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How To Set-Up A Bed In A Box

Do you need help finding the best king-sized mattress or have you wanted to try a mattress in a box? Come along with us as we show you how to set-up the Casper Wave Hybrid mattress and get our honest review.

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read our full privacy policy.

Just to note this post is not sponsored and we are just normal people going into furniture and mattress stores. Here is our real-life Casper Wave Hybrid bed buying experience. 

Are Casper hybrid mattresses worth it?

Yes! We are very happy with our mattress purchase. The mattress is soft enough but you feel the support. My husband and I also have not felt hot or overheated at all.

We did not get the snow technology add-on and I am glad we just trusted the normal cooling technology.

Our purchase

We upgraded to a King-sized mattress. Therefore we also needed to figure out the platform, bed frame and more.

We ended up purchasing the Casper metal bed frame and foundation (as well as this headboard from Wayfair).

Casper Foundation Tips

Do you hate bed skirts? One of my favorite parts of this bedding bundle or system is the foundation. It doesn’t look like your typical box spring. With our duvet cover, you don’t even need to do something else unless the metal frame really bothers you. We like the clean look of the simple foundation instead of an ugly box spring.

Casper wave foundation being set up
The nice gray of the foundation is way better than your classic box spring look.

If you already have a metal bed frame or platform bed there is no reason to purchase this. You can also just get the mattress and place it on a platform bed. We thought about that option, but are happy with the route we took. 

How To Set Up The Foundation and Metal Bed Frame

It was pretty easy to set up the base before the mattresses. The bed frame was relatively easy to set up and probably took around 20 minutes.

The harder part for us was when we attached our own headboard and still had to put that together. We weren’t sure of how these items would come in the mail. The bed frame and the foundation came in long boxes.

Casper foundation in box
Foundation in the box

Be careful as each of these boxes was pretty heavy and you may want to have two people help move them around.

You can easily set-up the bed frame by following the instructions.

Casper metal bed frame

Open the foundation box. Connect four sides with easy clasps.

Clasps inside Casper foundation

Once the foundation is on the metal frame the rest wood slates on it.

wood slates going on Casper foundation and metal frame

It took two of us to make sure that the slates were even and ready for the mattress.

We added our headboard and did not have to add any adjustors to the metal frame.

Once your base is put together, unbox the mattress and follow their guidelines to get the plastic off. Since ours was a king-sized mattress, it was pretty heavy.

Read the manual that comes with the mattress. They will suggest placing it on its side off the bed. Of course, we didn’t read the manual, so we made it probably harder than it was. Soon we will have a video showing our whole process so you can learn from our mistakes.

man with Casper mattress in box

Note: I am pretty much just summarizing what the Casper salesmen were telling us and our experience as we were shopping with our whole family. We were a little overwhelmed with trying to feel the difference between the two mattresses while comparing to other mattresses we were considering at the time. 

What does a Casper mattress look like in the box?

unrolling the Casper mattress

You can see from the above images that our king-sized Casper mattress came in a box that was about 3 ft high and the mattress was rolled up inside. When you pull the mattress out you can see that the plastic is compressing it.

Casper mattress on foundation

After the plastic is off you can see how the mattress starts to inflate. You hear it happening.

Casper Wave hybrid mattress on foundation with gray headboard in navy blue bedroom
This is what the mattress looked like right after the plastic came off.
corner of mattress in a box

Where can you purchase Casper mattresses?

Make sure when you are shopping for a Casper mattress that you are comparing the same models. You may think you are getting a better price, but it might not be the same actual mattress. 

Note About Direct

We were very happy with our direct-purchase from Casper. They were quick to respond to any questions and were willing to give us a price adjustment when a new sale appeared. Not to mention, I think we were able to score the best price directly from them.

Tips To Find The Best Price

We thought when we were shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday that those would have been the best deals. I believe they were 15% off the hybrid bundles. I did my research and found that they always have up to 20% off for teachers, the military, and healthcare. Use this link to take you to the promo code page (it took me a minute to find it easily on their site).

All you have to do is verify your status through ID.me (which a lot of stores use to look up your teaching license, etc). I was able to get the 20% off our bundle and felt pretty good about myself.

Look For Bundle Deals

The next week or two before our mattress had even shipped, Casper ended up having a 25% off bundles. On a long shot, I kindly emailed customer service and asked about a price adjustment since I could see that our mattress hadn’t shipped yet. At first, the customer service person told me my mattress had just shipped and I thought that was the end of the price adjustment question.

The next day I received an email saying my credit card would be credited the 5% difference. I was super pumped that a simple email did the trick and kudos to Casper for their customer service on that one.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  1. Each part was shipped to our home
  2. The foundation looks nicer than expected (honestly considering replacing other box springs in our house)
  3. Shipped to our house
  4. 100-day sleep trial
  5. 10-year warranty
  6. Customer service was amazing! Easily and quickly responded to all inquiries
  7. Comfort level increased. The bed has been comfortable for both my husband and I and we sleep in different positions
  8. The headboard fit metal frame easily without needing a bedframe adjustor
  9. We were able to install all parts of the bed ourselves relatively easily

Cons

  1. The king-sized mattress was pretty heavy. If you are nervous about this it would be worth it to pay Casper to set everything up for you.
  2. Discrepancy on the arrival date (4 days late)
  3. You have to air out the mattress for a night before sleeping on it due to a slight odor and to have it fully “inflate”.
  4. Don’t expect your mattress to look exactly like their promo pictures. The cover is super soft but isn’t completely tight. However, we do not notice once your protector and other items are on your bed.
Casper mattress cover once box was open

Cheaper Alternative

If the price is concerning then the Casper original may just do the trick or check out this Sealy foam hybrid mattress we just purchased for our guest room at a fraction of the price of the Casper hybrids.

This mattress does seem to be a little less supportive but still seems pretty good in our book. We plan to write a full review on that mattress later!

How much did our Casper Hybrid Wave Bundle cost?

Remember that they were able to give me a price adjustment for the sale they were running at 25% off bundles. Remember that if you are a military member, educator or healthcare worker you can always get up to 20% off through this page

Here is the breakdown of our purchases after the extra price adjustment I received due to a sale they had going on!

Free shipping was also included. 

While doing research, some sites suggested that the original Casper mattress is similar enough and not worth spending the money on the hybrids. If that is true, then it may be worth trying the middle-of-the-road-priced mattress instead of the more expensive one we went with. 

SW Indigo Batik painted walls with bedding, lamps and fan in primary bedroom
Shop this look: West Elm Duvet, Gray Headboard

FAQs about our bed in a box experience

One of the biggest factors for us in ordering a mattress online was where it was made. According to the Casper FAQ section, all parts of the mattresses are made in California. With a little more research, we found that the actual manufacturing of the Casper mattress takes place in Pennsylvania and Georgia. There is still a little controversy on this as Casper is a global company.

My husband is a back or stomach sleeper and I am a side sleeper. Both of us feel very comfortable in our bed and have limited aches and pains when we wake up (and that wasn’t always the case).

 In addition to being able to accommodate both of our sleeping positions, we are pleasantly surprised at how this mattress doesn’t seem to transfer motion. For once, we are not constantly waking each other up when moving around.

Casper mattresses are a mixture of memory foam, gel pods, cooling technology, and resilient springs. They have diagrams on their site about each layer for the Wave Hybrid. The original Casper mattress is only memory foam and has cooling technology but not as many layers as the hybrid models.

We are lucky enough to live near an actual Casper store. We went in and laid on the mattresses. Of course, the hybrids are what they recommend for a primary bed (and of course, they are more expensive). Since we were used to sleeping on a memory foam Tempurpedic, we thought a hybrid mattress might be close enough to what we were used to while giving up more support.

After laying on the Nova and the Wave we thought the “more supported” or the firm Wave would be better. The Nova has more cushion or is softer. We felt that when we laid on them even though it was pretty hard to tell the difference.

Our mattress was shipped later than we were originally told. We bought this mattress in December 2021 when all manufacturing and shipping were having delays. I believe we were supposed to receive our mattress by December 14th.

We ended up getting it on December 18th after I had emailed to inquire about the status. While 4 days isn’t that big of a deal, it was when our primary room was completely deconstructed as I was trying to paint it a nice dark blue color.

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