Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question The best answers are voted up and rise to the top I've moved into a smaller room and would like to maximize my space. I've decided to build a new bed frame, but for that to work how I would like I would need to eliminate my box-spring as it would make the bed too high. I currently have a standard mattress, with a box-spring, on a metal frame. If the new bed frame has a solid enough foundation, could I eliminate the box-spring?You can use slats instead of a box-spring. It will be a LITTLE bit stiffer, but it's perfectly fine and you'll love how your bed squeaks less. Here's a pic from an Ikea bed frame assembly guide - just as an example: Box springs help evenly distribute pressure on the mattress not just while laying but also when you're getting on/off the bed resulting in concentrated pressure points. They are for the most part, very firm and yield only the slightest bit. Most box strings don't even consist of springs at all.
They normally consist of cheap flexible wood, thin upholstery batting, and cardboard. Without a box spring you run a higher risk of popping a spring in your mattress. The thickness of a box spring is only for decoration while the functional properties could be reduced to a much smaller design. Slats are typically used with mattresses that don't have springs (coils). If you want to go the slat approach and have a mattress with springs, I'd strongly suggest using a thin yet strong sheet like material over the slats. Something like plywood or faux wood paneling. Take these concepts into mind whilst building your new frame and you should be perfectly fine without a traditional box spring. No you don't need one IF you have a foundation for the mattress to lay on, a thick sheet of plywood would do, since that is basically what a box spring us though you bed will lie 4-6 inches lower if you only have a 4 inch typical mattress. I have a friend that has sold furniture for years.
He has told me that box springs can change the firmness of a mattress drastically. So, if you want to buy a firmer mattress, just remove the box spring instead. No one in Europe uses box springs. They use slats or wire mesh, and lay mattress on that. Box springs are just a nest for bugs ! Go and buy a Euro bed at IKEA, less cost, less space, and no bug nest ! My opinion is the best mattress is a quality air mattress, specifically designed for a bed and not the camping-quality air mattress. Only one company that I know if that makes them, but I won't mention the name. You've probably seen the ads. Been using one for over 20 years and it is great. You can adjust the firmness. Doesn't bounce at all. I use a sheet of plywood beneath it vs box springs. No dangerous chemicals as found in some of the "foam" type mattresses. Same firmness after 20 years as on day 1. Only ones that don't like it are the traditional mattress dealers because it takes their business away. Sign up or log in
Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged bedroom or ask your own question.It is a problem that is facing shoppers like the actress Swoosie Kurtz, who, after years of sleeping on a fold-out couch, splurged on a fantasy bed last year. She ordered a custom-made king-size mattress and box spring, and hired a woodworker to build an elaborate headboard and frame, along with matching side tables. ''He asked me, 'How thick will the mattress be?' ''And I said, 'I don't know, standard size.' ''What Ms. Kurtz did not realize is that deluxe mattresses have been expanding as if on steroids, from 10 inches to as much as 20.''When the bed arrived, the whole thing was waist high,'' she said. ''I felt like I was climbing into a bunk bed.'' Not only that, she said, but the new mattress covered up half of her new headboard.
How did Ms. Kurtz, now starring on Broadway in ''The Mineola Twins,'' solve the problem? ''We chopped the legs off the frame,'' she said.As today's mattress manufacturers compete to outdo one another in comfort, adding more and more layers of padding, the sky -- or rather, the ceiling -- has become the limit. ''I'm constantly aghast at the size of people's beds,'' said the decorator Jeffrey Bilhuber. ''It's become this looming object in the middle of the room. Two phenomena are pushing beds higher than they've ever been lifted before. First, mass-market furniture makers have been compelled to build taller headboards to accommodate the bigger mattresses. ''We've had to raise the height of headboards by five to seven inches, so the pillows won't fall off,'' explained Korie Trevino, the product development director for the Fashion Bed Group, a Chicago-based manufacturer. Similarly, Crate and Barrel has added a hefty 10 inches to its Mission headboards.Further exacerbating this to-the-moon situation, furniture designers are taking inspiration from the romantic look of historic metal beds, with bedrails as much as 11 inches off the floor, for pragmatic reasons.
''You wanted the bed high off the ground because of rodents and vermin crawling around, or because there were floods and homes didn't have drainage,'' said Linda Allen, an owner of the Charles P. Rogers Company in Manhattan, founded in 1855, which makes reproduction antique brass and metal beds. ''Then there was the chamber pot issue,'' she added. ''You could shove it under the bed.'' Before central heating or air-conditioning, higher beds also offered better air circulation. Even Crate and Barrel and the Pottery Barn have gotten into this pyramid scheme. ''It's old-fashioned and romantic,'' said Celia Tejada, Pottery Barn's vice president for design, describing the company's new four-poster pine beds with rails 10 1/2 inches off the floor. Add a new mattress and a box spring, and the showroom model is a Jack-and-the-beanstalk 30 inches off the ground.So, how are people actually supposed to get into bed? ''We're going to be selling rustic-looking stools made in Indonesia,'' Ms. Tejada said.
PERHAPS this is the moment to confess that I'm not just an armchair observer of the bedtime scene. My husband and I did not take a tape measure with us when we recently upgraded from a queen- to a king-size bed, and no salesman at any of the Manhattan stores we visited ever mentioned the issue of height. So, we were caught short the day our new top-of-the-line Aireloom mattress and box spring and our Charles P. Rogers reproduction brass bed arrived.This movin'-on-up combination of bed and frame made us both feel positively Lilliputian. I now have to hop to make it onto my own bed. Our standard-size side tables are ridiculously low; our pole reading lamps cast a glow, not on our books, but on our stomachs.That's why it was a relief to discover, in conversations with friends and then in interviews with bed experts, that we weren't the only idiots around. ''It never occurred to me that my new bed would be higher,'' said Susan Birkenhead, a Broadway lyricist. ''I just thought it would be more comfortable.''
She and her husband, Jere Couture, an entertainment lawyer, bought a Stearns & Foster pillow-top mattress from Bloomingdale's in January and were in shock when it arrived. ''I love my bed, but you can't just sit on it,'' she said. ''I'm 5 foot 9 inches, and I have to jump up on it.''What many new bed owners find particularly annoying is that their old sheets no longer fit -- the equivalent of trying to squeeze a size 12 body into size 6 slacks. ''My sheets only go half-way down the mattress,'' said Nancy Porter, a documentary filmmaker based in Boston. ''The bed looks undressed.'' Mattress makers hear complaints all the time. Robert Malin, Serta's vice president for marketing, said: ''One of our biggest reasons for returns is that the bed's too high. People call and say, 'I'm really disappointed; this is much higher than I want it to be.' If a customer belatedly discovers that the mattress is too high, the odds are good that he or she paid top dollar for it. Serta's lowest-priced line, mattresses that sell for $799 or less, are from 9 to 13 inches thick.
Up-market models, costing as much as $4,300, are as thick as 18 inches -- thanks to additional foam padding and upholstery. ''In the past two years, the luxury sector has become a huge part of the market,'' Mr. Malin said, crediting the baby-boomer yen for comfort as its members approach middle age. His solution to the height problem: ''We suggest that people buy a low-profile foundation or frame.''In contrast, Sealy, the nation's largest maker of mattresses, has its own downsizing program to offset the thickness of its top-of-the-line mattresses. This fall, it will introduce a new box spring that is only four inches high, instead of the standard seven. ''The feedback we were getting is that people like to sit on the bed and talk on the phone,'' said David McIlquham, Sealy's vice president for sales and marketing. ''This will drop the height.'' The Better Sleep Council, an industry trade group, recently conducted exhaustive interviews with women who had purchased new, thicker mattresses.
''They loved them,'' said Andrea Herman, the council's director. ''They said the beds made them feel like princesses. There was a feeling of nostalgia -- they felt like a child, safe and secure in a big bed.''Although men were not surveyed by the Better Sleep Council, my own random queries produced a decidedly less enthusiastic response about this race to the top. Perhaps the gender difference arises because men tend to like to dominate their surroundings, which is hard to do with one of these titanic beds.Mark Horowitz, an editor at New York magazine, said: ''What's ironic is that the baby boom generation started with our beds and mattresses on the floor. My wife bought this new bed, and now we're so high we can't see the TV. What's next, mounting the TV on the ceiling, just like a hospital room, preparing us for old age?''In fact, old age may well be the cure for the desire for towering bedsteads. Richard Ralston is the senior vice president for sales at the steel products division of Leggett & Platt in Carthage, Mo., which makes bed frames and rails ranging from 5.5 inches to 18 inches high.