A Box Room That Works: The Osterley Kids Ottoman Divan Bed

The smallest bedroom in the house is usually the one that has to hold the most, and it is almost always a child's. The Osterley kids ottoman divan bed is built for exactly that problem. The whole base lifts: gas struts take the weight of the mattress and the top swings up from the side, opening the full footprint of the bed as one lined compartment. No drawers, no runners, and nothing that has to clear a wall or a wardrobe door first.

Why a side-lifting base suits a small room

Drawer divan beds are excellent when the bed has clear floor beside it. In a box room it does not. A drawer needs space in front of it to come out, so a bed wedged between a wall and a chimney breast gives you only the drawers that happen to face the open side, and you have paid for the rest.

A lifting base is reachable even when the bed is pushed into a corner. It is also one undivided space rather than several shallow ones, which means it takes the awkward things a child's room accumulates: a sleeping bag, a camp bed, a boxed-up Lego collection, the clothes that are two sizes away from fitting. For storage per square metre of floor, nothing else under a bed of this size comes close.

The headboard

Close-set vertical channels run the full height of the board, framed by a plain border with an upright post at each side. It is upholstered in the same cloth as the rest of the bed, so the bed arrives as one piece rather than a base and a board that nearly match. The 54-inch floor standing headboard is the option offered, which is a tall board standing on the floor behind the base rather than bolted to it.

It is a deliberately adult design on a child-scale bed. That matters more than it sounds: a bed decorated for a seven year old is a bed you replace at eleven.

Four sizes, as finished beds

• 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

The 2FT6 at 75 cm wide is the size that makes a genuinely narrow room workable, and because all four are the same length, choosing it costs you nothing but width. There is a full size guide on the product page, with the bed drawn from the side and from above and every size shown to the same scale.

Check the height, not just the floor

The top swings up from the side, so the bed needs clearance above the mattress on that side. Children's rooms are disproportionately the ones with a sloping ceiling, a dormer or a low window, and a sill or a coombed ceiling directly over the bed can stop the lid before it is properly open. Measure from the top of the mattress to the nearest obstruction. If it is marginal, ask us which side to hinge it rather than hoping.

Twenty-six colourways

The Osterley is upholstered to order in any of twenty-six colourways, and every surface finished in cloth, the headboard, the base and the sides, is done in the fabric you choose. Plush velvets, chenilles, the Coniston and Naples weaves and a Silver Linoso, in shades from Cream and Almond through Pink, Mauve, Blue and Emerald to Silver, Slate Grey, Charcoal and Black.

The side of the bed is the part that gets handled on a lifting base, because that is where you take hold to open it. A textured weave in a mid tone takes daily use better than a pale velvet. Ask us for samples and judge them in the room's own light.

Mattress and delivery

Mattresses are sold separately so the tension can be chosen for the child. The bed is handmade to order in your chosen cloth.

Delivery is free within 50 miles of our Glasgow store and £50 beyond it.

The dimensions, the fabric list and the size drawings are on the Osterley kids ottoman page. Every bed in the kids ottoman divan beds range uses the same lifting base, so if the mechanism is right but you want a different headboard, start there. Lifting bases are the same idea in the adult range, where ottoman beds run up to super king.