–NO!–
I repeat, DO NOT REMOVE THE COVER THAT CAME WITH YOUR MEMORY FOAM MATTRESS!
The tag on your mattress should confirm this; you should never remove the cover that comes on your mattress.
Important: If you’re unsure please consult the manufacturer of your mattress before removing the cover.
It may look like you can remove the cover, but you should NOT REMOVE the cover from your mattress.
Why Does The Mattress Have A Zipper?
Even though there can be a zipper on your mattress cover, it’s not meant for you.
The zipper is for the manufacturing of your mattress and meant to never come off.
Some manufacturers will sew the zipper closed or use something beyond a zipper as the cover is not meant to come off.
What’s The Reason To Not Remove Your Mattress Cover?
The reason you don’t remove the cover from your memory foam mattress is to keep the contents under the cover from coming out.
This content is most often fiberglass.
And yes, that sounds scary and confusing, but it’s there for a super important reason.
The point of the fiberglass is for fire insulation. All mattresses need to withstand certain levels of heat in case of fire.
This video does a great job showing you why we have fire retardants in things like mattresses…
Free Floating Fiberglass Is Not Good
If you remove the cover, you allow small particles of fiberglass to get into the air.
These small particles can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, and throat.
What Should You Do Instead?
No matter the mattress, you should put a mattress protector on it.
You only clean or replace the mattress protector and not the mattress cover. You always keep the mattress cover that came with your mattress on all the time.
A mattress protector is worth every penny and is super effective too. I have a post proving how effective a mattress protector is here.
Should You Avoid Memory Foam Mattresses?
When people find out memory foam mattresses have fiberglass fibers in them, it’s usually a put-off.
Not all mattresses have this, but they all have something to make them fire retardant.
If you never remove the manufacturer’s cover, you should never have to worry about this issue unless the cover is broken or wears out. As stated before, you should be using a mattress protector no matter what mattress you have. A mattress protector will help protect the mattress and keep it going for longer.
What Mattresses Don’t Have Fiberglass?
If you want a mattress without fiberglass you’re going to have a hard time finding one.
To give one example, here is someone on Reddit looking for a mattress without fiberglass but in the end, still gets a memory foam mattress with fiberglass in it because they’re hard to find. That article is also a good read on general advice about this issue too.
The best thing you can do is stick to buying a mattress protector and keep it on the mattress. Buy 2 of them so you can swap them out when washing them, so you always have some protection on your mattress.
If you have to have a memory foam mattress, you’d find most of them have fiberglass. There is a select few who use a polyester blend for the fire retardant. Then a few others that use other blends but still read the label to make sure you’re not allergic to the blends.
To learn more about mattresses and their fire retardants check out mattress clarity as they did a great write up on it.
Other options are to stick to spring or latex mattresses. If you like the feel of memory foam mattresses, then latex is the next best option. Of course, make sure you’re not allergic to latex before getting one. Also, read the labels to see what fire retardants they may use too.
If you want to see what mattresses don’t use fiberglass this writer here emailed all these companies to see what they say. It’s a good read and the comments are super helpful too.