If you remember waterbeds being everywhere and then suddenly not, here is the short version: yes, they are still made and you can still buy one. What has changed is who makes them. A handful of specialist manufacturers and replacement-bladder suppliers keep the category alive, mostly selling to people who already own a frame and want to keep it going. No major mattress brand builds them, no mainstream retailer stocks them, and you will not find one on a showroom floor in Los Angeles, including ours.
How a waterbed works
A waterbed is a vinyl bladder full of water sitting inside a supporting structure, with a heater underneath and a safety liner around it to contain a leak. Water does not compress, so your weight displaces it rather than squashing it, and the surface conforms to your whole body at once. That is the appeal, and it is a real one.
Two things vary between designs:
- Hard-side beds use a rigid wooden frame around the bladder. They sit on a plywood deck and a pedestal, and they do not take standard sheets or standard bed frames.
- Soft-side beds wrap the bladder in a foam perimeter inside a zippered cover, so the whole thing is shaped and sized like a conventional mattress. These take normal sheets and sit on a normal foundation.
Within both, the bladder is either free-flow, which is the classic sloshing version, or waveless, which packs fiber baffles inside to damp the movement. Waveless beds are graded by how much motion they allow, and the quieter the bed, the firmer and more supportive it tends to feel.
What actually happened to waterbeds
They did not get banned and they did not get worse. They lost on convenience.
Waterbeds peaked in the late 1980s, when frequently cited industry estimates put them at close to a fifth of US mattress sales. The decline through the 1990s came from several directions at once:
- Landlords wrote them out of leases. A filled queen holds in the region of 150 to 200 gallons. Water weighs about 8.3 pounds per gallon, so the bed alone lands well over a thousand pounds before anyone gets in it. That is within what most floors handle, because the load spreads over a large area, but it made building owners nervous and waterbed clauses became standard in rental agreements. In a city like ours, with a huge pre-war apartment stock and a lot of renters, that alone killed a lot of demand.
- Leaks. Rare with a good liner and routine care, catastrophic when they happen in a second-floor unit.
- The hassle was constant. Filling and draining took hours. Moving meant draining first. The vinyl needed conditioner added periodically. The heater ran every night and showed up on the electricity bill.
- Memory foam arrived. By the late 1990s, foam mattresses were offering the same full-body conforming feel with no water, no heater, no liner and no landlord conversation. That is the real story. The waterbed's main selling point got replaced by something easier.
Are waterbeds good for your back?
It depends entirely on which kind, and the honest answer is more mixed than either the fans or the critics suggest.
A free-flow waterbed is poor for most backs. Because water redistributes freely, your heaviest point sinks until the bed finds equilibrium, which usually means your hips drop and your lower back is left unsupported in a sagging curve. It is the same failure mode as an old, worn-out mattress, and it is why so many people remember waterbeds as comfortable to lie on and unpleasant to wake up on.
A waveless waterbed is a different proposition. The fiber baffles resist that displacement, so the surface holds a flatter line and supports the lumbar region properly. Plenty of people with chronic pain genuinely did better on these.
The one benefit nothing else quite replicates is even warmth. A heated water surface distributes gentle heat across the whole body, which some people with arthritis or stiffness find helpful in a way that a heated pad on one spot does not match. If that is what you are chasing, it is worth naming it specifically rather than assuming you need the water.
The ownership realities
Filling takes hours with a hose and draining takes longer, since a pump is needed for the last of it. You cannot move a filled waterbed, so every house move is a full drain and refill. The heater runs year round, which works against you for much of the year in a warm climate. And vinyl ages, which is exactly why replacement bladders are what keeps the category alive.
What to buy instead, depending on what you actually liked
Most people replacing a waterbed are not attached to the water. They are attached to one specific thing it did. Name that thing and the modern answer is usually straightforward.
If you liked the full-body conforming feel, memory foam is the direct descendant. It contours to your whole shape the way water does, without the hips dropping, because the foam supports rather than redistributes. Tempur-Pedic is the reference point here and the closest thing to a waterbed feel done properly. Browse our memory foam mattresses, or read our explainer on hybrid construction if you want some lift underneath it.
If you liked the floating, buoyant feel rather than the sinking one, latex is the better match. It pushes back and supports you on top rather than letting you settle in. Savvy Rest, Harvest Green and Birch all build that way, and all three are in our showrooms.
If you liked the warmth, buy the mattress on its own merits and add a heated mattress pad. You get the heat, you can turn it off in August, and your landlord never has an opinion about it.
If you liked being able to adjust the firmness by adding or removing water, an adjustable base plus the right mattress gets you closer than you would expect, since much of what people adjusted for was pressure at the hips and shoulders. Our adjustable bed collection covers the options.
Frequently asked questions
Do they still make waterbeds?
Yes. A small number of specialist manufacturers still produce bladders, heaters, liners and complete soft-side waterbeds, and replacement parts for existing frames are readily available online. What no longer exists is mainstream production and retail distribution, so you will be buying from a niche supplier rather than a mattress store.
Can you still buy waterbeds?
You can, almost entirely online and from specialist retailers. Expect to order rather than to try one first, and check your lease before you do, since waterbed restrictions are still common in rental agreements.
What happened to waterbeds?
They lost on convenience rather than on comfort. Landlord restrictions, leak risk, the weight, the heater running cost and the hours involved in filling, draining and moving one all counted against them. Then memory foam arrived and delivered the same conforming feel with none of that, and the category collapsed through the 1990s.
Are waterbeds good for your back?
Waveless waterbeds can be, because the internal baffles stop your hips sinking and keep your spine closer to neutral. Free-flow waterbeds generally are not, since water redistributes until your heaviest point bottoms out, leaving the lower back unsupported. If back support is the goal, a supportive modern mattress is a more reliable route, and our guide to mattresses for back pain works through what to look for.
How much does a waterbed weigh?
A filled queen typically holds somewhere around 150 to 200 gallons. At roughly 8.3 pounds per gallon, that puts the bed well over a thousand pounds filled. The load is spread across the whole footprint rather than concentrated, which is why residential floors generally handle it, but it is still the reason leases and insurers care.
How do you drain a waterbed?
Turn off and unplug the heater well in advance so the water is not hot, open the fill valve and siphon or pump the water out through a hose to a drain or outside. Gravity alone will not finish the job, so a pump is needed for the last of it, and the bladder should be fully dry before it is folded or stored.
If you are replacing one
Getting rid of an old waterbed is mostly a drainage job rather than a disposal job, since the frame and the bladder go separately and the bladder is not bulky once empty. If you are also clearing out a conventional mattress at the same time, our guide on mattress disposal in Los Angeles covers the local options, and our delivery crews take the old set away when they bring the new one.
The useful step is working out which part of your waterbed you actually want to keep. Come tell us at any of our five Los Angeles showrooms and we will put you on the two or three beds that do that specific thing well, rather than a dozen that do not. Same-day delivery across most of the metro, and a free 120-night comfort guarantee on every mattress. Not sure where to start? Take our sleep quiz.
