I was 23 when my bed broke and instead of fixing it decided…not to have one. I don’t mean that gradually over years it got less stable until I one day found myself staring at the ceiling from a position horizontal to the floor. It literally broke.
One night at around 11.30pm the legs just collapsed en masse sending bed and I skidding across the bedroom. Cue furious thumping from the flat below which sounded like he was hitting his ceiling with a baseball bat. As I lay there facedown on my mattress surrounded by shards of MDF and tiny Allen key screws I felt like I’d reached rock bottom.
For the next three weeks I couldn’t afford a new bedframe so made the executive decision to just not have one. I pushed my mattress up against the wall, vacuumed up all the debris and figured I’d see how I got on.
I’m not going to lie, I expected to hate it.
I assumed I’d spend three weeks staring at the bed leaning menacingly in the corner while I saved up for a trip to Argos. But actually, I loved it. I suddenly felt like my bedroom had so much more space.
Instead of that big pine monster taking up valuable real estate in the centre of my room, I could see all the way across to the window without anything slicing up the space. My room felt more streamlined, grown up and, weirdly, less hectic. Fast forward fifteen years and I still prefer to sleep low.
Officially, we could afford a bed frame. Danny and I make enough now that we could splash out on a bedroom set without blinking twice. But I’ve learned a few things about sleeping without a bedframe that can transform a small bedroom.
Our spare room is laughably small. Picture teeny tiny. We’re talking you could shrugwalk into it whilst inside a Premier Inn and still have room to spare small.
It’s eight foot by ten foot with a slanting ceiling that starts at normal height but dips down to about breast height on one wall where it meets the eaves. When we moved in we tried fitting a ‘normal’ sized double bed in there. Off-the-peg wooden frame from Ikea and all.
Guests were polite but always commented on how “cozy” it was –read as: this room makes you feel like you’re sleeping in a broom cupboard. But since we moved the bed out and built a platform for our mattress to sit on, knocking it only about 4 inches off the floor..guests actually fight over who sleeps there. Same footprint.
Completely different feeling. The ceilings feel higher, the walls feel further apart and there actually feels like space to walk around in it without doing that awkward side-stepping shuffle you do in tiny bedrooms everywhere. Honesty, the biggest thing is making it feel intentional instead of sloppy.
Random mattress dumped straight on to carpet? Lazy student bedsit. Fancy mattress on a well-made platform topped with seriously nice bedding and some strategically placed cushions?
Sort of like you’ve looked into Japanese minimalism and made some intelligent decisions about how you live your life. It was actually pretty easy to build our platform. Maybe £50 worth of wood from B&Q (some 2×6 inch boards and then some smaller slats to create airflow underneath) and I knocked it together one Saturday afternoon whilst drinking far too much tea.
Danny had to hold it still for me at one point whilst I worked out how a spirit level worked but that’s basically it. Simple little box shape that lifts your mattress up far enough away from the ground that it looks intentional without dominating the space. The Japanese have been worshipping at the altar of low beds for years.
Think of those gorgeous Japanese rooms, done up in traditional style with the mats all laid out on the floor. There’s something really soothing about being low to the ground when you sleep. It just makes you feel more at one with the room.
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One drawback is that when everything is at eye-level your bedding needs to be on point. Gone are the days of distracting people with a cool headboard or swiftly throwing a valance over the bed legs to hide the shabbyness of your mattress frame. When your bed is THAT low what you see is what you get.
Invest in good sheets. Flannel if you like but seriously consider cotton. Stick to colours that work with your wall paint and, above all else, keep it FREAKING CLEAN my friend.
When your bed is that low every.single.detritus.com will be on display. Yeah storage is different when you don’t have all that space under your bed either. But honestly you end up with more than you lose.
Once your bedframe is gone bam! You’ve suddenly got this huge expanse of wall that isn’t chopped up by bed and headboard. I mounted some floating shelves where our headboard would normally sit – three different lengths and a few inches apart vertically so I can stash my books, some little succulent that survives despite my black fingers and my current read.
Lamp choices are weird when you sleep low too. Bedside lamps suddenly tower over you when your bed’s that close to the floor. They looked like street lamps at the sides of our bed so we switched to pendant lighting downpipe style things that hang from the ceiling but are positioned perfectly to shine where we need them when we need to read.
Feels like you’re sleeping in a nice cozy cocoon instead of just… sleeping low. Mine came to visit recently and knocked up a bedofher own after she saw ours. Her mistake?
Dumping her existing mattress on the floor and calling it a day. Looked a hot mess. Seemed like she’d been evicted and was living out of suitcases.
Luckily she called me in to rescue it and we added a giant rug to frame the mattress and make it feel like part of the room. We also hung her curtains from about a foot above where the ‘window’ was which draws the eye up and makes the room feel bigger. Same room.
Same mattress. Completely different vibe. Do I have more cleaning to do now?hell yeah.
There’s nowhere to hide dust bunnies when your bed floats half an inch above the floor. Now I Hoover underneath my bed twice a week.
Sounds annoying but its literally takes about thirty seconds since there’s no bedframe to get the hoover behind.
Bonus though: my bedroom floors have never been cleaner and holy shit do I notice every square inch of dirt scuff on the carpet now. This won’t work with every type of mattress. Mine used to be a memory foam one that ended up developing disgusting mould marks down one side after about six months of use.
Laying your mattress directly on the floor traps heat and moisture and isn’t great for most kinds of mattress. We actually built the platform with slats so there’s enough airflow underneath to prevent it happening again. That £50 I spent on a simple pine frame potentially saved me having to buy a new £400 mattress.
Honestly though the thing that shocks me about floor beds is how much more you interact with the rest of the room. With a normal bed your eye is drawn to that big ol’ slab of furniture taking up most of the central area of your bedroom. But when your bed is low to the ground it just flows better.
It opens up the space and makes your bedroom feel less like a cell you’ve been locked in and more like a home you actually want to spend time in. Sleeping low might be the best thing you ever do for your small bedroom.
