Following is a transcription of the video.

Emily Christian: I'm currently laying on a $200,000 bed made of horsehair. Today I'm gonna tell you everything that comes with this bed and find out exactly what it's like to sleep on it. [laughing] Oh, are you kidding me? The creator of the bed is Sweden-based bed maker Hästens. The company has been making beds for 168 years, and it makes the most expensive beds in the world. I'm headed to its flagship store in New York City to check out the shop's crown jewel, the Vividus. At home I have a mattress which is just, you know, a Casper mattress. It's about $500, and it's made entirely of foam. Tell me more about horsehair, because I've never heard about horsehair being used in a bed before.

Sanja Tegeltija: It's actually our key ingredients in the beds. So, we have been using the horsehair for - since we started. For 168 years now.

Emily: Wow.

Sanja: And we actually use it because when you look at it really, really closely, it's like a cylinder. Which means that moisture runs, just passes through it, so it dries up really quickly. And when we sleep, we sweat a lot, and it needs to dry up really quickly, otherwise it would damage our sleep. So, here is an example from another bed model. But if we start looking at it, this is actually the horsehair, so you can touch and feel it.

Emily: Oh, wow!

Sanja: I'm also holding it here. So, it's actually the tail that is being used. And it's not from a live horse, so it's a byproduct. And it's curly, which makes it really comfortable and fluffy. And it's completely steamed and washed, which means that even if you're deadly allergic to horsehair, you wouldn't feel anything.

Emily: According to Hästens, the allergens are destroyed through a process of sanitizing the horsehair by heating it up to 140 degrees Celsius.

Sanja: This is how the knot is, because horsehair is straight, from the beginning.

Emily: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Sanja: So after it's been steamed and washed, it's made in this special knot. Not like I'm doing now. And kept like that for months. And then when we cut it open and do like this, you see it's curly. It gets fluffy.

Emily: That makes sense. So you're not getting, like, special curly-hair horses.

Sanja: No. Emily: You're getting straight horsehair and making it curly.

Sanja: Yes, by this knot.

Emily: OK, that makes so much more sense. 'Cause in my head I was imagining horses with big fluffy tails, and I was thinking to myself, maybe I didn't know as much about horses as I thought I did. [laughing] It must be the cotton that adds the softness, right?

Sanja: Exactly. I mean, if you touch it, it's fluffy. It's layers and layers of it.

Emily: Yeah, it's so fluffy.

Sanja: Definitely the mix, that's what makes it so comfortable.

Emily: How is it made, step by step?

Sanja: It takes 350 hours to make.

Emily: 350 hours to make one bed?

Sanja: Yes. As you know, we have a topper, we have the mattress, and we have the frame.

Emily: And who's making that bed?

Sanja: So we have an, actually, a Vividus atelier, a special sector in our factory in Sweden, in a small town called Köping. And it's only certain people that are certified craftsmen and women that are allowed to craft this bed. The first Vividus ever made is actually one of the craftsmen's own bed. Since we have 14 master craftsmen, they all do a special part of the bed.

Emily: For someone interested in purchasing a Vividus, Hästens offers a bed test.

Sanja: So, a bed test is actually our specialty. We spend so many hours and days educating our staff to actually get to teach the clients on what's the perfect bed for them.

Emily: As someone with frequent neck pain in the morning, I was curious to see how a $200,000 mattress might feel different on my shoulders and back. In my own research in mattress shopping, I learned that you should be checking for two things: the firmness of the mattress and the way that it feels when you move. During my bed test, I wanted to make sure to check for these two things in the Vividus.

Sanja: We will actually start by looking at how you're actually sleeping in the bed. And we don't recommend two pillows. So we'll actually remove one of these. Emily: All right. Am I supposed to sleep like this?

Sanja: I mean, this is the ideal.

Emily: OK.

Sanja: But when we look at the spine, we actually want it to be completely straight, so this is actually a really good tension for you as a mattress. What we want it to do is actually to hug each and every part of your body.

Emily: I can really feel that. Every little crevice of my body feels supported. I normally sleep on my side with my hand under the pillow, like this.

Sanja: OK. When you sleep that many hours on the shoulder, it's not good if it's getting smashed. Emily: That cracked the code! Every night I go to bed and my shoulder's up here, and then I wake up with terrible neck pain, and now I know why. I'm sleeping on too firm of a mattress.

Sanja: Yes, definitely!

Emily: Wow. And I feel like I don't wanna move around a lot. Because I'm feeling - I don't wanna say sunken in, because I have more support than that, but because I just feel so cradled. With the foam mattress at home, I go in and I kind of sink into it, but I'm never finding the right spot. Whereas I feel like I didn't have to find the right spot.

Sanja: So, now I'm gonna leave you to experience the bed. The most important step, to just feel it, relax, try to get comfortable. I will tuck you in and get all cozy with our duvets.

Emily: So fluffy! Sanja: This is really, really...oh, shoot.

Emily: [laughing] Oh, are you kidding me?

Sanja: Oh, no, wait, we need to do it over.

Emily: Oh, no. [laughing] Oh, my gosh. According to Hästens, the perfect bed allows you to sink into just the right spot. And once you get there, the goal is to feel that the bed keeps you as still as possible. While I took a quick lunchtime nap in the Vividus, I didn't feel like moving an inch.

Producer: This is, like, genuinely the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Emily: This is, without a doubt, the most comfortable I have ever been, certainly in the middle of my workday, but I think ever in general the most comfortable I've ever been. I am overwhelmed. But I have to know, who actually owns this bed? Like, who gets to sleep in this all the time?

Sanja: We sell more and more. For every year now we have sold over a thousand Vividus beds. So it is a certain clientele, and our clientele that owns this bed has three or four.

Emily: Three or four of these beds?

Sanja: Yes, some of them do.

Emily: For what? What do you use three? I guess you have multiple rooms if you can afford one of these.

Sanja: I guess they have really big houses and mansions. I was, like, imagining having one in my own Brooklyn apartment. I'm like, where would I put three more? Where would I put - on top of each other?

Sanja: So there are a lot of celebrities sleeping in this actual bed.

Emily: You know, obviously we're talking about the fact that this is a $200,000 bed with a special clientele. But, in another way, you talk about it being an investment. You know, usually you're supposed to buy a mattress every, you know, eight years. Is that different? Like, if you buy one of these, do you have to buy it every eight years? Sanja: No, definitely not.

Emily: OK. Sanja: I mean, we strive for it to last a lifetime. The only thing you should change every seventh or 10th year is the topper.

Emily: How can you tell when a mattress, not a Hästens mattress, but a mattress in general, how can you tell when it's losing its shape?

Sanja: So, what we really don't want happening that we perhaps have heard from clients of other mattresses is the hammock feeling. That usually don't happen in a Hästens, but of course it gets sometimes a little bit, with the natural material moving, it needs maintenance. So for us it's really important to always flip the mattress, the mid-part of the bed, but also the topper. And not only mattresses, but actually asking your kids, jumping in the bed. We actually have our resellers going out to our clients to massage the Vividus topper.

Emily: To massage the topper.

Sanja: Yes.

Emily: And how do they do that?

Sanja: So, they roll it, and then they jump in the bed.

Emily: They jump on it?

Sanja: Yes.

Emily: So you have people come into your house and jump on your bed?

Sanja: Yes.

Emily: Can we do that? Can we try it out?

Sanja: Of course, of course! We recommend everyone to do that in their Hästens. I jump in mine like crazy.

Emily: So much fun. I cannot wait to say that that I jumped on the fanciest mattress in the world.

Producer: Don't smile in your sleep.

Producer: Yeah, I think it's a little too like the stock footage right now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in July 2020.

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