Ottoman and storage beds: the buying and assembly guide

In a London bedroom with no loft, no cupboard and no spare metre, the bed is the storage. That makes the ottoman the most-bought bed in flats — and the one people most often buy in the wrong configuration.

This guide covers the decisions that cannot be undone once the base is built: lift direction, strut rating, clearance and whether a drawer bed would suit you better.

An end-lift ottoman hinges at the headboard end and swings the mattress up towards the wall. It needs clear headroom above the headboard and clear floor at the foot of the bed to stand while you lift.

A side-lift hinges along one long side and needs clear floor on the opposite side. It suits a bed pushed into an alcove or against a wall on one side, which is the common London layout.

Measure the swing before you buy, not after. A lid that fouls a sloping ceiling, a window reveal, a radiator shelf or a pendant light cannot be fixed at build time — the base is already the wrong one.

The struts lift the mattress, not the base. A heavy pocket-sprung or hybrid mattress on struts specified for a light foam one gives a lid that sinks as you load it, and a lid that will not stay up is genuinely dangerous around children.

Good manufacturers publish a mattress weight range for the base. Where they do not, and where the mattress is at the heavy end, uprated struts are worth ordering with the bed rather than after a month of fighting the lid.

Struts are fitted last, once the base is square. Fitting them early is the standard shortcut and it is why a badly built ottoman never quite closes flush.

An ottoman gives one big void — suitcases, spare duvets, seasonal clothes — but you have to lift the whole mattress to reach anything, so it suits things you touch a few times a year.

Drawer beds give smaller compartments you can open daily, but they need floor clearance beside the bed to pull the drawers out, which is exactly what a small bedroom does not have. Two drawers on one side is often the better compromise in a narrow room.

Divans with a split base are the third option and the most practical where the staircase is tight, because the base arrives in two halves that go up separately.

Ottoman bases are heavy, rigid and delivered in large boxes. Measure the narrowest point of the route — the front door, the stair turn, the bedroom door — against the box dimensions on the product page before you order.

Where the route is genuinely too tight, a split-base divan with an ottoman lift or a knock-down frame with a drawer unit is the workaround. It is worth knowing that before delivery day rather than at the top of the stairs.

The base is built and squared first, corners checked with the slat frame loose, then tightened in sequence. Squareness is what decides whether the lid closes flush along its whole length.

The lift frame goes on next, then the struts, then a loaded test: mattress in place, lid raised, held at mid-travel, and lowered under control. Finally we check the lid clears the window reveal, the ceiling and any headboard, then take the packaging away.

Six numbers decide whether an ottoman works: ceiling height above the headboard, clear floor at the foot, clear floor on each long side, the narrowest door on the route, the stair turn width, and the mattress weight. Write them down before you open a retailer's site, not after the base is in the hallway.

For an end-lift, the lid typically swings to around the bed's own length in height. In a loft room or under a dormer that is the constraint that rules it out, and a side-lift or a two-drawer divan is the answer instead.

Sprung slats flex and are kinder to a pocket-sprung mattress; solid platform bases suit memory foam and heavier hybrids. A slat frame that sits loose in its holders is the single most common source of noise in an ottoman, because the whole frame lifts and drops every time you open it.

On upholstered bases, the fabric is the part you cannot repair. Bolt covers come off and go back on cleanly during a careful build; a dropped spanner leaves a mark that stays for the life of the bed.

Load heavy items at the hinge end, not the lifting end — it works with the struts instead of against them. Keep the void under about two-thirds full so the lid closes without compressing anything against the mattress.

In a ground-floor or basement London flat, a closed void with no airflow will hold moisture. Store bedding in breathable bags rather than sealed plastic, and open the base for a few minutes when you change the sheets.

If you need daily access, a drawer bed or a two-drawer divan is genuinely the better buy, however much storage the ottoman advertises.

Ottoman bases are built in the room and rarely fit through a standard door assembled, so they come apart to move. Struts should be de-tensioned and removed first, the lift frame unbolted, then the base broken down and every fixing bagged and labelled by corner.

Rebuilding on the other end is a full build, not a reassembly, because the base has to be squared again in the new room. Where a move is in the diary, booking the dismantle and the rebuild together is the cheapest way to do it — the same crew, the same fixings, no missing parts.