most expensive) – it’s a wonderful mattress and you don’t really need to buy the most expensive.” A couple of weeks later it arrived and it’s perfect.

Now, in case you find the whole mattress-buying exercise as bewildering as I did, let me tell you about Feather & Black’s brand new contribution to simplifying the matter. Adam Black and Robbie Feather were inspired to address the mattress problem because, as Black puts it, “it’s the worst consumer experience on the high street. I did exactly what you did – I went to three different stores and came away utterly confused. I came to the conclusion that the mattress industry is like a sorcerers’ convention – it’s a deep, dark art, and the chances of the consumer buying the right mattress are pretty small. Also, people’s body weight changes (pregnancy, the onset of middle age, loss of weight), so a mattress that suits one year may not suit the next.”

The duo have devised what they call their Comfort Control Mattress (read all about it at www.comfortcontrolmattress.com). In simplest terms, they persuaded a manufacturer to help them think differently (“Most of them told us they’d been making mattresses the same way for generations”) and find a way of allowing the consumer to adjust the firmness of the mattress themselves. What they’ve done is to insert air pockets among the springs, and a small hand-controlled gadget (you simply press up or down) will either increase or decrease the air pockets, thus altering the firmness of the mattress. Feather & Black has also simplified the quality question by offering just three versions – good, better and best. The difference between them lies in the number of springs (the higher the number, the better the quality of the mattress) and the filling (a choice of cotton, wool or cashmere). Mattresses come in all sizes up to super king and emperor (7ft wide). Prices start at £1,400.

As to bedsteads (which, from the point of view of sleep, may not be as crucial as the mattress, but they are key to the aesthetics of the room), let me tell you what I have learnt: firstly, those beguiling, Victorian-style metal bedsteads are devilishly uncomfortable to rest the head against, so look for something solid. If you’d like a little decorative appeal as well, let me direct you to a wonderful website, www.frenchfarmhousefurniture.co.uk, for beautiful, antique French bedsteads that charm the eye and support the head.