Thread: Making a King bed frame

We have a bed in the spare room with rails about that size so they will hold up but they do look spindley to me. It also has about 200mm floor clearance. I guess the overall height also depends on how thick the mattress is. I built a queen bed about 10 years ago and used the mattress we had from the old bed so I based the height on that. Rails are 150mm and 300mm floor clearance. We just got a new mattress thats a fair bit thicker so the bed is now a tad high. If I had started with this mattress I would have made the legs slightly shorter. That said the older you get a high bed is easier to get out of. The proportions on that plan look about right to me. There are always compromises with design. To get a better idea mark out the measurements on cardboard or a stick to see how things look for overall height. A dining chair would be a good thing to compare with.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by vovo

We have bought a king mattress so now I need to make a bed frame. The room is narrow so the bed frame cannot protrude from under the mattress at the foot of the bed, nor will the bed have a headboard, so the mattress will sit flush on the top of the bed frame

I am probably going to make a bed similar to this one, just modified to suit a king and the room requirements. Queen Size Bed Plans • WoodArchivist

I will be using Silky Oak (pretty confident it is southern silky oak).

I need some help sizing the rails as the other half does not want the bed too high but also wants storage under the bed (approx 200mm)

I was thinking 100x30 silky oak rails. Would these be suitable? Would it be possible to go smaller? If so, how small would be possible. Of course the other consideration is appearance, I don't want it looking anaemic which it will if the rails get too small. I will include a centre rail and the slats will be pine ripped to approx 20mm thick

I normally tell people contemplating a bed construction to borrow or buy a copy of Jeff Miller's Beds. It's available as an ebook for USD $19.99 Product code: TP-FWW61077931

Jeff covers everything you need to know about building a single, 3/4, double, queen, king sized bed.

Your proposed 100 x 30 rails appear to me a bit on the narrow size. I'm pretty sure that 100 (is that 90 finished?) will be strong enough, but against the thickness of the mattress I believe that they will appear too flimsy. The rails on my own queen sized bed are 200 150 nominal.

The critical dimension is how high you want the mattress to be? Decide on that and then work backwards. Achieving 200 or even 300 under the rails is doable.

Slats
the queen sized bed I built using Jeff's book uses Tassie oak rails around 100 x 20 -- but Tassie Oak is supplied quarter sawn so the rails easily spanned the whole 5 foot width of the mattress. To my mind 20 mm thick pine rails are probably 30 mm too thin even if only spanning half the width of a king sized mattress.

Headboard
Think long and hard before dispensing with this feature.
Usually the headboard is an integral part of the headboard frame. If you leave it off the design will change substantially and you may as well build a futon base, which your proposed plan doesn't really suit.

If it helps, this bed has 120mm high rails with 230mm under the rail.

Great Dane Bed Oak | Great Dane

You will also need a centre rail to support the slats for a king size.

Originally Posted by vovo

Making a King bed frame ...

I will include a centre rail and the slats will be pine ripped to approx 20mm thick.

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

....You will also need a centre rail to support the slats for a king size.

My king size bed, 1830mm wide, has old growth Tas Oak T&G slats 115x18mm without a central rail, and after 30+ years they are still going fine. I do not think that I would rely on 20mm plantation pine, even with a central rail.

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

If it helps, this bed has 120mm high rails with 230mm under the rail.

Great Dane Bed Oak | Great Dane

You will also need a centre rail to support the slats for a king size.

Awesome, thats the basic premise of what I am planning to do, just without the headboard.

Originally Posted by ian

The critical dimension is how high you want the mattress to be? Decide on that and then work backwards. Achieving 200 or even 300 under the rails is doable.

The mattress is 300 high, allowing 50mm for bed clothes or a mattress topper Plus 100mm for rails and 200mm for storage means the total height is 650mm (on the high side but probably just acceptable)

Originally Posted by ian

Slats
the queen sized bed I built using Jeff's book uses Tassie oak rails around 100 x 20 -- but Tassie Oak is supplied quarter sawn so the rails easily spanned the whole 5 foot width of the mattress. To my mind 20 mm thick pine rails are probably 30 mm too thin even if only spanning half the width of a king sized mattress.

With a centre rail, the span is ~900mm. If I assume a 100kg point load, I get a deflection on a single slat of 6mm. There will never be a point load that high so I am expecting a max deflection of a couple of mm but I could probably stretch it to 25mm thick.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

My king size bed, 1830mm wide, has old growth Tas Oak T&G slats 115x18mm without a central rail, and after 30+ years they are still going fine. I do not think that I would rely on 20mm plantation pine, even with a central rail.

Surely most commercially available bed frames these days would use plantation pine. The mattress will distribute a lot of the load