Materials · 3 July 2026
Wool against foam, four years on
We cut open a four year old wool bed and a one year old foam bed. Here is what was inside each of them.
Every dog bed claims to be supportive on the day you buy it. The question is what it is like in year three.
The foam bed
Polyurethane foam compresses and does not come back. The bed we opened had lost about 40 percent of its loft in fourteen months of ordinary use by a 22kg dog, and the loss was uneven, so the dog was lying in a dish.
It also smelled, and the smell was not on the cover. Foam is open celled, it takes up moisture from a damp dog, and there is no way to get it out again.
The wool and latex bed
Natural latex is elastic rather than plastic. It deforms under load and recovers overnight, which is the same reason it is used in good mattresses.
The wool wrap around it is doing two jobs. It moves moisture away from the surface, and it is naturally inhospitable to dust mites, so the bed stays usable for a dog with skin allergies.
What this costs
A wool and latex bed is roughly three times the price of a foam bed and lasts roughly four times as long, and the cover and the insert are replaceable separately, so the failure of one does not end the other.
That is the entire argument. It is not a romantic one.