of greenwashing around the term “organic” these days. It often seems more like a reason to raise prices than anything else, which is why it helps to be selective about where you pony up for organic things. I’ve taken to buying organic by exposure—you’re going to sleep on a bed every night for years, and that’s a lot of exposure, so to my mind, it makes sense to invest in an organic mattress. The good news is that most of these aren’t much more expensive than a conventional mattress.
often have questionable materials in them. Everything from polyurethane foams with formaldehyde and TCEP (a flame retardant) to
can end up in nonorganic mattresses, off-gassing into your home. How much these substances affect you isn’t scientifically settled, but it’s not hard to avoid them altogether with a mattress made from natural, organic materials. Most organic mattresses are made of a combination of wool, natural latex, and cotton. The construction is similar to conventional mattresses but without the chemicals.
I’ve been testing and sleeping on organic mattresses for seven years now, and these are my favorites out of the dozens I’ve tested. All of the prices below are for queen-size models unless specified.
Updated August 2026: We’ve revamped this guide to narrow down our picks and added some organic toppers and sheets you can grab to round out your organic bed.
To help you make sense of the often bewildering world of organic mattresses, here are some terms and certifications to know.
The big name in organic certifications, and organic cotton certification specifically, is the
, generally abbreviated as GOTS. It looks not just at how the cotton is grown and processed but also at
that standards are being met. If you’re curious, you can
Most of the mattress brands here have GOTS certification. Our top pick, Avocado Green Mattress; our favorite kids’ mattress, My Green Mattress; and the Birch Natural are all GOTS certified. Awara is not. But cotton is not the end of the story for these mattresses, which usually also contain latex, which has its own certifications like GOTS. The latex certification is called
and is more or less the same as GOTS, but for latex instead of cotton. Again, the goal of GOLS is to look at the entire supply chain, not just the finished product. Avocado and My Green Mattress are the only ones in this guide certified by GOLS and GOTS.
While we especially like the big-picture approach of GOTS and GOLS, there are other certifications that test the finished product, and in some ways some of these are more revealing. The best one,
, certifies that mattresses (or other products) are not made with any known cancer-causing or hormone-disrupting chemicals. The Made Safe standard is one of the strictest in the industry.
, which certifies that an item is “tested for harmful substances and that the article, therefore, is harmless for human health.” Another thing to look for is the
, which both certify that there are no volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or formaldehyde in your mattress.
Another term you might see while shopping for organic mattresses is “needle-tufted.” This means the mattress is sewn rather than glued (assuming it’s 100 percent needle-tufted). Since needle-tufted mattresses use no adhesives, you don’t need to worry about VOCs from adhesives.
Organic mattresses are something of a Wild West when it comes to certifications. There is no government involvement here, and no USDA or other official organic certification. Anyone can claim their mattress is organic. Some companies claim to carrry GOTS- or GOLS-certified brands or have a certified mattress when, in fact, they don’t. What they have is certified materials, but the end product has not been tested. In particularly egregious examples, companies will claim someone else’s certification for themselves. I have not included any such brands in this guide, but it’s also important to understand that there’s a big a difference between certifying the materials and certifying the finished product. In one case, the finished product has been independently tested; in the other, it has not.
As noted above, there are independent standards that have to be met in some cases, but in the particular case of GOLS, the latex certification, the fine print says “organically
natural rubber latex.” Unfortunately, while it’s great that the rubber trees are grown without harmful chemicals, that doesn’t mean those weren’t added somewhere in the process that transforms rubber tree sap into something you can sleep on. It’s a safe bet that just about any industrial process is going to have a detrimental effect on its source material. How detrimental and what that means for you is often difficult to know. Most companies, when you read the fine print, will say that latex foam is ≥95 percent certified organic latex, which is the highest possible standard. The remaining 5 percent represents the essential processing agents—required for any manufacturer to make lat