How to choose a bed: sizes, storage and what a good frame is made of

A bed has to do three things at once: fit the room, fit the mattress, and stay quiet for a decade. The first is a measuring problem, the second is a specification problem that catches a surprising number of people, and the third comes down to details you cannot see once the bed is made.

This guide takes them in that order. The bed designs page shows the shapes; this explains how to choose between them.

Bed sizes in India

Bed sizes are not internationally consistent, and Indian sizes differ from American and European ones. An Indian king is narrower than a US king and slightly shorter. This matters when you buy a mattress or bedding online from a listing that assumes a different standard.

If you are over about 6 ft 1 in, a 78 inch mattress is short. A made-to-order frame can be built 84 inches long without changing anything else about the design, which is one of the more genuinely useful reasons to have a bed made rather than bought off the floor.

Clearances: how much room the bed needs around it

• 60 cm minimum on one long side, so the bed can be made and walked past. 75 cm is comfortable.
• 75 to 90 cm where a wardrobe opens. Measure the door's swing, not the wardrobe's face. Sliding doors need none of this, which is often the reason to choose them.
• 90 cm at the foot if there is a walkway there, or 30 cm if the wall is simply the end of the room.
• Both sides, in a shared bedroom. A bed pushed against one wall means one person climbs over the other every night. It is the fastest way to regret an extra 20 cm of mattress.

The common trap in a builder-built bedroom is choosing a king because the room technically takes one, then discovering there is no room left for side tables or for the wardrobe door. In a 10 by 11 ft bedroom a queen with two side tables usually lives better than a king with neither.

Storage, platform or upholstered

This is the real decision, and it is about how the room is used rather than about how the bed looks.

Hydraulic lift-up storage

The whole mattress platform lifts on gas pistons to reveal one large box underneath. It offers by far the most storage of any bed, and it is the right answer for bulky, seasonal things: quilts, suitcases, winter bedding.

What to check: that the pistons are rated for the mattress weight you intend to use, that the platform can be lifted one-handed, and that there is space in front of the bed for the platform's arc. You cannot open it with a rug or a bench in the way, and you will not open it daily, so do not put things you need every morning in there. The Vault storage bed is the hydraulic version of this design.

Drawer storage

Two to four drawers in the base. Much less total volume than hydraulic, but you can open one without stripping the bed, which means it actually gets used. Check the runners: proper telescopic channel runners will still work in five years, and drawers that slide on bare wood will not.

Drawers need clearance to pull out. If the bed sits close to a wardrobe, side-opening drawers on that side are useless, so specify which side they open on before the bed is built.

Platform, with no storage

The lightest option visually and usually the quietest, because there is less structure to work loose. A low platform makes a small bedroom look larger, and an open base lets air move under the mattress, which matters more in a humid month than most people expect. Choose it if you have wardrobe space and want the room to feel calm. The Nova wooden platform bed and the Atrium low platform bed sit at two different heights of the same idea.

Upholstered

An upholstered headboard is a comfort decision as much as an aesthetic one: it is the difference between reading in bed against padding and against wood. It can be combined with any of the three bases above. Fabric on a headboard collects dust in the buttoning and the seams, so a smooth or lightly channelled panel is easier to live with than deep tufting.

Headboard height

Headboards run from about 60 cm above the mattress to full-height panels that reach most of the way up the wall. Height changes the room more than any other single feature of a bed.

• Low, 60 to 80 cm above the mattress. Keeps a small or low-ceilinged room open. Not much to lean against.
• Mid, 80 to 110 cm. The comfortable default, and high enough to read against.
• Tall or full wall. Gives the room a clear focal point and works well under a high ceiling. It needs to be built to your wall height, and it will cover a socket or a switch if you do not plan for it.

Check where your bedside sockets and switches are before choosing a tall headboard. Moving a headboard is easy; moving a switchboard is not.

What makes a bed silent

Creaking is not a mattress problem. It is almost always one of four things, and all four are questions you can ask.

1. 1The joinery. Bolted or dowelled joints into solid timber stay tight. Joints held with screws into engineered board work loose as the board compresses.
2. 2The centre support. A queen or king base needs a central rail with its own legs to the floor. Without it the slats flex in the middle, and that flex is what you hear.
3. 3Slat spacing. Slats should sit no more than about 7 cm apart, both to stay quiet and because most foam and pocket-spring mattress warranties require it.
4. 4Contact points. Wood resting directly on wood squeaks. Felt or rubber pads where the slats meet the rails cost almost nothing and remove most of the noise.

Before you order

For the layout of the whole bedroom rather than just the bed, and for what to do when the room is genuinely small, furnishing a small apartment works through a compact 2BHK room by room.