New feature! Home Improvement Guide Interactive

Remodeling a room in your home or simply replacing appliances or buying new gear for your yard and garden?

The Consumer Reports Home Improvement Guide interactive (picture shown) on ConsumerReports.org lets you click on any room in your house and choose the top appliances, paints, flooring, and other remodeling products for your home's interior and exterior, from the kitchen and bathroom to roofing, siding, mowers, and tools.

The Home Improvement Guide includes expert remodeling tips as well links to Ratings of top ranges, refrigerators, dishwashers, decking, mowers and tractors, room air conditioners, windows, washing machines, vacuums, and many more appliances, tools, and remodeling materials you need to upgrade your home.

Take a room-by-room tour of our interactive home today!

Buzzword: Boomerang Children

What it means. Boomerang children refers to the growing number of young adults who have moved back into their parents’ home after time out of the house, say at a four-year stint at college.

Why the buzz? With the latest crop of college grads having gone through the pomp and circumstance of commencement, a new flood of able-bodied college grads has entered the workforce. Or not. With the “r word”—recession—on every economist’s lips and the U.S. unemployment rate ticking upward, job prospects are less than stellar for the class of 2008.

So rather than light out for the big city in pursuit of entry-level positions, affordable digs, and the sort of twenty-something scraping-by that previous generations accepted as a matter of course, many in the millennial generation are bringing it all back home.

Boomeranging has its supporters and its critics. The pro camp views it as a way for parents and children to forge healthy adult relationships. Those against call the trend perilous pampering that curbs motivation and paves the way for generational conflict.

Consumer Reports can’t settle the debate, but we can help keep the peace by guiding boomerang households through a few potentially key purchases, including:

Mattress
Now that the home office or exercise space you planned or even created has to be turned back into a bedroom, you might be in the market for a new mattress. The process can be perplexing, but our mattresses buying guide tells you what you need to know.

Interior Paint
That reconverted room might need a fresh coat of paint, but who knows how long this boomerang will last? Read our latest report on interior paints, which looks at the issue of one-coat coverage for finishes.

Organizers
After four years of dorm living or, worse, fraternity/sorority rules, your boomerang child may not be so handy with a hanger. So read our report on closet organizers, which includes Ratings of different systems and tips for installing them. The same report covers garage organizers, handy if you suddenly find yourself short on storage space.

Computers
A new computer will help a young B.A. get gainfully employed—or at least keep a Facebook page up to snuff. Our colleagues in the Electronics franchise recently put the latest laptops and desktops through their paces. Check out the results in their report.—Daniel DiClerico

Essential information: The Money page on ConsumerReports.org contains advice on all things financial, including paying for college and planning for retirement—without kids at home.

Shopping for a mattress remains business as usual

Many ads for innerspring mattresses are appropriately dreamy. Attractive people are shown sleeping or lounging in their beds—and, of course, smiling. The advertising come-ons tell shoppers to “Have a good night’s sleep on us” or promise that when it comes to mattress shopping, “It’s all about You!”

So buying a mattress should be a pleasant experience, right? (Watch our video report, right.)

But it isn’t, say many of our readers, who find buying a mattress frustrating and tell us that they are not sure they’re getting a fair deal. A big contributing factor to these problems, as we noted in “Why Consumer Reports Doesn't Rate Specific Models of Mattresses,” is that the model names of the top mattress brands differ from one store to the next, so there’s no way to truly compare models. What’s more, even for mattresses that retailers claim are similar, significant differences exist in quilting, padding, and springs, according to our experts.

We thought some of the nightmares would end when the spokesman for a major U.S. mattress manufacturer—let’s call it Brand S—told us in January that his company was going to revolutionize mattress shopping. “We recognize that there’s confusion. We’re changing that. Retailers now require that they be able to name their own mattress,” said the spokesman of the change, which was slated to go into effect this spring.

The manufacturer was planning to introduce the same branding from store to store: A queen-size Brand S ExtraDreamy firm mattress you’d test out at store A would be exactly the same (except, perhaps, for price) at store B and store C. “When consumers walk into the store, they’ll see a [Brand S] mattress at one retailer and the same at another—it will have the same [Brand S] branding,” promised the spokesman.

The manufacturer would recommend that all its retailers use the Brand S mattress name on their store signs but, according to the spokesman, retailers could still call the mattresses whatever they wanted on in-store signage.

This move could shake up the industry, so we called several major mattress retailers for comment. Two didn’t call back after repeated tries, and the spokesman for a third wouldn’t allow his comments to be published.

But our phone did ring just a day later. It was the spokesman who’d informed us of his company’s radical plan. “[The company] is trying to change this, but if a retailer says they won’t take the mattress—they don’t want it—then that’s their decision,” he said. The manufacturer wouldn’t be changing its branding policy.

We asked him what the company’s decision would mean for mattress shoppers. “For the consumer, nothing has changed,” he explained.

That’s unfortunate. But we’re working on ways to help you shop for mattresses, so stay tuned. In the meantime, read “How to Buy a Mattress Without Losing Sleep” (available to Consumer Reports subscribers) for expert advice on selecting the mattress that’s right for you and analyzing prices.—Kimberly Janeway

Americans working more, sleeping less

Psssssst. You there? Good. You haven’t nodded off yet, so keep reading.

Over the last several decades, Americans have sleeping less and less. Late-night movies, the Web, pastimes, and romance aren’t keeping you awake until all hours. What’s getting in the way of a healthy dose of Zs is a four-letter word: W-O-R-K.

A new nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 working adult Americans by the National Sleep Foundation found that each day Americans work on average 9½ hours at their job and—courtesy of the 24/7/365 connectedness that technology provides—nearly another hour from home. Something’s got to go, and for many, it’s sleep.

You need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each day, say the experts, but on average you’re getting only six hours, 40 minutes each weekday. That lack of sleep can take its toll on the job:
• About one-third of poll respondents said they’ve become very sleepy or fallen asleep at work.
• Not surprisingly, some said that their productivity was lower than expected.
• Forty percent of those polled said they’ve been impatient with coworkers at least a few times a month. (Beware of your sleepyhead colleagues.)

Outside the office, not getting enough sleep can be dangerous. More than one-third polled said they’ve nodded off or fallen asleep while driving. Yet the majority surveyed said they’re very likely to ignore their sleepiness and push themselves to keep going. That’s a bad combination: Each year in the United States, drowsy drivers cause an estimated 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

With National Sleep Awareness Week (March 3-9) in full swing, now’s the time to remedy your bad sleeping ways. You and your children (especially teenagers) should use the following expert strategies to establish healthy sleep patterns:

1. Be consistent. Try to go to sleep and wake up at about the same time every day, including weekends.

2. Log your sleep. Keep track of how much sleep you need to feel refreshed. Adults need 7 to 9 hours every day. Most adolescents require about 9 hours of sleep, some a little more or less.

3. See the light on light. Light triggers waking and sleeping signals to the brain. Avoid light exposure at night, but turn on the lights or get outdoors as soon as possible when you wake up in the morning.

4. Avoid those nasty habits. Stay away from caffeine and nicotine after lunch. These stimulants can disrupt sleep later that evening.

5. Relax. Do soothing activities before bed and minimize or avoid activities that stimulate you within an hour of hitting the sack, such as heavy reading, working or studying, and computer games.

6. Skip the all-nighters. Staying up all night working on a presentation or cramming for an exam can drain brainpower and throw sleep patterns into chaos.

For more information on getting a good night’s sleep, check out the National Sleep Foundation’s Healthy Sleep Tips. If your teenage children aren’t sleeping enough, read what our experts have said about why teens fall asleep in class.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Remember, daylight-saving time returns this Sunday morning, March 9. And if it’s your mattress that’s keeping you up at night, use our expert advice to buy a mattress without losing sleep (available to subscribers).

Why Consumer Reports doesn't rate specific models of mattresses

Among people who bought a mattress in the last two years, one-third can't recall the brand they purchased, according to Synovate, a market-research company.

That weak brand identity might be a result of the confusing nature of mattress shopping. Unlike refrigerators, cars, or other big-ticket items with specific models that you can easily compare at different stores and dealers, mattress are sold in a way that might give you nightmares.

The model names from the top mattress brands such as Sealy, Serta, Simmons, and others change from store to store, so there's no way to truly compare models. What's more, our research has revealed that even for mattresses that retailers claim are similar, significant differences exist in important characteristics, including quilting, padding, and springs, all of which affect comfort and firmness.

Given this lack of consistency—Brand A's ultra-premium firm queen-size mattress sold at one national retail chain will have a model name and composition that are different from Brand A's ultra-premium firm queen-size mattress sold at another retailer—it's impossible for us to be able to make an apple-to-apples comparison that will be useful to you. And that's why we don't publish Ratings of specific models of mattresses, as we do for the hundreds of products we test each year.

Despite that, we have a lot of useful information about mattresses. Read "How to Buy a Mattress Without Losing Sleep" for expert advice on choosing the right mattress, analyzing prices, understanding how mattresses are made, and for tips on getting the ever-elusive good night's sleep. Be on the lookout for more in-depth coverage of mattresses in the next year.

"It's difficult to compare mattresses unless you cut them open," says Eugene Schayer, who worked in the mattress industry for 46 years, including stints in the marketing department of two major mattress makers. "The retailers demand exclusivity of the cover and label. They don't want their product shopped." Even the Better Sleep Council, which is paid for by the mattress industry, says that buying a bed can be confusing because "it's not easy to see what's inside."

Our testers do delve inside to analyze mattresses. For one mattress report, we dissected mattresses to compare the construction, including in-depth analysis of padding, quilting, and springs of mattresses that retailers told us were similar. We found that when retailers claimed they were selling mattresses similar to those found in other stores, the mattresses often differed. We've also found in past mattress studies that except for the cheapest models, all mattresses are likely to be sturdy.

In our most recent study, we looked at alternatives to conventional innerspring mattress from Duxiana, Select Comfort, and Tempur-Pedic. Couples slept at home on the three different mattresses for a month at a time, while about five dozen panelists tried them out in our lab as they would when shopping.

Based on the findings of our panel tests, we concluded there's no best mattress for everyone—sleep comfort is very personal. So take time to find the mattress that's the most comfortable to you.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Learn how to shop for a new bed and make your mattress last.

Q&A: How often should I buy a new mattress?

My mattress is getting on in years. In fact, Bill Clinton was in his first term as president when I last bought a new one. Is it time for me to replace my mattress?

You’ve probably logged more than 30,000 hours in your bed, and your mattress has likely  become less comfortable and less supportive. But there’s no set formula for determining when you need to replace a mattress. It might be time to buy one if:
• You regularly wake up tired or achy—you make Oscar the Grouch seem as cheerful as Mr. Rogers.
• You tend to sleep better away from home, than in your own bed. Are you planning unnecessary business trips or looking for any reason to go on a weekend getaway?
• Your mattress looks or feels saggy or lumpy—it needs go on the Abs Diet.
• You’re over age 40 and your mattress is five to seven years old. Remember, your body tolerates less pressure as it ages. As if getting older weren’t tough enough . . .

A mattress can be an expensive investment—we’ve tested models that cost in excess of $4,000—but if you treat your new one properly, it could easily last 10 years. Our advice:
• Don’t let your kids use your bed as a trampoline.
• Rotate your mattress. If you have a single-sided mattress (you sleep on only one side), rotate the mattress from end to end—that is, move the mattress 180 degrees. The foot of the mattress is now at the head, and vice versa.
    If you have a double-sided mattress, rotate it as above, then turn it over so the bottom is now on top.
    Perform these steps every two weeks for the first three months you have your new mattress, then once every two months thereafter. You’ll find illustrated instructions on a number of different Web sites.
• Use a bed frame that has a center support.

Essential information: See “How to buy a mattress without losing sleep” for detailed advice on finding the perfect bed. And watch our video buying guide.