Nottingham vs the UK Average: Furniture Spend Compared

There is no published furniture spend figure for Nottingham to compare with the UK average. The ONS reports household expenditure on furnishings, household equipment and routine maintenance in Family Spending at UK, national and regional level, drawn from the Living Costs and Food Survey. The East Midlands is as local as the published data goes, and it covers a large area of which the city is a small part.

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Where Nottingham does differ from the national picture is in the bedroom. The city’s housing is dominated by bay fronted terraces and interwar semi detached houses, both of which produce bedrooms with a specific and repeated problem: a front room with a bay that has no wall for a wardrobe, and a small third bedroom that has to hold a bed and nothing else. Those two rooms decide most of the furniture bought here.

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Key findings at a glance

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• No UK organisation publishes furniture expenditure for individual cities, so a Nottingham versus national comparison cannot be evidenced and should not be claimed.

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• Bedroom storage, not bedroom size, is the recurring constraint in the city’s bay fronted stock, because the bay removes the wall a wardrobe needs.

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• Standard UK mattress sizes are 90cm x 190cm single, 120cm x 190cm small double, 135cm x 190cm double, 150cm x 200cm king and 180cm x 200cm super king.

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• A wardrobe needs around 58cm to 60cm of internal depth for a garment on a hanger, and anything shallower forces clothes to hang sideways on a rail.

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• A hinged wardrobe door needs its own width again as swing space in front of it, which is why sliding doors work where a bed sits close to the wardrobe.

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• Allow 60cm on at least one long side of a bed to make it usable, and 75cm where a wardrobe or chest opens onto that side.

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• The English Housing Survey publishes dwelling age and tenure context for England, and the Nationally Described Space Standard sets minimum bedroom floor areas and widths in new homes.

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Sizing the bed against the room, not the wish

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The most common error we see in bedrooms of this type is a bed one size larger than the room can carry. A double will fit almost any main bedroom in the city. Whether it leaves a usable route past it, and whether a wardrobe door can then open, is a different question, and it is answered by clearance rather than by the bed footprint alone.

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The working rule is 60cm on at least one long side for access, rising to 75cm where a wardrobe or a chest of drawers opens onto that side, because a drawer front extends into the space a person is already standing in. At the foot of the bed, 60cm is enough to walk past and 90cm is needed if a piece of furniture stands there.

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The table below applies those allowances to standard UK bed sizes, giving the minimum room dimensions each becomes comfortable in. These are specification figures built from standard mattress sizes and accepted circulation allowances.

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UK bed size	Mattress	Minimum comfortable room	Access it allows	Typical Nottingham room
Single	90cm x 190cm	210cm x 250cm	60cm one side, 60cm at foot	Third bedroom
Small double	120cm x 190cm	240cm x 250cm	60cm both sides	Second bedroom
Double	135cm x 190cm	255cm x 250cm	60cm both sides, 60cm at foot	Second or main bedroom
King	150cm x 200cm	270cm x 260cm	60cm both sides, 60cm at foot	Main bedroom in a semi
Super king	180cm x 200cm	300cm x 260cm	60cm both sides, 60cm at foot	Extended or knocked through only

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Read the third column against the room before choosing. Where a bay fronted front bedroom measures around 340cm into the bay but only 260cm of that is square, a king fits the square portion and a super king does not, whatever the total floor area suggests. Where the room genuinely takes the larger size, king size fabric beds UK are the point at which upholstered headboards start to make sense, because the wall behind is wide enough to carry them.

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The bay window bedroom and the missing wall

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A bay fronted bedroom loses the whole front wall to glazing and gains a shallow projection of floor in return. That trade is good for light and bad for storage, because a wardrobe needs an uninterrupted run of wall at least 100cm wide and 200cm high, and a bay bedroom typically has only one such run: the wall opposite the bay, which is also where the bed wants to be.

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Something has to give, and the decision should be made deliberately rather than by default. Placing the bed against the wall opposite the bay puts the wardrobe on a side wall, which usually means a narrower unit and possibly a taller one. Placing the bed with its head to a side wall frees the opposite wall for storage but puts the bed’s long side into the walkway to the bay.

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In smaller rooms the second arrangement is generally the better one, because storage that does not fit is a permanent problem while a slightly tighter walkway is a daily inconvenience. The bay itself should stay clear or take something low. A window seat, a bench or a slim dressing table at around 75cm high keeps the light and adds a genuinely useful surface, and a compact selection from modern dressing tables UK suits a bay better than a chest of drawers ever will, because the shallow depth follows the projection of the window.

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Door swing: the dimension nobody measures

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A hinged wardrobe door requires clear floor in front of it equal to its own width. A 50cm door needs 50cm of swing, and two doors on a 100cm wardrobe need the same 50cm each because they open into the same space. Add the person standing there and the practical requirement is closer to 75cm. In a bedroom where the bed sits 60cm from the wardrobe, the doors cannot open fully, and the wardrobe is only partly usable from the day it arrives.

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Sliding doors remove the problem entirely. They cost a little internal depth, because the track and the overlap take space behind the front, so a sliding unit needs to be around 65cm deep externally to give the 58cm to 60cm of hanging depth a garment requires. That is a fair exchange when the alternative is a door that opens 40cm and stops.

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Where the room cannot give either, the answer is to move the storage function rather than compress it. An ottoman bed puts substantial volume under the mattress with no floor cost and no swing, taking bedding and out of season clothing out of the wardrobe and freeing the hanging space for what actually needs hanging. In the city’s small third bedrooms this is often the only way to store anything at all, and pairing a compact frame with modern chest of drawers UK at around 40cm to 45cm deep will hold folded clothing in a room that has no space for a wardrobe.

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The third bedroom problem

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Both dominant house types in Nottingham produce a third bedroom above the stairs or over the hall, and it is small by the standards of anything built today. The Nationally Described Space Standard sets minimum floor areas and minimum widths for bedrooms in new homes, and these rooms predate that entirely. Many are under 2.5m in their smaller dimension, which is enough for a single bed and a route past it and very little else.

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Trying to make such a room a full bedroom usually fails. Treating it as a single purpose room succeeds. If it is a bedroom, it takes a single bed with storage underneath and a wall hung mirror rather than a freestanding one. If it is an office, it takes a desk across the shorter wall and shelving above. If it is a nursery, it takes a cot and one chest that will later become the child’s own storage.

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The specification consequence is height again. In a room this small, everything that can go up should go up, because the floor is fully committed the moment the bed is placed. Shelving above a desk, storage above the door line, and hooks rather than a coat stand all recover capacity that the floor cannot give. Nothing tall should stand where it narrows the route to the window, since a room of this size relies on that one window for the whole of its light.

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What this means for UK homes

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Size the bed by clearance, not by footprint. Allow 60cm on at least one long side, 75cm where drawers or wardrobe doors open onto it, and 60cm at the foot to walk past.

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Check the wardrobe swing before buying. A hinged door needs its own width in clear floor, and 75cm with a person in front of it. If the bed sits closer than that, choose sliding doors.

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Keep 58cm to 60cm of internal hanging depth. Sliding units need around 65cm externally to achieve it. Shallower than that and garments hang sideways on a rail.

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In a bay window bedroom, decide between light and storage deliberately. Put nothing tall in the bay, use a low bench or a slim dressing table there, and give the best uninterrupted wall to whichever function the room needs more.

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In a small third bedroom, commit to one use and build upwards. Under bed storage, wall hung mirrors and shelving above desk height recover the capacity the floor has already spent.

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Methodology

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This 2026 report was compiled by the editorial team at Furniture in Fashion. It draws on our editorial assessment as a UK modern furniture retailer of what fits and works in Nottingham’s predominant bedroom types, on standard UK mattress and furniture dimensions with accepted clearance and circulation allowances, and on named public sources where they genuinely apply: the ONS Family Spending release for the geographic level at which household expenditure on furnishings is published, the English Housing Survey for dwelling age and tenure context in England, and the Nationally Described Space Standard for minimum bedroom floor areas and widths in new homes. No city level expenditure data exists for Nottingham and none has been modelled or estimated here. The report includes no proprietary sales, search, pricing or customer data, and no survey fieldwork, panel research or weighting was carried out.

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Citing this report

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Media and websites are welcome to cite this 2026 analysis, crediting Furniture in Fashion as the publisher and linking back to this report. The work is specification and housing led rather than statistical. It offers no spend figure for Nottingham, and we would ask that it is not presented as though it does.

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Frequently asked questions

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Does Nottingham spend more on furniture than the UK average?

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No published source can answer that. ONS Family Spending reports household expenditure on furnishings and household goods for the UK, the nations and the regions, so the East Midlands is available and Nottingham is not separable from it.

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What size room does a king size bed need?

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Around 270cm x 260cm to be comfortable, allowing 60cm on both long sides and 60cm at the foot. A king mattress is 150cm x 200cm, so the clearance rather than the mattress sets the room requirement.

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How deep does a wardrobe need to be?

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Around 58cm to 60cm internally for a garment on a hanger. Sliding door wardrobes need roughly 65cm externally to achieve that, because the track and door overlap take depth behind the front.

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Where should a wardrobe go in a bay window bedroom?

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On the longest uninterrupted wall, which is usually the one opposite the bay or a side wall. Nothing tall belongs in the bay itself, since that removes the light the bay was built to collect.

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How do you store clothes in a room with no space for a wardrobe?

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Move the volume under the bed and keep folded items in a chest. An ottoman base takes bedding and out of season clothing with no floor cost, and a chest of 40cm to 45cm deep will fit where a wardrobe cannot.