Wycombe Upholstered Ottoman Bed: Storage With Nothing to Give It Away

Storage beds usually announce themselves. A divan box has flat sides and a visible seam, and you can tell what it is from the door. The Wycombe upholstered ottoman bed does not, because it is a frame rather than a box: the sides are upholstered and shaped, so when the bed is closed there is nothing to suggest the whole area beneath the mattress opens.

How it opens, and why it hides

The mattress platform lifts on gas struts to reveal the full area underneath as one lined compartment. One space, not drawers, so bulky things go in whole and nothing is lost to runners or to the dividers between boxes. Nothing has to pull out into the room either, which means the bed can sit against a wardrobe and still work.

The difference from a standard ottoman divan is the construction. Here the lift sits inside a shaped, upholstered frame with a buttoned footboard, so the storage is concealed entirely rather than being a visible box with a lid on it. If you want the capacity of an ottoman without the bed looking like a storage product, this is the design that gets you there.

Before ordering, check what is above and beside the bed. A lifting platform needs clearance to swing through, and sloping ceilings, shelves and low windows are the usual obstacles. Tell us the size you are considering and we will tell you how the platform moves rather than leaving you to guess from a photograph.

The headboard and footboard

The headboard is deep diamond buttoning between two tall wings, with the footboard buttoned to match. The wings give the board real depth from the front, which is what lets it hold a large wall without anything hung above it, and the matching footboard closes the bed at both ends. Everything finished in cloth, the headboard, the sides and the surround, comes in the single fabric you pick, so the bed arrives as one object rather than a set of parts that nearly agree.

The headboard listed for the Wycombe is the tall version, which is the one the wings are drawn around.

Five sizes, measured on the outside

• Single 3FT, 99 cm wide by 212 cm long
• Small Double 4FT, 132 cm wide by 212 cm long
• Double 4FT6, 143.5 cm wide by 212 cm long
• King 5FT, 158 cm wide by 222 cm long
• Super King 6FT, 189 cm wide by 222 cm long

Those are finished dimensions at the widest point of the bed, and they are generous because the wings, the surround and the footboard all sit outside the mattress. A Double is 143.5 cm wide and 212 cm long; a Super King is 189 cm by 222 cm. Measure your alcove and your door swing against these figures, not against the mattress size, and remember to leave the side you intend to walk down. The product page carries a size guide with the bed drawn from the side and from above, every size to the same scale.

Choosing from 25 colourways

The Wycombe is upholstered to order in any of 25 colourways. Buttoning this deep behaves quite differently from cloth to cloth. A plush velvet pools in the diamonds and catches light on the raised centres, so the pattern is unmistakable across the room. A flat weave quiets it and hands the bed over to the shape of the wings. Both work, but they are not the same bed, and the wings cast shade onto the centre panel so colours sit darker there than they do on a sample held up to a window. Ask to see the cloth if a precise shade matters to you.

Where it sits in the range

Within our ottoman beds this is the one to pick when the bed is a piece of furniture first and a cupboard second. If you want the same storage with a plainer, lower profile, a divan-based ottoman does the job for less visual weight; if you want the Wycombe's look without the lift, the plain frame version exists too. The full range is on our upholstered ottoman beds page.

Mattresses are sold separately. On a platform ottoman that matters, because the depth of the mattress sets how much of the buttoning shows above the surround, and a very heavy mattress is worth mentioning to us when you order. Anyone shopping for beds in Glasgow can come and lift a platform in the store, which settles the question faster than any description. Delivery is free within 50 miles of us and £50 beyond. Sizes and fabrics are chosen on the Wycombe ottoman product page.