Inside the Delamere: Vertical Channels and Forward-Angled Wings

The Delamere upholstered bed spends all of its detail in one place. The headboard is a run of narrow vertical channels carrying the full height of the board, and it sits between two wings that angle forward towards the pillows. Nothing else on the bed competes with it, because there is no storage in the base and the rest of the frame is kept deliberately quiet.

Why vertical channels read the way they do

Narrow upright channels pull the eye upwards, which is the oldest trick there is for making a wall behind a bed feel taller than it is. The forward-angled wings do something more practical: they bring the upholstered surface a little way down each side of your pillows, so if you sit up to read there is cloth where your shoulder lands rather than bare plaster.

The board is upholstered in the same cloth as the rest of the bed. That sounds like a small thing until you have bought a frame in one place and a headboard somewhere else and watched the two nearly match. Nearly is the worst outcome in a bedroom, because the eye keeps going back to it. Here the headboard, the side rails and the foot end all come in the fabric you choose, so the bed arrives as one object.

A frame, not a storage base

The Delamere is built as a bed frame. The mattress drops down inside an upholstered surround, with the sides and foot end finished to match the headboard, and the base holds nothing. That is what keeps the profile low and the silhouette clean, and it is the right choice if you have a chest of drawers or fitted wardrobes already doing the work.

If you do need the space under the mattress, the same Delamere headboard is available on a lifting base, and our upholstered ottoman beds range covers that. It is worth deciding this before anything else, because it is the one part of the specification you cannot change later.

Five sizes, measured as the finished bed

These are the dimensions across the finished bed at its widest point, not the mattress:

• Single 3FT: 104 cm wide, 212 cm long
• Small Double 4FT: 132 cm wide, 212 cm long
• Double 4FT6: 149 cm wide, 212 cm long
• King 5FT: 164 cm wide, 222 cm long
• Super King 6FT: 194 cm wide, 222 cm long

Read those lengths twice. The finished Delamere in a 4FT6 is 212 cm long, which is noticeably more than the mattress that sits inside it, because the upholstered surround adds material at the head and the foot. People who measure a mattress and buy to that figure are the ones who find the bed will not sit in the alcove. 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 is the quickest way to see what a step up in size really costs you in floor area.

Measure the width of the space, then the length, then the route in. A bedroom door, a turn at the top of a staircase and a radiator pipe have all defeated beds that fitted the room perfectly.

Twenty-five colourways, and how to choose one

The Delamere is upholstered to order in any of 25 colourways, drawn from the Coniston, Naples, Chenille, Plush Velvet and Linoso cloths. Velvets such as Mocca, Steel and Silver shift with the light and show the direction of the pile, so they look different at the window end of a room than they do by the door. The chenilles and the weaves are flatter and more forgiving of daily handling. Colours run from Almond and Cream through Mink and Silver to Black, so the bed can disappear into a pale scheme or become the darkest thing in the room.

If you are between two shades, ask us for a swatch and live with it for a few evenings under your own lighting. Choosing cloth from a screen is the single most common regret we hear about.

Delivery, and what is not included

Mattresses are sold separately, which is deliberate: tension is personal, and pairing a frame with a mattress you have chosen yourself beats taking whatever a set includes. Delivery is free within 50 miles of our Glasgow store and £50 beyond it, so if you are shopping for beds in Glasgow or anywhere in the central belt there is nothing to add, and customers further out across Scotland know the figure before they order.

Everything is handmade to order in the cloth you pick, so the configuration you choose is the bed that gets built. Pick your size and your colourway on the Delamere product page, or come and sit on one in the showroom first.