The everything bed

By Marshall Allen (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Steve Marcus

Model Michelle Rosabal demonstrates the Starry Night Sleep Technology bed on Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The mattress industry will have you believe that the higher the price the more blissful the slumber. Pay a grand for a pillow top and log the standard eight hours. Ten grand for hand-flailed horsehair transports you into sleep nirvana.

With the Starry Night Sleep Technology you may never leave the bedroom. At $20,000 to $50,000, Starry Night is not promising simply a good night’s sleep, it’s promising a good time.

And we’re not talking about Magic Fingers. The bed boasts so many bells and whistles it’s like having a spa, a movie theater and a nightclub in your bedroom.

Introduced Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Starry Night also shows the contradictory nature of consumer behavior. The bed boasts health innovations that promote peaceful sleep and built-in entertainment features that could lead to insomnia.

Why? Because consumers told the manufacturer they want a bed that reflects how they use the bedroom.

First, the healthy stuff. Leggett & Platt, the Missouri-based Fortune 500 company that created the bed, designed anti-snoring technology that it says will bring tranquility to relationships marred by one partner’s malady. A sensor detects snoring vibrations and responds by raising the perpetrator’s head 7 degrees to open breathing pathways. If the snoring continues, it raises the mattress another 7 degrees. When all is quiet the bed lowers again to the prone position. Company spokesman Mark Quinn says his personal experience and company research show that elevating the head puts an end to sawing logs. But the studies, he said, are proprietary so he won’t release them.

The Starry Night’s two side-by-side mattresses can heat to 117 degrees or cool to 68 designed with the menopausal woman in mind. The bed also has a massage function. And it monitors body movement and breathing patterns to detect restlessness, and provides diagnostic reports (when you are awake, of course) with tips for better rest lower the temperature to reduce tossing and turning, for instance. In the future, Quinn says, the bed will be able to call 911 if breathing patterns become irregular or stop.

That’s the Starry Night’s mature side.

Then there’s the fun stuff. An iPod docking station connects the tunes for the retractable, cylindrical surround-sound speakers that rise from the four corners of the frame. A projection unit mounted in the headboard beams a 120-inch screen onto the bedroom wall for watching movies or surfing the Internet. The bed’s 1.5 terabytes of disc storage will hold up to 40,000 songs or 2,000 hours of video. The bedroom can become the family room or the disco.

The Starry Night even has a “love button” that, when used with software that integrates and automates the home system, can lower the window shade, dim the lights and play some Barry White, Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye or whatever preselected music might enhance romance.

“We don’t guarantee it enhances activity; we just set the stage,” Quinn quipped.

The bed has so many health and entertainment features because that’s what people said they wanted, Quinn said.

“People don’t just sleep and have sex in the bedroom anymore,” Quinn said. “It is a gathering place for families, where people work on laptops, watch TV, fold clothes.”

The bed won’t be available until 2009 and price depends on the features the lower-end model has fewer entertainment options. Quinn said it’s a small price to pay to get rid of snoring, which can become a point of conflict in relationships. And people need to devote as much attention to getting a good rest as they do to workouts and nutrition, he said.

Dr. Christopher Landrigan, a sleep researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said that without seeing Leggett & Platt’s research, it’s impossible to tell whether the Starry Night will actually provide a better night’s sleep than a conventional bed.

If the company’s claims are true it seems it would release its research, Landrigan said.

“It would be easy marketing for them.”

Landrigan said he’s skeptical that changing the angle of the bed will stop snoring, but cooling the mattress will likely provide better rest.

The Starry Night’s myriad media functions appear to undermine its efforts to improve sleep, Landrigan said. Experts generally agree that rest is best when bed use is restricted to sleeping and intimacy, he said.

“Reading can even be stimulating enough that it can lead to insomnia,” he said. “As a rule, TV and movies in the bed are a big no-no.”