The bed with drawers that returns the most value is a four drawer double or king frame with full depth drawers on both sides, running on metal runners with a solid drawer base. That combination gives you roughly the same storage capacity as a chest of drawers, in floor area you were using anyway, for less than the cost of buying a bed and a separate storage unit. Two drawer versions are cheaper but store noticeably less, and shallow decorative drawers rarely justify the extra outlay over a plain frame.<\/p>\n
A double bed occupies about 2.7 square metres of floor. In a typical British bedroom of nine to twelve square metres, that is a quarter of the room given over to a single function. Drawers underneath turn that footprint into two jobs instead of one.<\/p>\n
The comparison worth making is not between a drawer bed and a plain bed. It is between a drawer bed and a plain bed plus a chest of drawers. Once you include the chest, the drawer bed is usually cheaper, and it frees a section of wall that can hold nothing at all, or something more useful like a chair or a wardrobe.<\/p>\n
This is why storage beds have become the default choice in smaller homes, flats and rooms where a wardrobe already takes the only spare wall. You can see the range of formats across our modern beds UK sale<\/a> pages.<\/p>\n Bed listings describe drawer counts in ways that are easy to misread, so it helps to know what each configuration actually gives you.<\/p>\n Two drawers, one side.<\/strong> The most common budget option. Useful, but it only serves one side of the bed and often means moving furniture to reach it.<\/p>\n Two drawers, one each side.<\/strong> Better balance and easier access, especially when the bed sits against a wall on one long side.<\/p>\n Four drawers, two each side.<\/strong> The strongest value in most cases. Capacity approaches that of a standard chest of drawers, and each drawer is short enough to pull out without needing a large clearance.<\/p>\n Two long drawers.<\/strong> Very large capacity per drawer, though they need a lot of room to open fully and can be heavy when full.<\/p>\n End drawer.<\/strong> A drawer at the foot of the bed. Handy for bedding, and it needs clearance at the end rather than the side, which suits beds placed in an alcove.<\/p>\n Count the drawers you can actually open in your room layout rather than the number in the product title. A four drawer bed with a wall on one side is really a two drawer bed.<\/p>\n This is the step people skip, and it is the main reason storage beds disappoint.<\/p>\n A side drawer typically extends 50cm to 60cm when fully open. Add space to stand in front of it and you need around 75cm of clear floor on that side. Measure from the bed frame to the nearest obstruction, whether that is a wardrobe, a radiator or the door swing.<\/p>\n Check the door swing in particular. In small bedrooms the door often opens straight into the space where the drawer would come out, which limits the drawer to a partial opening.<\/p>\n If clearance is genuinely tight on both sides, an ottoman base is the better solution because it lifts upwards rather than outwards. Our modern ottoman beds UK sale<\/a> selection covers both end lifting and side lifting versions.<\/p>\n Drawer quality varies enormously between beds at similar prices, and the differences are easy to check in a specification.<\/p>\n Runners.<\/strong> Metal runners, ideally ball bearing, glide smoothly and carry weight. Plastic runners and timber on timber sliding work at first but stiffen as the frame settles and as the drawer is loaded.<\/p>\n Castors.<\/strong> Some beds use drawers that roll on small wheels directly on your floor rather than on runners. These are fine on hard floors and unreliable on thick carpet, where they sink and drag.<\/p>\n Drawer base.<\/strong> A solid board base holds folded clothing flat. A fabric or thin liner base sags under weight and makes the contents difficult to keep tidy.<\/p>\n Depth.<\/strong> Around 15cm to 20cm of internal depth suits clothing. Shallower drawers are only good for flat items, which limits their usefulness considerably.<\/p>\n Front fixing.<\/strong> Drawer fronts that are screwed and dowelled into the sides last far longer than fronts attached with staples or glue alone.<\/p>\n Storage drawers appear across most bed materials, and each behaves a little differently.<\/p>\n Upholstered fabric beds with drawers are the most popular in the UK. They look soft, they hide the drawer joins well and the padded sides protect walls. Check the fabric on the drawer fronts is the same specification as the frame, since drawer fronts see the most handling. Our modern fabric beds UK<\/a> range includes several storage configurations.<\/p>\n Wooden storage beds tend to have the most robust drawers, because the frame itself can carry a proper runner system. They also allow the drawer fronts to match the rest of the bedroom furniture.<\/p>\n High gloss storage beds suit contemporary rooms and reflect light, which helps in small bedrooms. Fingerprints on the drawer fronts are the one maintenance consideration.<\/p>\n Divan bases with drawers remain excellent value and are simple to live with, though they offer less scope for a decorative headboard unless you buy one separately.<\/p>\n Under bed drawers suit items you use seasonally or weekly rather than daily: spare bedding, towels, out of season clothing, shoes in boxes, hobby equipment and children’s toys.<\/p>\n They are less suited to anything you need in a hurry while half asleep, and to items sensitive to dust, since under bed spaces collect more than a closed wardrobe does. Fabric storage bags inside the drawers solve most of that.<\/p>\n Avoid storing anything heavy and awkward in a long drawer. A drawer packed with books becomes difficult to pull out and puts strain on the runners over time. Spread weight across drawers rather than loading one.<\/p>\n To judge whether a storage bed is good value, compare it against the alternative you would otherwise buy.<\/p>\n Take the price of the drawer bed. Subtract the price of an equivalent plain frame in the same material and size. The difference is what you are paying for the storage. Then compare that figure against a chest of drawers with similar capacity, and include the floor space the chest would occupy.<\/p>\n In most cases the drawer bed wins clearly, particularly at four drawer configurations where the capacity is meaningful. The exception is a two drawer bed with shallow drawers, where the premium over a plain frame can approach the cost of a small chest that would hold more.<\/p>\n It is also worth checking reduced lines, since storage beds appear regularly on our bedroom furniture UK sale<\/a> pages where the specification is unchanged. Everything at Furniture in Fashion<\/a> comes with free delivery to most UK mainland postcodes.<\/p>\n Drawer beds earn their keep in children’s bedrooms more than almost anywhere else, because toys and clothing expand faster than storage does. A few details are worth checking. Soft close or at least smooth running drawers reduce trapped fingers. Drawer fronts without protruding handles are safer in rooms where children move quickly past the bed. And low frames make it easier for a child to open a drawer without dragging the whole bed.<\/p>\n Capacity matters less than accessibility here. Two shallow drawers a child can actually reach will be used daily, while one deep drawer often ends up as a place things disappear into.<\/p>\n Storage beds have more components than plain frames, so allow more time for assembly and check the drawers run freely before loading them. Most alignment problems are solved by tightening the frame while it sits level on the floor rather than adjusting the drawers themselves.<\/p>\n On carpet, a drawer that catches is usually sitting too low. Some beds allow a small adjustment at the frame legs, which lifts the whole base a few millimetres and resolves it.<\/p>\n Vacuum inside the drawer recesses occasionally. Dust builds up in the cavity and works its way into the runners, which is the most common cause of a storage bed becoming stiff after a year or two.<\/p>\n How much can you store in a four drawer bed?<\/strong> Roughly the equivalent of a standard chest of drawers, typically enough for spare bedding plus a season’s worth of clothing for one person.<\/p>\n Do drawer beds work on carpet?<\/strong> Beds with proper metal runners work well on any floor. Beds with drawers that roll on castors directly on the floor can drag on thick pile carpet.<\/p>\n How much space do you need beside a drawer bed?<\/strong> Around 75cm of clear floor on the drawer side, allowing the drawer to open fully with room to stand in front of it.<\/p>\n Are drawer beds or ottoman beds better?<\/strong> Drawers give quicker access to smaller quantities. Ottoman bases hold more in a single large space and need clearance above rather than beside, which suits tight rooms.<\/p>\n Do storage beds affect mattress comfort?<\/strong> No, provided the slat or platform base is properly supported. Check for a centre rail on double sizes and above, exactly as you would with a plain frame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Under bed drawers turn floor space you are already using into storage, which is why they have become the default choice in smaller British homes. This article works out which configuration actually delivers value, comparing two drawer, four drawer, long drawer and end drawer layouts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":66377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1315,974,1313,4273],"class_list":["post-66376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bedroom-furniture","tag-drawer-beds","tag-small-bedrooms","tag-storage-beds","tag-value-buying"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Counting Drawers Properly<\/h3>\n
Measuring the Clearance You Need<\/h3>\n
What Separates a Good Drawer From a Poor One<\/h3>\n
Frame Types and How They Compare<\/h3>\n
What to Store and What Not To<\/h3>\n
Working Out the Real Value<\/h3>\n
Storage Beds in Children’s Rooms<\/h3>\n
Assembly and Living With It<\/h3>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h3>\n