How to Get the Right Height for a Custom Bed (Hint: Start With Your Mattress)

Picture of undressed mattress on a custom bed to demonstrate sleeping height of mattress on plywood platform

Custom four post bed with mattress on plywood platform in place of boxspring.

When you order a custom-made bed, the frame alone doesn’t decide how high you’ll sleep off the floor. Your mattress and boxspring both contribute to that height. That’s why we ask our clients how thick the mattress and boxspring are before building anything.

At Scott James Furniture in Tiverton, Rhode Island, we build custom beds around your preferred sleeping height, so the finished bed looks and feels right.

Why does mattress thickness matter for a custom bed?

Your sleeping height is the distance from the floor to the top of your mattress. It equals the height of the bed frame (where the mattress rests) plus the thickness of the mattress and boxspring.

Mattresses range from about 8 inches thick for low-profile models to 14 inches or more for pillow-top and hybrid styles. The mattress thickness alone can change your final sleeping height by half a foot or more. We want to adjust for these two heights to ensure you won’t also need a custom stool to get in and out of bed.

Once everything is stacked on the bed, the top of the mattress lands exactly where you want

As the table shows, a thick mattress on a standard box spring leaves very little room for the frame itself. That’s one reason many custom platform beds are built with a solid plywood platform that supports the mattress directly, with no box spring needed. If you plan to keep your box spring, let us know so we can accout for it during the build.

Planning a custom bed? Measure your mattress thickness, your box spring or foundation (if you’ll use one), and your ideal sleeping height, then contact us to start your design. Download our Bed Order Guide for additional details.

Bed height needed for a common 28-inch sleeping height
Mattress Box spring Frame height needed Sleeping height
10 inches None 18 inches 28 inches
12 inches None 16 inches 28 inches
14 inches None 14 inches 28 inches
10 inches 5-inch low-profile 13 inches 28 inches
12 inches 5-inch low-profile 11 inches 28 inches
10 inches 9-inch standard 9 inches 28 inches
12 inches 9-inch standard 7 inches 28 inches