Tetbury Upholstered Ottoman Bed: A Low Plain Headboard for a Tight Room

Almost every storage bed we sell is trying to be noticed. The Tetbury is trying not to be. Its headboard is softly rounded, entirely plain, and cut low on purpose for a compact room, where a tall board eats the wall and makes the ceiling feel closer. Everything under the mattress is storage. You can see the proportions on the Tetbury upholstered ottoman bed page, and they are the whole point of it.

Why a low headboard changes a small room

In a room where the bed has to go under a window, beside a sloping ceiling, or on the only wall that also has the door on it, headboard height stops being a style question. A low rounded board sits below a window sill instead of cutting across it, and it does not fight a fitted wardrobe standing next to it. The lack of detailing helps for the same reason: there is no buttoning or channelling to pick up shadow, so the bed takes up less visual space than its footprint suggests.

The storage

The mattress platform lifts on gas struts and opens the full area beneath the bed as one lined compartment. Since the Tetbury is built as a frame rather than a divan box, the sides are upholstered and shaped, and with the bed closed the compartment is hidden entirely. No drawers means no runners, and no runners means the bed can live tight against a wall or in a corner without losing access to anything.

Three sizes, and they are not uniform

• Double 4FT6 - 153 cm wide by 215 cm long
• King 5FT - 168 cm wide by 225 cm long
• Super King 6FT - 198.5 cm wide by 222 cm long

Read those lengths again, because they do not do what you expect. The king is the longest of the three at 225 cm, and the super king is actually shorter at 222 cm while being 30.5 cm wider. If your room is short rather than narrow, the super king may fit where the king does not. This is the sort of thing a specification table rewards you for reading. There is a full size guide on the product page with each size drawn from the side and from above to the same scale.

Three colourways

The Tetbury is upholstered to order in three fabrics, and the choice is deliberately narrow because the bed is a shape rather than a pattern. Cream Boucle has a looped, nubbly surface that gives a plain board some texture without adding any line to it. Pebble Maloy and Sand Maloy are flatter and warmer, in the neutral ground most bedrooms are already painted in. Whichever you choose, the headboard, base and sides are all finished in it, so the bed is handmade to order as one piece.

With only three cloths, samples are worth asking for. Boucle in particular looks different in a photograph from the way it looks in a room, because the texture reads as colour at a distance.

Things to settle before you order

Mattresses are sold separately, so the depth and tension are your decision. Measure for the lift as well as the floor plan: the platform swings up from the side, so you need clear air above the bed and room to stand beside it. If the listing does not answer something you need to know, such as the fabric composition or the lining, ask us rather than assuming.

Delivery from Glasgow

We sell beds in Glasgow from our own store and deliver free within 50 miles of it. Past that radius there is one flat charge of £50 and it is the same whether you are an hour beyond the line or five.

Ottoman beds are not all built the same way, and the difference between a shaped upholstered frame like this and a square divan box is worth seeing in person. The rest of our upholstered ottoman beds are listed together for exactly that comparison, and if the plain low board is what your room needs, the Tetbury is configured here.