Bed Bunk Futon

You’ll find some great internet deals on classic and contemporary twin beds. Also called a single bed, the standard size for a twin mattress is 38 by 75 inches. In recent years, consumers have gone with the “bigger is better” mentality when choosing bedding products. If you’re an adult who thinks a twin bed is strictly for kids, you might want to take another look.

Twin beds give you a lot more flexibility when arranging a bedroom. Big mattresses like queens and kings aren’t very versatile. Unless you have a house with large rooms, a king size bed, which measures 76 by 80 inches, will take up most of your bedroom, leaving room only for a small dresser for your clothes. There are only one or two ways you can arrange a big bed in a small room and still leave space to get in out of the door and get to the closet, unless you push it into a corner and make one sleeper crawl over the other one to get out of bed. And taking a large mattress up a flight of stairs to a small upper story bedroom or loft style apartment can be a nightmare.

Another thing to consider about twin beds is that couples don’t always like too much togetherness. If your partner snores, or twitches a lot in his sleep, or if you’re a light sleeper or insomniac, you might be happier in your own bed, without taking the drastic step of moving into separate bedrooms. Some couples have very different temperature preferences for sleeping and can’t stand each other’s blanket arrangements. And if you’re having guests over, they might be less than enthusiastic about sharing one bed in your guest bedroom if that’s not their standard sleeping arrangement at home.

That’s where the twin bed makes good sense. You can buy a pair of twin size mattresses and have many more options for arranging them in the bedroom than you would with a king or queen. You can shove a bed into each corner of the room and nobody will have to climb over anybody else to get up in the night. Couples can sleep in the same room without getting on each other’s nerves, and guests will be comfortable with the sleeping arrangement.

Best of all, you can buy an inexpensive conversion kit to turn your twin beds into one king size. The kits go by names like “bed doubler,” and “create-a-king,” and consist of a web belt that fastens around the perimeter of the two twin size mattresses to keep them from slipping apart. They also come with a pad made of foam or sheepskin that runs down the length of the seam between the two mattresses to make the center of the “bed” more comfortable. The best approach to padding the seam with this arrangement is a king size memory foam mattress topper.

The best strategy if you’re going to use a bed doubler is to buy a pair of twin XL beds, which measure 38 by 80 inches, five inches longer than the twin bed’s standard 75 inches length. A doubled twin XL is exactly the same size as a king size bed and can take a king fitted sheet with ease. If you convert a standard twin size bed with a doubler, then you’ll need to use sheet garters to shorten the sheets before you can use them. The two twin mattresses will need to be the same thickness.

Go ahead a buy twin beds for your kids and don’t worry about what you’ll do with them after the kids are grown. Sweet dreams!