Mid-Height Loft Bed

April 21, 2014 10:01 AM

I am looking for a loft bed for my daughter. Most on the market seem to be quite high off the ground; I am looking for one with about 42 inches of clearance below. Something like this: http://www.sleeplandbeds.co.uk/hyder-midloft-mid-sleeper-bunk But sold in the USA. Room and Board has their 'Bower Bed,' which is almost right but not quite high enough (and is one piece of solid steel so getting it in the apartment is a problem). Curious if anyone knows of any products or hacks to existing products?
posted by dearleader to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

Have you seen this?

I have one for both my (small sized) 11 year old daughter, and my bulky 8 year old son. Its standard ikea quality but we've been happy with it.
posted by ShawnString at 10:11 AM on April 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wayfair has a lot.

As does Wal-Mart.

Sears.

Overstock

I googled "Kids low loft bed" Got a bunch of responses at all price points.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 10:18 AM on April 21, 2014

If you're prepared to do a bit of DIY I think this IKEA hack is amazing.
posted by *becca* at 10:35 AM on April 21, 2014

We bought a loft bed for our son from the internet, it's basically made out of 2x material and you assemble it at home. The legs were 2x4s so you could get any height above what you wanted and saw the legs to your desired length. I don't remember what site we ordered from but they had a few models and sizes - there were mostly intended for dorm rooms and stuff like that, but they work well for us.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:10 AM on April 21, 2014

I've lofted beds a bunch of times. It's not hard to raise an existing bed, and in fact it's not particularly difficult to just do the whole thing from scratch. In fact, it's probably one of the easiest pieces of furniture you could make. You just need a platform for the mattress, some legs, and some rails to keep the mattress from sliding around. For a taller bed, you'll also want some bracing to keep it rigid, and some ladder rungs to make it easy to get in and out.

If you don't want to do it from scratch it's also quite easy to build raise an existing bed. If you're adding much height, you'll still want some braces between the stilts. And still need a ladder (I guess a rope ladder would work?).

For a narrower bed, I'd recommend putting the ladder on an end instead of the side.

My current bed is steel pipe and fittings. As I've moved between apartments I've changed the length of the legs. When my bedroom was smaller, I had it way up over my desk. Now I just have 32" clearance underneath, for storage. 42" of space underneath is pretty high - remember the mattress will add an extra 10-12" of height.
posted by aubilenon at 11:54 AM on April 21, 2014

Ive actually slept underneath the IKEA Kura that ShawnString links to above. The kid who sleeps on the top part uses the bottom part for a guest bed, or for stuffed-animal storage and play. Because it's a flat-pack thing, they were able to get it into their extremely narrow city apartment with no trouble at all.
posted by chowflap at 2:16 PM on April 21, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks for the good suggestions. Am considering the IKEA Tromso, and just cutting it down a bit, as someone documented in their blog.
posted by dearleader at 3:12 AM on April 22, 2014