Loft bedrooms can be some of the most interesting rooms in a home. Exposed beams, sloping ceilings, dormer windows and tucked-away corners give them character that you simply don't get in a standard square bedroom.
They can also make choosing furniture a little more complicated.
A bed that looks perfectly reasonable on paper can suddenly feel very tall when it's sitting beneath a roof slope. A headboard can interfere with a window or eaves. Put the bed in the wrong place and you might end up using the highest, most useful part of the room for furniture that you only lie down on.
The good news is that an unusual room doesn't necessarily need an unusual bed. Often, choosing the right height and shape of frame is enough to make much better use of the space.
Here's how to work out what could suit yours.
Where Can the Bed Actually Go?
In a conventional bedroom, the decision might simply be which wall has enough space for the bed. Loft rooms ask you to think in three dimensions.
Look at where the ceiling begins to slope, where you can comfortably stand and which parts of the room are better suited to lower furniture. The tallest area can be valuable for wardrobes, dressing space and simply moving around without thinking about your head.
Your bed doesn't always need that height.
A low wooden bed can allow you to use an area of the room where a taller frame and headboard would feel crowded. A headboard-free design gives you even more freedom because there's less vertical structure competing with the ceiling behind it.
That doesn't mean pushing the bed as far beneath the eaves as it will physically go. You still want enough headroom to sit up and get in and out comfortably. The aim is to find a position that makes sensible use of the lower part of the room without making the bed feel squeezed into it.
If you're considering the whole bedroom layout rather than the bed alone, our How to Choose a Wooden Bed for Your Bedroom guide looks more broadly at working with room proportions, furniture and available space.
Working With Sloping Ceilings and Eaves
There's no single layout that defines a loft bedroom. Where the roof slopes and how the room has been converted can completely change which bed works best.
If the bed will sit beneath a long roof slope
This is where keeping things low and simple can really help. A lower frame reduces the overall height of the bed, while removing the headboard avoids creating a tall point against the lowest part of the ceiling.
A platform bed can work particularly well here, giving you a solid wooden frame without adding unnecessary height behind the mattress.
If you have exposed beams
Measure to the lowest obstruction above and around the bed, rather than relying on the room's maximum ceiling height. A beam crossing the proposed bed position could matter much more than the height at the centre of the loft.
There's also no need to hide those beams. If they're one of the features you love about the room, a lower bed can leave more of the original architecture visible.
If you have a full-height gable wall
You have considerably more freedom. A bed with a headboard can work beautifully here, and there's no reason to automatically rule out a standard-height bed simply because the bedroom happens to be in a loft.
In fact, placing the bed against the tallest wall can make it more of a focal point while leaving the lower areas beneath the eaves available for other uses.
If the bed will sit in or beneath a dormer
Take the window into account as part of the furniture plan. Check the height of the sill, how the window opens and whether a headboard would obstruct either the view or access.
A low or headboard-free frame can keep more of the window exposed, but again, it depends entirely on the dimensions of your particular dormer.
The Headboard Question
A headboard can be one of the first things that makes an otherwise suitable bed difficult to position in a loft.
Imagine the mattress and main frame fitting neatly beneath a slope, only for the headboard to extend straight into it. That's why it's worth checking headboard height separately from overall bed height when comparing designs.
If the bed needs to sit beneath eaves, beside a low window or against an unusually shaped wall, a headboard-free platform bed gives you a simple rectangular footprint to work with.
But don't rule headboards out altogether.
Against a full-height wall, a wooden headboard can give the room a clear focal point and provide some visual structure among all those changing ceiling lines. Our beds with headboards include both standard and lower designs, so you can choose the proportions around the space you actually have.
The room should make that decision for you. If there's height available, use it if you want to. If there isn't, keeping the frame simpler can give you far more flexibility.
Don't measure the frame and stop there.
Your mattress adds to the finished height of the bed. A particularly deep mattress on a low frame may place you higher beneath a sloping ceiling than you expect, so consider the frame and mattress together when checking headroom.
Three Bed Styles Worth Considering
There isn't one universal “loft bed”. These three styles simply solve different problems.
If height is the main restriction, low wooden beds are the obvious place to look.
Our low frames sit at approximately 20cm before the mattress, compared with around 40cm for our standard-height designs. That difference can be significant when you're working beneath a roof slope or lower window.
They don't all create the same look, either. You can choose a classic low wooden frame or take things further with a Japanese-style design. Our Low Bed Buying Guide explores the different styles and how they can change the feel of a bedroom.
Sometimes the problem isn't the height of the whole bed. It's one tall section at the head.
A headboard-free platform design removes that obstacle, making it particularly useful where the wall behind the bed slopes sharply or includes a window. The simpler outline can also work well in loft conversions where exposed beams, brickwork or other architectural features already give the room plenty of character.
A loft conversion with good headroom doesn't need to look like it's been furnished around a low ceiling that isn't actually causing a problem.
If you have a full-height wall and plenty of space above the mattress, a standard-height bed may be every bit as suitable as it would be downstairs. This is why measuring the actual room matters more than following a blanket rule about what belongs in a loft.
And the four poster?
We love the idea too, but this is one loft-bed option that needs particularly careful measuring. Our four poster beds have a recommended minimum ceiling height of 220cm (7ft 3in), so they're better suited to conversions with generous headroom.
If yours passes the tape-measure test, our Four Poster Bed Buying Guide covers everything else you need to consider.
What About the Awkward Corner?
Most loft bedrooms have at least one part of the room that seems determined to be difficult.
It might be a narrow section beneath the eaves, a corner where the ceiling drops sharply or a space that simply isn't tall enough for a wardrobe or chest of drawers. Once you've decided where the bed will sit, these areas can become much easier to work with.
Low storage, baskets and smaller bedside furniture can make use of restricted spaces without fighting against the shape of the room. In other cases, leaving an awkward corner empty can actually work better. Not every available centimetre needs to be filled.
This is particularly worth thinking about if you're choosing a larger wooden bed. Moving from a Double to a King, for example, doesn't just increase the sleeping area. It changes the space left around the frame and may affect which parts of the loft remain useful for other furniture.
Sometimes moving the bed even a short distance away from the lowest part of the ceiling can make the whole layout feel more comfortable.
Getting a Wooden Bed Up There
There's another measurement that's easy to forget when furnishing a loft bedroom: the route into the room.
Loft conversions can come with narrow staircases, tight turns, smaller doorways and landings that weren't designed with an Emperor bed in mind.
Fortunately, our wooden beds are delivered flat packed rather than arriving as one enormous assembled frame. The individual components can be taken into the bedroom before the bed is put together.
Even so, it's worth checking the route upstairs before ordering, particularly with one of our larger bed sizes!
Take a look at:
The staircase - Are there tight turns or areas with restricted headroom?
Landings and doorways - Check the narrowest points along the route rather than just the bedroom door.
The loft entrance - If your conversion has an unusual doorway or access point, make sure the individual bed components can comfortably pass through.
Assembly space - Once everything is upstairs, you'll need enough room around the bed position to assemble the frame.
A few minutes with the tape measure beforehand is considerably easier than discovering an awkward corner halfway up the stairs.
Let the Loft Set the Style
One of the advantages of a loft bedroom is that the architecture often gives you a starting point for the rest of the room.
If you have exposed roof timbers, a solid oak bed can sit naturally alongside them without everything needing to match exactly. Oak's visible grain and variation can complement the character already present in the space.
A bright conversion with white walls and roof lights gives you a different starting point. Scandinavian pine beds, natural oak and lighter finishes can keep that airy appearance while bringing some warmth into the room.
Darker finishes aren't off limits, either. In a larger loft with plenty of daylight, Walnut or Black can give a simple wooden frame greater definition against lighter walls and flooring.
Think about what the room already has before deciding what it needs more of. Beautiful beams don't necessarily need competing with. A very simple conversion, on the other hand, might benefit from a bed with more visible timber character.
If you're choosing between the materials themselves, our Oak vs Pine Bed Frames: Which Should You Choose? guide takes a closer look at the differences.
Making the Most of an Unusual Bedroom
The best bed for a loft room isn't determined by the fact that it's upstairs. It's determined by the particular shape of the space. A room with sharply sloping eaves may benefit from a low, headboard-free frame. A dormer might influence where the head of the bed can sit. A generous conversion with a full-height wall could comfortably accommodate a standard-height bed with a substantial headboard.
That's why we'd always measure the actual space before narrowing down the style.
Our wooden beds are handmade to order in Yorkshire from solid European oak or Scandinavian pine, with sizes from Single through to Emperor and a choice of finishes. If standard dimensions don't quite work with the space you've inherited, we can also create bespoke wooden beds for non-standard requirements.
Loft rooms may ask you to think a little harder about where the bed goes, but that's also part of their appeal. Work with the slopes, beams and unusual proportions and they can become features of the bedroom rather than obstacles you need to disguise!
