How to Choose a Designer Bed

• How to choose the right sofa for a smaller living room
• Tips for measuring and planning your space
• The benefits of compact and corner sofa designs
• Designer sofa recommendations for smaller rooms
• Simple ways to make your living space feel bigger and brighter

A third of your life is spent in that subconscious realm of dreamland. Well, depending on your daily caffeine intake, anyway. But asleep or not, your bedroom is likely the room you spend the most time in throughout your life. Which is funny because when you build the hierarchy of the home, does everyone place it at the top of the list? Is it "Let's get the sleeping quarters figured out; the rest will follow"? Rarely. To us, it's the home's unsung hero. Well, it is time to sing its praises. More specifically, the piece of furniture it's named after. The Bed.

From health to aesthetics, the benefits of making a bed your most considered purchase are almost infinite. The most important of them all, in our opinion? The bedroom demands a personal touch. It is your sanctuary, the strongest visual representation of your style, in its most intimate form. A designer bed will offer comfort for every early night and lazy Sunday, while displaying your personality to perfection.

As with anything high-end, there are two core components of a designer bed. The build quality, the aesthetic appeal and adaptability are key. None is more important than the other, but a balance of the three is paramount. The fact that a bed is such a high-use piece of design requires it to last long while remaining easy on the eye every time you see it. After all, the only thing you want looking tired at night is you before you drift off.

Durable, high-quality upholstery and decades of design history from household names like Flexform and B&B Italia are the gold standard when it comes to this combination. But let's take a closer look at what exactly you're looking for.

Made of something special - Given how often you'll use your luxury bed, you want a material that offers not just softness but longevity. I know, often not the best of friends. That is why quality matters. A supple, loose-fitting leather that moves almost like water is an ideal crossover of luxury visuals and longevity. Whereas a fabric with a high rub count is a more practical option for long-lasting bedroom use. Again, the material itself isn't the key factor, but the overall quality it provides is.

Heritage and history - We're not saying that age in this instance is a guarantee of experience. But in our world, it tends to mean there is a lot of knowledge and heritage driving both the manufacturing process and the material decisions. Shopping brands that have countless years of verifiable history when it comes to making luxury furniture ensures you're going to have a time-tested, experience-backed piece of luxury design that also comes with a household name.

A good fit - The best designer beds are nothing if not versatile. The options don't have to stop at upholstery or headboard size. Having one that doubles as a side table, storage unit, and lighting solution is something that truly makes a room feel like it was tailor-made to your specifications. Like a chic 5* hotel that has been constructed for your unique tastes. Some essentially take on the role of the entire bedroom.

Size matters when it comes to the bedroom. No, this isn't the start of a BuzzFeed article; we are talking about making sure your bed can actually integrate with your sleep space. We live in an era of design where there are so many bespoke options available that it is nearly impossible to get it wrong. Nearly. You still need to consider your variables before choosing one of the many sizes. Single or superking? High enough that it looks like something from a fairy tale? Or so low that even the most-ardent Scandi furniture enthusiast would look on, jaw agape.

The key really is to make sure the bed sits perfectly in the middle of the scale. You don't want to lose it against the entire sleep setting; it is the centrepiece after all. But you also don't want it to dominate the environment so much so much so that it negates the efforts of the entire room. Sort of a leading cast member of the ensemble. Make sure all of your furniture is visible but radiates outwards around the bed.

A general rule of thumb for height is to use the ceiling as your benchmark. The higher they are, the higher the bed should be and vice versa. Getting this part wrong can make the space feel either cramped or empty and lifeless.

We've discussed why quality materials are so important, but knowing which ones are available and why they're optimal for your space is a different animal. There are no set rules of course, but like many things in life. Listening to the experts is often advisable.

Wood - The classic. A staple everywhere from stately homes to Swedish apartments. They can evoke everything from grandeur to minimalism. Be carved to include intricate details or simply exist as a platform for a mattress. Not forgetting that wood is highly versatile when it comes to finishes; you can have everything from rich walnut to bright beech; for us, it really is the underrated all-rounder. However, its natural properties do add a bit more manual labour when it comes to Spring cleaning the bedroom.

Metal - Lending itself mostly to an industrial-style sleep space, metal

Fabric -

Leather -

The nature of being a place to lie down and relax gives a bed the largest horizontal footprint in the home (extendable dining tables unaccounted for). You can't sleep vertically, but what if you could store them standing up? Wall beds have always been seen as a space-saving necessity, an ergonomic convenience, but with apartment living becoming far more common and incredible innovation in multi-functional furniture has become a new entity entirely.

Dining rooms can welcome guests for dinner, then invite them to stay the night; WFH all of a sudden stands for waking for hash browns, and falling asleep on the sofa takes on a whole new meaning in itself. One brand that handles the world of compact living incredibly well is Clei. Their solutions offer designer sleeping and integrative technology in one precise package that opens the door (or the wall) to napping no matter the room.

As with every considerably large piece of furniture, the best place to buy a bed is in-store. As mentioned, you'll be spending a lot of time in each other's presence, so before making that purchase, see it for yourself. A digital representation gives you a good idea of what to expect, but physically trying it out ensures no surprises and also allows you access to the experts who can answer questions that may have never even occurred to you.

It is the reason our showroom contains multiple bedroom settings with styles from across modern design. We want our customers to be able to truly grasp the available combinations while getting insights that only our experienced specialists can provide.