The Bramley: A Pleated Fan Headboard Over Full-Footprint Storage

Most beds spend their design effort on the frame and treat the headboard as something you buy later. The Bramley works the other way round. Everything under its mattress is storage, which leaves the headboard to carry the look, and it does that with a fan of upholstered pleats radiating from a single point at the lower corner, spreading up and across inside a plain rectangular border.

If you are weighing the Bramley ottoman divan bed against a plainer base, this is what the specification actually gives you and what is worth measuring before you commit.

A headboard that matches the bed rather than nearly matching it

The pleats are upholstered in the same cloth as the base and the sides. That sounds obvious until you have tried to pair a separately bought headboard with a base in the same named shade and found the two reading as different colours in daylight. Because the Bramley is upholstered to order as one piece, the border, the fan and the box below all come from the same choice of fabric. The headboard offered with it is the 54 inch floor standing type, which carries its weight through the floor rather than hanging off the base.

Why the base lifts instead of pulling out

The whole top of the base lifts. Gas struts take the weight of the mattress and the lid swings up from the side, opening the full footprint of the bed as one lined compartment. There are no drawers and no runners, and that is the honest difference between ottoman beds and the drawer divan beds they get compared with. A drawer needs clear floor in front of it, which is the first thing you lose in a small room with a wardrobe on the opposite wall. The Bramley opens upwards, so it keeps all of its storage even pushed into a corner.

Two things to check first. You need space at the side for the lid to travel up and over, and a low ceiling or a sloped attic wall is worth measuring rather than guessing.

Six sizes, given as finished widths

Every figure below is the finished bed measured at its widest point, not the mattress:

• Small Single 2FT6: 75 cm wide by 191.5 cm long
• Single 3FT: 90 cm wide by 191.5 cm long
• Small Double 4FT: 120 cm wide by 191.5 cm long
• Double 4FT6: 135 cm wide by 191.5 cm long
• King 5FT: 150 cm wide by 200 cm long
• Super King 6FT: 184 cm wide by 200 cm long

Use the finished width to plan the room and the mattress size to buy bedding. The product page carries a full size guide with the bed drawn from the side and from above, every size to the same scale, which beats converting feet and inches in your head. Measure the doorway and any turn on the stairs as well as the floor.

Twenty-six colourways

The Bramley is upholstered to order in any of 26 colourways, spread across the Coniston, Naples, Chenille, Plush Velvet and Linoso cloths. Every upholstered part is finished in the one you choose: headboard, base and sides. Pale shades such as Almond Coniston or Cream Naples lift a dark room, while Charcoal Coniston, Slate Grey Naples and Black Plush Velvet forgive more. If you are torn between two, ask us rather than deciding from a screen.

Mattress and delivery

Mattresses are sold separately on purpose, so the tension is your decision and not ours. If you are starting from scratch, choose the base first and then try our mattress range against the size you have settled on.

Delivery is free within 50 miles of our Glasgow store and £50 beyond it, so it is worth telling us your postcode early if you are further out. You can compare it with the rest of our ottoman divan beds, or go straight to the Bramley's own page for the size guide and the full fabric list.