North Leeds Plumbing & Heating – Home Improvement and DIY Advice

Archive for the ‘Bedrooms’ Category

Beds occupy a central place in our lives, and after a hard day’s slog it’s a real relief to fall into one and recharge the batteries drained through the course of the day.

Whether you’re after a king size bed for the main bedroom, a decent double bed for guests or bunk beds for the kids, there’s plenty to choose from.

Divan beds are very popular, especially if space is limited, as they provide useful storage space as well as looking smart. Divan beds come in various models, from the traditional design to adjustable and hypo-allergenic. You can also choose between double and single. Single divan beds are great for the spare room or guest room, and are a good choice for children’s beds

Your choice of bed frame largely depends on available space, personal aesthetic and requirements. There is a huge range of wooden beds and metal beds on the market, and leather beds are popular too. 

Mattresses are of paramount importance once you’ve picked the frame. The mattress technologies today are such that the choice can be daunting, but memory foam and other materials can make your sleep more peaceful, by making fine adjustments based on your habitual sleeping positions.

Whatever your requirement, the choice of beds and mattresses available is enormous and it’s basically down to you to balance a range of personal factors when picking one. Most people spend a large chunk of their lives in a bed of one kind or another, and beds are an important piece of household furniture by any standard.

With so many different types of beds to choose from, making the correct selection is largely a matter of taste and individual requirements. Of course you also need to take account of constraints such as the space available and how much you’re willing to spend.

The bed frame itself is essentially a grid to contain the mattress, but its choice will depend on your aesthetic tastes, other decor and what sort of mattress you’ll be putting on it. For example, an adjustable bed frame will need a special type of mattress.

Metal beds can be bought in all sizes, from single to king-size and are very affordable. The larger versions have a central support and are often fitted with wheels or flush with the floor on casters, so they’re generally easy to move.

Wooden beds tend to remain in fixed positions once they’ve been set up and they usually sit higher off the ground than their metal counterparts, allowing storage space beneath. You can easily fit a variety of headboards and footboards to wooden beds and thin slats positioned between the frame provide additional support for the mattress.

Platform beds incorporate drawers beneath the mattress and don’t use headboards or footboards. Waterbeds also use this type of frame.

Adjustable beds enable you to change the angle of the mattress using a built-in control unit and are particularly suitable for those with special needs.

Finally, there are bunk beds and sofa beds, which are ideal for freeing up space, especially in small guest rooms.

Mattresses until quite recently were essentially just oblongs of springy material placed in a bed frame, with minimal allowances made for individual requirements, making them only slightly more advanced than the bales of straw that graced the sleeping quarters of medieval castles.

These days, mattresses are so advanced that there’s little excuse for not getting a good night’s sleep, and choosing the right type of mattress with the right type of base, can have a positive effect on your waking as well as your dreaming life.

As with many other things, you get what you pay for, and a really good mattress may cost a bit more but it should last for ten years, so think of it as a serious investment.

The right mattress and base combination is designed to promote correct posture and deliver support where it’s needed. Often, a decent existing bedstead will preclude the need for a base, but in the case of divan beds a mattress on its own is not likely to provide the right level of support.

Open spring mattresses are the most common type, whereas pocket spring mattresses are more elitist, with the springs docked in separate fabric pockets and responding individually to variable body weights. Memory foam, or visco-elastic mattresses also have anti-bacterial properties and react to body heat, to soften and mould to the sleeper’s shape.

With these and many other types of mattresses on the market, it’s advisable to consult the staff before forking money out, and give the matter as much thought as you would when buying a new car. And how much of your life do you spend in a car?

Many of us spend years searching for the perfect bed. It must be the perfect size and firmness, easy to make and keep up, and last a long time. Some beds are too soft, some too firm. From cot mattresses to super king size, the fit and firmness matter most.

One of the first things to do when considering the perfect bed is to decide on a size.   People normally move around in the night; too small a bed will interrupt that movement, forcing you to wake up when you reach the edge of the mattress. While the size of your room may dictate the size of your mattress to a degree, you should buy the biggest mattress you can afford that will fit in your bedroom. After all, the vast majority of the time your bedroom will be used for sleeping, so copious amounts of extra space would be a waste. 

Next, consider firmness. If you’re sleeping poorly, try placing a piece of plywood beneath your mattress to firm it up. Sleep on that for a few nights. Are you sleeping better? If so, a firmer mattress is probably in order. If not, try putting a foam “egg crate”, or pillow-top mattress topper on to soften things up.  If you sleep better with that, then you want to look for a mattress with extra softness that still supports you. 

Then consider style. You want to find a bed that suits not only your personal style, but also your decorating scheme. Whether simple, ornate, Oriental or elegant, think about the styles that make you feel most comfortable and relaxed, and lean towards them when choosing the bed frame. 

Put everything together, and you’ve got the recipe for the perfect bed and a perfect night’s sleep.

One of the most functional, practical, and versatile pieces of furniture that you can invest in when refitting your home office, guest bedroom, living room, or master bedroom is a sofa bed.  Naturally, the size of the area or the room has everything to do with this, but it definitely solves some issues where furniture and accommodating your overnight guests is concerned.

The biggest advantage of sofa beds is that they are the best of both worlds when you consider that you can enjoy a good movie while sitting on it or provide a place to sleep for a guest who is staying the night, or nights.  Sofa beds are available in all types of styles and fabric coverings.  An important fact is that there is no visible evidence that the piece converts into a bed and no one will ever know this to be the cae until you show them.  Most sofa beds are manufactured in a double bed size, but you can find them larger.

Additionally, if you have the budget for it, you can upgrade the mattress to a thicker one that has innerspring construction and is constructed from higher quality materials.  You can find sofa beds on the market today that are ridiculously cheap or extremely expensive and luxurious.  It is a matter of personal preference as well as budget as to what you finally choose of course.

There is a huge range of beds to choose from and although your first instinct will be to go for a stylish frame to fit in with your interior design scheme, you have to take into account other aspects of this important item of furniture. A bed is not just a fashion statement, but also a very practical item that you’ll spend a large part of your life in.

A headboard will be important for anyone used to reading in bed and many also like a footboard, which can make a bed feel more secure. Headboards, even if they can’t be attached to your frame of choice, can be of the freestanding variety and attached to the wall instead, where they often perform a design function and enhance the ambience of the room.

The actual frame can be of metal or wood, designed so as to hold the mattress and prevent it slipping off. The mattress itself is the most important consideration, as this will determine your quality of sleep. Mattresses come in various types, with coiled spring mattresses the most common; however, the pocket spring style provides a better level of comfort with their springs housed individually in fabric pockets and therefore able to react independently to pressure.

If you suffer from aching joints, back pains and the like, you might want to try out memory foam mattresses, whose material softens in contact with body heat to mould itself slightly into the shape of the sleeper. They are the ultimate in comfort as they provide superb support over all the body area.

Mattresses are the most important part of a bed, and come in several varieties. It’s important to consider your individual requirements when buying one, especially if you have some condition such as a back problem.

The standard mattress has a uniform spring system, which applies equal resistance across its surface. These open spring mattresses are well-designed and are perfectly adequate for the average sleeper, but they take no account of weight differentials and variable sleeping positions.

Pocket spring mattresses, on the other hand, have their springs housed separately in their own fabric pockets, and react separately and independently to different weights. If you are on the, shall we say, heavy side and your partner is lightweight then this would be a good one to consider.

Memory foam mattresses take it a step further by dispensing with the spring system altogether. These mattresses use an advanced type of foam that responds to body heat by softening slightly and effectively moulding itself to your position. This is not for everyone, but worth at least considering.

Whatever type of beds you are thinking of buying – wooden beds, leather beds, metal beds, children’s beds or guest beds – the mattress is the main component to consider. Sofa beds are in a separate category, but even with these it’s worth pulling them out in the showroom and rolling on them a bit, to get a sense of their resilience.

You should expect a decade of use from a good mattress, so it’s important to choose the right one for you.

When you consider that you are going to spend up to one third of your life sleeping, it is important to choose the right metal or wooden bed frame, as well as the correct mattress for your bedroom. 

Beds today come in a wide array of designs and styles so it is important to do some research before making your purchase of a new bed.  Here are some suggestions that will help you make the right decision:

Firstly, consider your available budget  – obviously this is the most important step in the decision making process since you don’t want to overspend, but there are plenty of websites that you can pick up decent cheap beds from.

Determine your bedroom’s dimensions and decide where you want the bed to be located – this will enable you to decide on the size of bed frame that you are going to purchase.

Functionality and practicality is the key – think about if you want a bed frame with a headboard and footboard, as well as the construction, design, and material that it is made from.

Remember the theme of your bedroom – this will help you determine the design and style of bed frame that you are going to purchase so that you do not upset your bedroom’s theme.

Consider the height of the bed frame – beds today can very greatly in size from being low and simple in design, to tall and very overpowering. You are going to have to decide what is going to work best in your bedroom.

Sofa beds used to be very impractical affairs, it was difficult to get the frame opened up to form the bed and equally difficult to fold back to restore the sofa. In addition, the things were often grossly uncomfortable in both their roles, although they were useful for students to crash out in, but then so was the bath.

Nowadays, however, the technology has finally caught up with popular demand and there are a wide variety of sofa beds on the market. They all look great as sofas, with sumptuous padding and cushions and often you’d never have imagined that they could be rolled easily out to form an equally comfortable bed. They are ideal for anyone with limited space and especially in guest rooms.

Corner sofa beds are also ideal for saving space and they often come in easy self-design units made from a variety of fabrics. They are very useful when unexpected guests suddenly turn up and the other rooms are already taken.

Bunk beds are also worth considering. Kids especially adore these, though you may have to rotate who gets the top bunk. You can double the space available in a kids’ room by getting rid of the two singles and moving a bunk bed in.

Futon beds are another option. These can be simply rolled up and stored against the side of a room or in a cupboard when not in use. They are versatile, economic and easy to use, as well as comfortable and stylish.

Many people are now choosing to install underfloor heating as an alternative to bathroom radiators. Underfloor heating comes in two variations – electrical and water. Water underfloor heating can be incorporated with your existing heating system; therefore there are no major renovations required.

The system is actually installed via a series of pipes which are located underneath your choice of flooring, be it tile, laminate or wood. The pipes then fill with hot water which creates heat which rises and circulates around the bathroom creating a warm and cosy ambience. Underfloor heating has long been popular in Europe and is now becoming a much more popular choice than traditional bathroom radiators in the UK as people opt for a sleeker, design-led aesthetic within their bathroom. No longer do you need to incorporate a radiator within the design of your bathroom. Often these radiators do not fit with the style of the room but they have, in the past, been deemed necessary due to the requirement for warmth. However, with underfloor heating the only wall space required will be for the thermostat.

You will also find that the heat provided by the underfloor heating is different to the heat commonly provided by radiators. The heat actually stays in the room for longer as the room is heated from the floor up. It is also a more environmentally friendly heating option since your energy consumption is lower. This should also result in reduction in your fuel costs.