Luxury Mattress Costs $33,000

There's a growing market in luxury mattresses. The most expensive made in the United States is the Palais Royale by E.S. Kluft & Co., which costs $33,000. It contains 10 pounds of cashmere and its coils are tied together by hand with Italian twine. The price only goes up for higher-end, imported European models:

At $69,500—roughly the price of a Porsche Cayenne S hybrid SUV—there's the Vividus king-size mattress set from Hästens Sängar AB, of Sweden. Hästens says it takes 160 hours to assemble this mattress entirely by hand, which has a Swedish-pine frame with thick layers of horsehair, cotton, flax and wool inside. The company says since introducing the mattress in 2006, it has sold 250 of them world-wide.

There's an arms race under way in the world of luxury mattresses that jittery economists and sluggish home sales seem unable to stop. Even at the middle-to-upper-middle tiers, mattress prices are creeping up as companies cater to mainstream demand for luxurious sleep.

Voon. At the link, you can view a cross section of the Palais Royale.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user aralbalkan used under Creative Commons license