11 tricks for fitting a big bed into a small room

For anyone who has crammed into a too-snug bed with a partner (and kids or pets — or all three), or who relishes an opportunity to sleep outstretched like a starfish, a king bed is the dream. Without a royal-sized room to match, it might feel like an unattainable luxury, but interior design experts have good news: There are ways to help a large bed not only fit within a small space, but actually look good there.

As is often the case with decorating, there's no single prescription that will work in every room, but some combination of the following tips could be your ticket to sleeping in the big, blissful bed you didn't think you could have.

1. Focus on flow

To determine if a bigger mattress can really can fit, the pros say you'll need to ensure there is at least 2 feet of clearance around the bed — the bare minimum to walk by it comfortably. Before you go mattress shopping, tape out the perimeter on the floor with painters' tape. While the designers I spoke to said any kind of bed can work in a small room, none of their big bed/small room projects featured footboards, which can be a real knee-banger in a tight space.

2. Get the bed height right

I expected the experts to tell me that a low-slung bed would be the best choice for a small bedroom, but Tami Ramsay, principal designer and partner at Cloth & Kind, an interior design firm with offices in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Athens, Ga., says it's much more important for the bed to be a comfortable height for the user. "Maybe it's not the perfect situation with the ceiling height in the room, but we really let the client's comfort level lead where the bed is concerned," she says, noting that most of the beds she specifies are between 24 and 28 inches high. Just don't forget to match the bedside table height to the bed.

3. Use your walls

One space-saving tactic that designers recommended repeatedly is to opt for wall-mounted bedside accoutrements. Instead of a standard bedside table, pick a wall-mounted one. In lieu of a table lamp, install a wall sconce to keep the surface of your small nightstand free.

4. Select lighting with care

Not all wall-mounted sconces are created equal, and in a tight space, the wrong fixture could become a pain point. Ideally, in cramped quarters, you'll want lights that articulate both side-to-side and front-to-back, so you can position them for reading, then easily move them out of the way, says Ramsay. She also recommends dimmable models.

5. Go minimal next to the bed

New York interior designer Matthew Kowles says that even a wall-mounted bedside drawer can be too big for a small room. Instead, he recommends mounting custom shelves as nightstands beside the bed. "When you have a narrow space, [a bed with nearby shelves] feels like the cabin of a ship," he says.

6. Play with prints

Don't be afraid to use patterns in a small room with a big bed. For a recent project, Ramsay used bold prints on the headboard, curtains, side chair and pillow shams. While it may sound counterintuitive to go for pattern-on-pattern in a tight space, the combination of the four different prints actually draws attention away from the bed's relatively large size for the room, she says.

7. Use mirrors

Mirrors are a classic way to make a room seem more spacious. When you're squeezing in a large bed, experts suggest adding small mirrors in unexpected spots, in addition to the usual bedroom mirror over a dresser. For example, Kowles hung a pair of rattan mirrors over the bedside tables in a guest room with a big bed, giving the eye another place to roam.

8. Don't go fully monochrome

It might seem like matching the bed linens to the walls would obscure a bed's large dimensions, but Suzanne Tucker, co-founder of San Francisco interior design firm Tucker & Marks, says you need at least some contrast between the bed and the rest of the room — or the bed can actually look bigger. "That contrast can be a subtle play of tonal colors or a sophisticated mix of textures," she says.

9. Don't skimp on bedding

"When you come into a small bedroom, the bedding is the most dominant thing in the room," says interior designer Cindy Rinfret, founder of Greenwich, Conn., design firm Rinfret. This only becomes truer when the mattress is particularly large for the space, so make sure you love the bedding that covers it: "You are going to enjoy it every day," she says. "Good bedding is expensive but you use it every night."

10. Layering textures is key

Rinfret says that whatever your color scheme, the success of a small bedroom design "is all about textures and the mixing of materials," which will give a room visual interest that makes the bed feel less like an island and more like a part of the full landscape of the room. You can add texture without overwhelming a space by sticking to a tight color palette and playing with juxtapositions of matte and shimmery finishes or smooth and chunky textures.

11. Canopy and four-poster beds are fine

You might think a grand four-poster or canopy bed would make a king mattress feel much too bulky in compact quarters, but Tucker has used them often and says "the feeling of a room within a room works remarkably well in a small room" because it is so cozy. If you add curtains around the bed, her advice is to make sure they're long enough to kiss the floor. Rinfret agrees: "A four-poster bed in a tight space can be wonderful — I love that added architecture in a small room."

Laura Fenton is a writer based in New York; she writes the weekly newsletter Living Small.