This is a meandering journey of a put up, so make your self snug. We talked about in this side table post that we traded our queen-size mattress for a much bigger king-size one. The purpose might sound apparent – as a result of it’s greater, duh! – however as for why we fortunately sailed by way of over 17 years collectively with out wanting one – after which all of the sudden pulled an about-face final fall… nicely, it basically boiled right down to: “the things we do for our dog” (extra on that in a second).
We additionally needed to rigorously plan how we’d squeeze the most important mattress we’ve ever owned into our smaller bed room. And we had an enormous realization about bigger furnishings in a smaller home (it’s in all probability not what you assume!). Plus we had some enjoyable with photoshop.

When we advised one in every of our buddies concerning the change, they had been shocked – neigh, SHOCKED – to listen to we didn’t have already got a king mattress. In truth, we’ve heard this sentiment a number of occasions over our decade and a half of running a blog. As if two adults sleeping in a queen was akin to sharing bunk beds or one thing. We by no means actually understood that response as a result of we had been all the time completely content material in our queen mattress – particularly as a result of we shared many smaller beds in our earlier days collectively.

You see, a queen was an enormous enchancment from the place we began our relationship – with me sleeping on a futon in the lounge of a one-bedroom residence that I shared with 2 different guys in Queens. If you do the mathematics, that meant 1 individual was within the bed room and a couple of of us slept in the lounge on futons, therefore my Pinterest-worthy setup under. Yes, I received Sherry’s coronary heart regardless of this “bedroom” state of affairs:

Pretty quickly after that I moved to a special residence on the Upper West Side the place I used to be lastly in a position to improve to a full-size mattress. You can watch a video tour of that apartment and see Sherry’s NYC apartment in The Village (which additionally sported a full-size mattress).
Trading as much as a queen-size mattress in our first Richmond apartment together (proven under) was fairly a luxurious as a result of we had been sharing full-size beds for a 12 months or so at that time. These facet tables and $5 Ikea lamps, although? Not fairly luxurious.

Over many (many) years we by no means actually felt cramped sleeping in a queen-size mattress. So though a few of our buddies and a big portion of the web had been like “I cannot live without my king bed”, it appeared pointless to us to spend the additional cash on a much bigger mattress/sheets/cover since we had been completely pleased with our queen. It was frugality meets a traditional case of “If it ain’t broke…”
Then after we moved right here a collection of issues began to slowly change our minds. The first one wasn’t a width difficulty that was bothering us – it was a top difficulty. And not for us, however for our previous canine, Burger.

Like most growing older canine, leaping up and down turned more durable for him as he received older (he was 15 when he passed in 2021). He liked being on the mattress however was typically too cussed to make use of a bench or different “helper surfaces” to rise up and down (we had a ground pouf + bench model of Doggy Steps happening however about half the time he ignored them in favor of the kamikaze methodology).

In true “small-dog-who-thinks-he’s big” style, he’d try and spring from the ground to the facet of the mattress in a single chaotic leap – and most well-liked to get down the identical approach. He’d all the time make it (though getting up generally took just a few tries), and we might fortunately carry him up and down every time he’d allow us to – however we apprehensive concerning the toll it was taking up his legs and again.
At first we simply thought of getting a decrease mattress body (like a platform) to shorten the space for him since we had made different Burger-mobility adjustments to the home already (like installing a stair runner over our wooden steps) however he sadly left us suddenly in the fall of 2021 on account of a longstanding coronary heart situation.

The entire bed-height consideration turned high of thoughts once more when Penny entered our lives final 12 months. She fancies herself some mixture of a cat / ninja / mountain goat / daredevil and leaps up & down from the chairs, couches, and – specifically – our mattress with absolute reckless abandon.

She’s nonetheless younger and spry (she’s 3), however we all know that decreasing our mattress will assist her legs and again over the long term. And the explanation that our brains appeared to slowly shift from “let’s just lower our queen bed” to “what if we got a lower bed that’s also king-size” = this canine sleeps like she’s impersonating that equals signal I simply used. Burger used to twist right into a small ball and tuck in behind Sherry’s legs or up on my pillow by my head, however Penny likes to stretch out horizontally like she’s impersonating a twizzler, and since our mattress isn’t additional large, which means she fairly recurrently smashes into each of us within the course of. Essentially all of us type the letter H. Sherry and I are the perimeters of the H and Penny is the center sprint if you happen to can image it.

It all of the sudden made a queen mattress really feel… not so roomy. And generally her arms poke out in entrance of her like this, and her face rests between them, leading to some claws and a chilly nostril to whoever is the fortunate facet of the H at that second.

Then this previous summer season we went to Mexico. Whenever we go on an enormous journey, we all the time appear to take some form of home or life-style inspiration again with us. We can pinpoint the spring break trip that began our minimizing efforts, our Costa Rica trip kicked our Florida transfer into gear – and nicely, our Mexico trip made us need a king-size mattress.

Somehow we managed to take zero images of the precise mattress that wooed us, however right here it’s under from the Airbnb listing. It doesn’t look significantly spacious from this angle, but it surely was one of many first occasions I keep in mind registering “so THIS is why individuals love king-sized beds.” Upon additional reflection, I’m positive the belief was hitting us as a result of it was the primary time in lots of months that we slept with no inflexible stretched-out canine poking into either side of our our bodies. It was nice. We slept SO WELL. Penny included.

You also can see a bit extra of the house on this video tour Sherry took of the Airbnb proper after we checked in. You know, earlier than we had suitcases and varied trip stuff in all places (which might be why I by no means took images of this room).
Note: You also can view this video on YouTube.
Bottom line: we got here dwelling from Mexico with an especially robust want to determine a approach to make a king-size mattress work in our bed room, although we apprehensive that we didn’t even have the room (particulars, particulars). A king mattress is 16″ wider than a queen, which felt like house we didn’t have – particularly contemplating that we would have liked to depart room to entry our closets alongside that left wall. This is the room with a queen mattress under:

Instead of instantly giving up, we determined to do some cautious measuring and planning – even turning our queen mattress sideways at one level to visualise the broader king mattress – which helped us decide that we might really make it work! More on that in a second.
The King Bed We Chose
We thought of a variety of choices for our decrease wider bedframe and ended up with this Tessu upholstered platform bed frame from Article. We actually like how stable a mattress feels when the headboard and body are constructed as one, particularly since each Burger and Penny like to hang around beneath the mattress generally too – in order that additionally makes you need one thing that doesn’t really feel rickety. Are we too obsessive about our canine? The reply is: that’s not attainable and canine are the perfect. And sure, although this mattress is a lot decrease than our final one, Penny likes to military crawl beneath it and assume her Twizzler-like sleeping place.

Looks/function-wise we additionally preferred that the legs of this mattress had been inset from the corners in order that they mainly disappear with the cover on the mattress (particularly because the walnut end didn’t match our room). Plus, they don’t develop into a toe-stubbing hazard!
We received it within the Taupe Clay colour, which is a pleasant medium heat grey (it additionally is available in navy and deeper grey). We’ve been actually, actually pleased with it! Basically goes with the whole lot.

How We Got A Bigger Bed To Fit Into Our Smaller Room
We lined a few of this in our put up about our DIY wood nightstands, however I needed to reiterate it right here as a result of the “fit” of this mattress was actually necessary to us. Even I, who was probably the most apprehensive about cramping this bed room with a much bigger mattress, am thrilled with the consequence. And sure, we undoubtedly nonetheless have room to get into our closets with out difficulty. We’re in them a number of occasions a day, so I used to be unwavering in my dedication to creating that not-annoying.

Essentially the important thing was that we needed to shift the mattress over and construct smaller nightstands (and the one on Sherry’s facet needed to be even smaller than mine). That concession purchased us sufficient house to make the closet entry utterly workable – and it was nicely value it to have such an enormous mattress, which makes this room really feel prefer it lives quite a bit bigger than it did earlier than!
I can also’t say sufficient about utilizing no matter you will have in artistic methods to assist “feel” what a room may really feel like with that new bigger merchandise. When we realized {that a} king mattress’s width (76″) was much like the size of a queen mattress (80″), we knew that turning our queen mattress sideways was a good way to experiene how it could really feel to entry our closets with one thing that large within the room.
You can see how the whole lot matches collectively within the video under that we made for the nightstand put up.
Note: You also can watch this video on YouTube.
Not solely does it match logistically, we each really feel prefer it aesthetically matches higher as nicely. You could have heard that generally the trick to creating small areas look greater is to make use of bigger furnishings. It appears counterintuitive, however generally small-scale furnishings can emphasize the smallness of a room. Plus, within the case of our mattress, the decrease top makes the room really feel taller and airier.
I imply actually – look how the queen-size mattress simply made the entire room really feel smaller and fewer ethereal. I want this was taken from the very same POV, however you get the thought:

As for the way it feels to lastly be a part of the king mattress membership, it undoubtedly feels straight-up luxurious. The 5 of us (children and canine included) can all discover a spot on weekend mornings. Penny can transfer round at night time with out waking us up (and vice versa). We are now not a human-dog-human conga line. Except apparently for this photograph:

And in case you’re apprehensive concerning the destiny of our previous mattress, the whole lot lives on (we offered the body and headboard on a neighborhood buy-sell-trade board and donated the mattress there too). Within someday of itemizing it, the whole lot was picked up!
Now that the brand new mattress is in place, we’ve been considering slightly little bit of colour or texture on the wall behind it – particularly since extra of it’s uncovered now with the lower-lying headboard.

We love how gentle and brilliant this room is, so we don’t assume we need to paint the entire thing, however we’re debating doing one thing with that wall behind the mattress. These are simply photoshop renderings, however we thought of perhaps utilizing a muted pink…

…or a gentle blue-green to enrich all the greenery we’ve got exterior the wall of glass doorways.

We’ve even debated doing one thing extra textured, like grasscloth wallpaper or a wooden slat wall. This was our greatest approximation of 1 the place we would stain the wooden a gentle tone. Again: that is photoshop so the whole lot seems to be jarring. Please squint A LOT.

Honestly, some days we simply love how easy and expansive the white wall with the brilliant artwork feels. There’s a fairly nice view out all the wall of glass doorways to the correct of the mattress, so generally we expect: that’s the accent. Sorry, partitions – you possibly can’t compete.
So who is aware of! We’ll undoubtedly share if and after we do one thing. And within the meantime, we’ve already made one other purposeful improve to the room that we’ll share in a future put up. Spoiler: it includes incomes much more storage! Like AS MUCH STORGE AS OUR LAST HOUSE’S HUGE WALK-IN CLOSET.

If you’re taking one factor from this put up I hope it’s: “don’t give up if you think something won’t fit in a smaller room.” If we hadn’t turned our queen mattress sideways and experimented with how it could work if we shifted the mattress over and gave Sherry a smaller facet desk, nicely, our king mattress desires would have been simply that – a dream that by no means turned actuality.
And all the idea that bigger gadgets of furnishings in smaller rooms can typically make them really feel greater is TRULY WILD. In truth, this mattress change impressed an upcoming sitting room change that we’re making primarily based on that discovering – so keep tuned (furnishings takes like 15+ weeks currently, however as quickly as we’ve got one thing to indicate you I’m positive Sherry can be on IG tales sharing all of it).
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