Wentworth Kids Divan Bed: Choosing a Drawer Layout That Fits the Room

Most children's beds are sold on colour. The Wentworth kids divan bed is more interesting than that, because the decision it asks you to make is where the storage goes. Five layouts are offered, and the right answer depends entirely on which walls the room has free.

Start with the drawers

The Wentworth can be ordered with no storage at all, with two drawers on the left side, two on the right, two at the foot end, or with four drawers. That choice is not about capacity so much as geography. A drawer has to pull out into clear floor, so a bed pushed into a corner can only use the side and the end that face into the room.

• No storage keeps the base lines low and clean, and suits a room that already has a chest or a built-in cupboard.
• Two drawers, left or right is the layout for a bed against a wall, with the drawers on the side a child can reach without climbing over the mattress.
• Two drawers at the foot end works where both long sides are tight, which is common in a small second bedroom.
• Four drawers is for a bed sitting out in the room with floor on both sides.

Measure the pull-out space before you choose. It is the mistake we see most often: the drawers are ordered for the side that turns out to be the side the wardrobe door swings over.

A headboard with real depth to it

The Wentworth headboard is wide, softly rounded vertical channels, fewer and deeper than close-set fluting, so it reads as sculpted rather than ribbed. At a child's scale that works in its favour. The channels are broad enough to stay legible on a small board, where a fine fluted pattern would disappear.

The headboard is upholstered in the same cloth as the base and the sides, so the bed is one piece rather than a frame and a board that nearly match. The headboard offered is the 54 inch floor-standing version, which carries down to the floor behind the bed. That is useful in a child's room for a reason that has nothing to do with looks: there is no gap between board and base for socks, books and small plastic animals to fall into.

How it is built

Despite the name, this is a bed frame rather than a divan box. The mattress sits down inside an upholstered surround, with the side rails and the foot end finished in the same cloth as the headboard. The low sides are a quiet advantage for a younger child, because a mattress held inside a surround is harder to shift out of place than one sitting loose on top of a base.

Four sizes

• Small Single 2FT6, 75 cm wide by 196.5 cm long
• Single 3FT, 90 cm wide by 196.5 cm long
• Small Double 4FT, 120 cm wide by 196.5 cm long
• Double 4FT6, 135 cm wide by 196.5 cm long

Every size is the same 196.5 cm long, which catches people out. A Small Single saves you width and nothing at all in length, so if the room is short rather than narrow, no size in the range will solve it. The Small Double is worth a thought for a child who is still growing, since it takes the same length as the single and gives years more use. The product page carries a size guide drawn from the side and from above with every size to the same scale.

Fabric, and a note on wear

The Wentworth is upholstered to order in any of 26 colourways. For a child's room, the mid tones in the Coniston and Chenille cloths are the forgiving ones, because marks show least on a broken weave in a middle shade. Charcoal Chenille and Mink Coniston are both easier to live with than cream, whatever the mood board says. Pink Coniston and Blue Coniston exist for the rooms where that argument has already been lost.

Because the channels are deep, the colour has somewhere to pool, and velvets read considerably darker inside the folds than they do on a flat sample. Ask to see the cloth if a precise shade matters.

Where it sits in the range

The Wentworth headboard also appears on an ottoman version, which trades the drawers for a lid that lifts the whole base. If the room needs more than four drawers can hold, that is the one to look at. Otherwise the rest of our kids divan beds use the same construction under different headboards.

Mattresses are sold separately so you can match the tension to the child. We send beds in Scotland and further afield from our Glasgow store, free within 50 miles of it and £50 beyond. Sizes, fabrics and drawer layouts are all chosen on the Wentworth product page, which prices each combination as you go.