We will call this “The Curious Incident of the In-Store Purchase Chart.”
The chart in question was developed by Dana French, the researcher extraordinaire who regularly surveys consumers to keep Home News Now and Bedding News Now readers up to date on the dynamic consumer marketplace.
That chart, which shows in-store mattress purchases accounting for 67% of sales in 2025, with online sales accounting for the other 33% of the market, is remarkable not for what it shows, but for what it doesn’t show.
I shared that chart the other day with a top bedding executive, who was busy telling me how rapidly the mattress industry is changing, and commenting that he was having a difficult time adjusting to the ever-changing reality.
But the chart that Dana prepared made exactly the opposite point. In a time of supposedly rapid change, the in-store and online mattress markets were, shockingly, stable.
Dana has been tracking the key metrics of in-store and online mattress sales for several years, long enough to see how those metrics are, or are not, changing over time. And the big takeaway from our 2025 consumer research is that the online mattress marketplace is not, as many suspect, continuing to eat away at the business done by brick-and-mortar retailers.
In 2022, we found that 69% of consumers said they bought a mattress for their primary bedroom in-store, with 31% saying they bought that mattress online.
In 2023, the in-store percentage had risen to 72%. It dipped to 71% in 2024, before falling to 67% in 2025.
Now, those slight differences are not statistically significant. But what is hugely significant is that the in-store and online mattress marketplaces are essentially unchanged over the past three years.
My bedding friend did not expect to see that finding. He thought that online sales were continuing to climb. Seeing the continuing growth of Amazon and other online retailers, I’ve also been thinking that the online sales share is growing.
This is probably a good time to say that this is just one question, albeit one that we’ve tracked for several years, and that further research on this topic is warranted.
Still, I find myself going back to what Sherlock Holmes said in “Silver Blaze,” one of the classic Holmes stories authored by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is investigating the disappearance of the Silver Blaze racehorse. He is asked by Inspector Gregory if there is anything to which he should draw his attention. Holmes replies: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The inspector responds that the dog did nothing in the night-time. And then Holmes delivers this instructive response: “That was the curious incident.”
The curious incident in our in-store purchase chart is that in-store mattress sales are holding steady, despite all of the talk these days about online mattress sales. That is very good news for brick-and-mortar retailers, who may be feeling that they are facing an online adversary they can’t beat.
Our chart should give those retailers hope. Perhaps the online mattress boom has plateaued. We need to see more research to reach a definitive conclusion on this important point, but we do think it is noteworthy that on this one question, at least, the in-store channel remains dominant and has not lost any ground in recent years.
I wonder what our 2026 research will reveal.
