After a hectic day at work, it’s imperative that we get a quality night’s sleep. But when your mattress betrays you by making popping noises, this frustrating experience keeps you up, disrupts your sleep pattern, and causes low productivity.
So, it’s reasonable to want to understand why your mattress makes popping noises. The popping noise is caused by your mattress’s coils losing strength and becoming loose. Therefore, they tend to rub against one another.
This noise is usually common with old mattresses and might signify a replacement. However, if the new mattress makes a noise, the coils are faulty.
Read on to know why your mattress is making noise and how to solve this issue for a better night’s sleep.
Causes Of Popping Noises In Mattresses: The Most Common Reasons
Generally, your mattress should be quiet and soft to allow you to get a night of quality sleep. However, if turning or moving slightly on the bed causes a popping noise, your mattress is failing, and it might be best to replace it.
However, several factors can cause nasty squeaking, popping, or cracking sounds coming from your mattress.
Old mattress
Mattresses are built upon different types of springs or coils. But with time, the springs will wear out, especially for a mattress featuring connected spring loops.
Over the years, the stability of your mattress will start to degrade, irrespective of how durable it was touted when you bought it. The coils will slowly begin to lose their springiness and have trouble handling your body weight. This leads to an uneven mattress surface.
So, if your mattress is old, the uneven surface, popping noise, and low support will affect your overall sleep quality. The best advice is to change your mattress.
Slats Creak
If you use frames as your bed foundation, then the noise might come from those wooden slats. They tend to squeak or creak as their clamps loosen with time. Aside from the squeaking noise, clamps gradually fall out becoming less secure for you to sleep in.
Therefore, you should inspect the noise origin, tighten any loose clamps, or replace the slat before the wooden slats break.
Faulty Frame
A good bed frame should provide the much-needed support to hold the weight of a duvet blanket mattress and the sleeper(s). So, if you notice some disturbing noises from the edge of your bed, it might result from the loosening of nuts and bolts.
If you have little charming ones that tend to jump and play on your bed, they are integral in degrading your bed frame’s durability. Also, external factors such as temperature can affect your wooden bed frame by altering the moisture in the wood. Hence, it creates gaps for the nuts and bolts, which produce that bothersome noise.
An important tip for people using a wooden bed frame is to keep your room dry and moisture-free to inhibit wood imbibition.
New Mattress With Broken Or Defective Coils
If you just bought your mattress and noticed a popping noise after a couple of days. You should investigate the origin of the sound. Keep in mind that there could be more than one reason your bed squeaks or pops.
Also, you want to remember that innerspring mattresses are coil-based models with metal springs that rub against one another. Therefore, you should expect some noise moving and turning even slightly on them due to the metal springs.
If the springs are faulty, then you should return the new mattress for another one. This is a better option rather than trying to fix the noise. It can be exhausting and fruitless sometimes.
Box springs
Another type of bed frame or foundation is a box spring. Basically, it’s a wooden frame shaped like a box and covered in cloth with springs inside. The box spring aims to provide your mattress with more support and elevation.
It offers a flat mattress surface, a decent bouncy, and helps it handle the weight better. In our opinion, it’s best to use memory foam with the box springs. However, the noise originating from box springs can be due to the old springs rubbing against one another or the loosely connected joints.
Solutions To Popping Noises In Mattresses: How To Stop The Noise From Happening
By now, you should have figured out that there are many reasons why your mattress makes a popping noise. While it might seem like replacing your mattress solves the problems, in some cases, it’s not to be blamed.
So, here are tips and tricks to help fix the popping noise from your bed and mattress:
Pinpointing the origin
To ensure you fix these issues, it’s best to figure out the source of the noise. Get your partner or child lying over the bed to cause the bed or mattress to make a squeaking sound while you track the noise origin. It’s best to observe the bed’s sides or beneath to get the precise area to be blamed.
Another way, albeit stressful, is to disassemble the bed component and inspect each unit individually. This is the best way to do it. It guarantees you get to the root of the matter.
Padding the area
Friction is one of the main causes of the popping noise. Therefore, using unused shirts and pairs of socks to pad the faulty areas can help minimize the friction between the box spring and the mattress.
For effective results, you should lay the cloths gently to pad the noise’s origin accurately.
In addition, you should slate in between the spring and the backing. Also, you ensure the screws holding the joints are fastened to prevent the padding from dropping.
Fasten the nuts and bolts
Another common cause of bothersome noise from your bed is loosened bolts. So, get your wrench from your toolbox and fasten these bolts. If, after doing this, the problem still persists, then introducing washers in between the bolt and the wood should solve this issue.
Lubricating the Coils
If spring coils are the culprits, then you should detach the mattress and slip the springs for better reach. Next, open up the side close to the faulty coils to allow easy access and lubrication. After lubricating the coils with WD-40, stitch up the enclosed spring coils.
Prevention Tips for Avoiding Popping Noises in Mattresses
Over time, your bed or mattress will make a popping noise due to degradation. Once you notice this disturbing noise, get it fixed instantly. However, to avoid this trouble sooner than later, here are a couple of things you can try:
Reduce the activity on the bed surface. The bed can be a nice place to play with your partner, friends, or kids. However, the jumping and applied weight might cause the coils to lose their springiness and cause them to rub against each other.
If you are using a wooden bed, then it’s essential to keep the surroundings moisture-free and dry. Water is not a friend of wood. This weakens the wood leading to some squeaking sounds.
Conclusion
The mattress makes a popping noise to inform you that something is not right somewhere. It’s a sign that innerspring coils are faulty and can’t deliver the much-needed support for a comfortable sleeping experience.
At this point, you needn’t repair the mattress. It’s best to purchase a new one to eliminate the uneven sleeping surface, sore back, restless night, and annoying continuous popping sounds. If the mattress is not the issue, you might have to check the joints and nuts to ensure they are tightly fastened to solve the popping noise coming from your bed.
