How to choose your bedroom furniture - full guide

Buying furniture is tough, we know that. Choices are sometimes overwhelming, besides you're not really sure what would look good in your specific room, your specific lightning conditions and so on. Is every product you see would be a great match for you? Obviously not.

With this guide we'll try to help you as much as we can and cover as much as possible. Our experience in furniture handling would probably be helpful for you in case you're shopping for new bedroom furniture. We also hope this guide will help you to avoid any potential problems that some of the shoppers unfortunately make from time to time and will be extremely helpful when shopping for your new bedroom furniture. So, let's start!

Bedroom Types

So what should you consider when shopping for your new bedroom? First of all, you have to take a look at is bedroom type design-wise. There are many types and styles for bedroom furniture, but we'll try to define 3 main groups: contemporary, casual and traditional. Contemporary and traditional styles are two absolutely opposite poles of furniture designs and if you're looking to mix and match these styles in absolute most cases it will not work. It's hard to imagine high-gloss night stands right next to a bed full of royal style and carved wood details.

Typically, contemporary style refers to high-gloss case goods and beds, leather headboards, low-profile platform beds, minimalistic sleek strict design that is mostly takes full advantage of 90-degree angles, lacquer and pure wood with simple bold colors, like black, gray, white and so on. Classical or traditional style bedrooms tend to have a warmer, brown tones as primary color choice, a lot of details, elegant forms (if you see a dresser standing on a curved legs it's 100% classic style) and beds that mostly utilize slat type platform.

This gives them higher feel and suitable for people who want more bed height. While bed height doesn't solely depend on platform and thus on style (mattress is a big role here), typically if you want to have a higher bed: please choose classical and traditional designs. If you love modern sleek feel and lower platforms - choose contemporary full platforms.

Casual styles are something in between these two drastic bedroom styles. While we have no special filter to easily filter out classical vs contemporary you can easily tell in most cases which one is which, for example by using platform filter.

Budget and Cost

Furniture cost tends to add up. Yes, you might like that amazing Italian bedroom but price - price can be a huge factor. Choose all the case goods you need using our options, add it all to a shopping cart and check the delivery cost. If you would want an optional installation service or walkup (not available in every area) just see how much it all would cost.

If overall purchase cost appears to be something completely out of your range just consider something more affordable. However, we'd like you to think about your dream purchase this way: in most cases you're investing in furniture for years. Years of service - a good quality furniture is made to last. Would that bed make you smile every time you step into a room? If so, money should not be a primary factor - but in the end it's up for you to decide.

Besides we have great financing options from Affirm and Paypal just for the cases like this. Consider that. If you're missing just a little for your purchase pay for it later - life is too short to deny yourself a pleasure of owning something, you'll truly love.

Colors and Finishes

Very important is to take a look into your overall room color scheme. Most people would not touch the walls since wall repaint is something that would require effort, planning, time and expense. If you have an option to choose / paint your walls before ordering furniture - it's totally great. For the most part, customers tend to stick with what they have. If you're renting an apartment painting a room in most cases would be a hassle - since most apartments wouldn't allow it or will allow it with requirement to repaint it back once you move out. So yes, in most cases just work with what you have.

Once you've decided what colors you want to concentrate on just use our color filters. White bedroom furniture - no problem. Gray bedroom - here you go. For brown we have a couple of shades, lighter brown shades, that can include mahogany, pine, merlot and others; and espresso brown. Stick to your plan and see what is available.

For white walls anything but white would work wonderfully. The more drastic difference color of the furniture is to you walls (white) generally the better. Any wooden, black, dark gray bed set is 100% match. You have to pay attention to color of carpet or floors as well. Curtains and area rugs are generally much easier to change if needed than furniture.

If you're looking to buy a white bedroom furniture set one of the best things you can do is to paint the walls beforehand. Dark gray, burgundy, deep blue walls would work wonders with your white furniture. Contrast is the king, and it always works to your advantage.

Floors are also very important. Let's say you have hardwood floors that are overall pretty amazing. For the most part contemporary bedroom furniture would look very awkward when room has a solid hardwood flooring which is extremely costly and hard to exchange. Also, any lacquered furniture would not be a perfect match to this kind of place. Modern carpets with gray or taupe tones are better fit for any modern furniture.

Delivery considerations, Measuring over sizes

In case you're not sure always contact us with pictures of your staircases. This staircase is not good for most king beds.

One of the primary things to think about is delivery. A lot of customers completely forget this part: it can be very easy to get carried away by nice pictures of your bedroom with a set that you like. However, you have to think about your specific room, entrances, how furniture is typically installed & brought in and don't attempt to order absurd models to places highly unsuitable for those.

First of all - check your home or apartment. If it's an older place, there's nothing wrong with it. However, older places like older houses across New England or walk-up 6-story building in New York were simply not designed for some of the modern furniture types. Avoid classic heavy stuff, marble top dressers, high headboards and such.

Secondly, most of bedrooms in United States are historically located on second floors. That means walkups. If we offer an optional delivery service to your area - great, we'll take care about it. In most cases, though, furniture will ship to you in boxes and bringing it in, installing and getting rid of the boxes will be your quest.

Most important delivery advice in case of bedroom purchase - take a look at your staircases! If those are wide + there are no or one single turn to go up - perfect. Generally, all staircases in relatively modern homes are wide. Another very important thing: ceiling. If you have enough ceiling space on your staircase in most situations there will be no problems. However, if you have a limited space, awkward turn or low ceiling - contact us before ordering. In most cases we'll ask what you want to order and ask for some pictures of your entrance & turns. We have a huge experience in this and will be able to give you a 99% accurate advice for free.

King size headboards come in single quite large boxes - always keep that in mind.

King Beds are 'triple-measure-alert' sign! We even have a warning about all king beds in a shopping cart. Be extra careful shopping for King Beds and evaluate your purchase before hitting that pay button.

Main thing here: you have to fully understand how beds are transported, shipped and delivered. Typically, beds come in 3-6 flat or relatively flat long boxes. Of course, beds are not assembled. For King Beds, though, headboards, especially if headboard features leather upholstered headboard or carved edges are coming in one single box. Let's say you see a bed size on a website that says something like 94W x 88D x 67H. That would mean that box with headboard will be slightly larger than 94 by 67. Make sure you have enough space to turn that box in.

A little piece of advice - if you already have a mattress in place (king or queen size, regular type mattress, not memory foam) that would mean that in most cases you will have no problems with your bedroom furniture. Mattresses, especially king mattresses are quite large and mostly unbendable - and if they fit, pretty much everything else fits. That's true in 95% of the cases.

Again we offer expertise on those things for free. Always ask if you're not sure. You can simply send us an email with a couple of pictures of your room / staircases / turns and we'll tell you if you want to order that particular model or stick with something else.

Dressers come in boxes just slightly larger than dresser itself. Fully assembled.

Chests, dressers and night stands typically come fully pre-assembled in a single box. Nightstands are relatively small, but chests and especially dressers can be very heavy. When we say very heavy, we really mean it. Classic dressers with marble tops can be over 300lbs. Contemporary dressers with high-gloss lacquered finish can also be extremely heavy, easily over 200, 300, 350 lbs. and more. Do you have two people that can carry 350lbs to the second floor? ...

Also, there's extra packaging in a box that you can't take out until you fully unpack the unit that sometimes include protective wooden planks or carcasses over whole dresser length, so this adds up to dresser weight, obviously. Please consider that especially when you're going to take care of furniture installation yourself.

That's how typical bedroom set looks like in boxes.

Typically more affordable furniture is less heavy - not because it's cheaply made, but simply because it's differently made. If you see a dresser for $400 most likely it will much lighter than a dresser for $1500. Weight is not a primary factor on overall furniture price, but one of the factors for sure.

Boxes your purchase comes in can be very beaten up and quite unsexy. That's very normal, don't be upset. The main thing is what's in those boxes! See, boxes along with extensive packaging are designed only for one thing - to protect your marvelous furniture from transportation, dirt and damage and arrive in one piece to final destination. Your home. You can easily see on a picture above how typical bedroom set order looks like.

Last thing we want to mention is overall size of your room. Don't order extra-bulky, oversized furniture to your room if you're not going to have a space to walk or would have to move half of your case goods somewhere else. It just makes no sense. All measurements are typically very accurate - just take books, glasses or anything else and measure each single piece you're planning to order by placing these objects directly on your floor. It will help with visualizations tremendously. Don't forget about opening drawers, doors and so on.

Measurements for the beds can be sometimes tricky as a lot of headboards are 'wider' than night stands they partially or fully cover and overhang, so take that into account. It's always the best approach to order less than order more - there should be enough room to breathe and freely walk around.

Style match when buying additional Case Goods

Does bedroom furniture has to match? Short answer is YES if you're buying a new one. It's generally not a good idea to get different pieces from different models when you're literally have an empty room. Stick to overall model that you like and get your dressers, chests and beds from the same collection.

What do you do, though, if you already have a bed or want to buy a single nightstand, for instance? First of all, forget about 100% match with your existing furniture and take it easier since in this case it doesn't matter. Moreover, matching something from different sets / factories will be impossible. So, it's the best to take it easy from the very start. It won't matter that much anyway.

If you're looking for a separate dresser or chest just stick with more or less same color scheme, i.e., white with white (in case you have white bed), brown with brown (brown shades match perfectly together) and so on. Try to avoid drastically different finishes - for example if your bed and existing furniture feature high gloss finish it will be strange to order a dresser in velvet, for example.

If you're looking to buy nightstands make sure two of them are the same. As a matter of fact, sometimes different night tables from different sets can look really interesting so don't be afraid to experiment. Nightstands, to be honest, is the most 'you can skip all the rules' product in your bedroom. A lot of folks tend to buy night tables from accent tables categories for instance, since they like unique style, they can achieve when combining bedroom furniture with round accent table as nightstand. Your fantasy is the limit.

Don't mix and match classic and contemporary stuff as it generally would look really strange together. Avoid pure wood finishes matched with high-gloss and lacquer. But that's again, up to your taste.

Summary

So let's summarize:

• Choose your style and color.
• Check if price is good for you. If not consider financing.
• Check colors of your walls / floors and bedroom furniture you want to order
• Measure up your entrances - think about delivery and bringing the boxes in
• If you're buying some extra pieces to your existing bedroom furniture see how they're going to match, but don't worry about matching it perfectly
• If you're not sure or have questions - always contact professionals. In this case - us. We'll give you our expertise option. Don't worry, you don't have to buy after that, it's for free :)

We're hoping this bedroom furniture buying guide was helpful. Happy shopping!