Post by Craig Jenkins.

Do you have a sizable room that you want to furnish with a bed that takes advantage of that space? Maybe you want to consider a canopy bed. Canopy beds are great ways of filling up a room. Naturally a king or queen sized bed will eat up some of the horizontal space in any room you put it in, but a canopy bed makes use of not only the horizontal space, but also the vertical space. Pick the right one, and you’ll not only have a luxurious, regal sleeping space for yourself and your family, but you’ll also have a towering, majestic focal point for your room.

Better yet, canopy beds allow you to flex your creative muscles and introduce little personal design flourishes you wouldn’t normally be able to work into a smaller bed. You can trick out your canopy with extra trappings like curtains, drapes, lights, plants, and whatever else strikes your fancy. If you have the right room for it, and you want to add some extra three dimensional pop and kingly largess to your sleeping space, a canopy bed seems like the perfect option.

Tags: bed, bedroom, canopy bed, Charles P. Rogers

Post by Craig Jenkins.

Hello out there. Hope the winter’s treating everyone all right. We wanted to take a minute out to talk about daybeds. They’re a great space saving convention for hiding sleeping surfaces in rooms that aren’t necessarily large enough to handle a whole bed. From a design standpoint, though, daybeds’ surfaces can be built in a couple different ways. They can be built with platforms or with topsprings.

Platform daybeds, much like standard platform beds, have a head and footboard connected by side rails. Perpendicular to those side rails are the platforms, long planks usually made of wood that support the weight of the mattress and, of course, the person sleeping on it. The platform set up will offer a high level of support and is generally recommended for people who prefer sleeping on a more firm surface. That firmness meets its match in the far more limber topspring set up.

Daybeds with topsprings have the head and footboard as well, but they are connected to the topspring, a fence-like frame outfitted by an interlocking mesh of supportive metal spindles. As the wire mesh is affixed to the topspring’s metal edge by springs, a topspring can bend and give in a way the more rigid platforms cannot. Topspring daybeds are recommended for an individual who prefers a more supple sleeping surface.

As always, let your personal preferences be your guide. Take care, and stay warm!

Tags: bed, bedroom, Charles P. Rogers, sleigh bed

Post by Craig Jenkins.

Happy New Year! How’d everyone ring in 2012? Crazy fun-loving parties and legendary shenanigans? Quiet night in with the family? Did you watch the ball drop? Did you go to sleep and ignore all the festive hoopla? However you closed out your 2011, we hope it was a great night, and we wish you nothing but health and happiness (and warmth!) for 2012.

Let’s talk about beds for a bit though. More specifically, how to make the most of your headboard. If you’ve gone out and purchased a bed with a beautiful headboard, you want to show it off, right? Different beds have different headboard heights, and displaying that headboard to the best of your abilities can sometimes be tricky. It won’t be a problem if your bed’s headboard is tall. But let’s assume it isn’t. What are your options?

The answer is a little bit of simple mathematics. First and foremost, you should always make certain that you’re aware of stats like the height of the headboard and the height your mattress will be from the floor. From there, you can wring some hard fought extra headboard inches by playing with mattress and box spring height. Maybe you want to get a slightly thinner mattress. Maybe you opt for a low profile box spring. Maybe you want to look into bunkie boards (thin box spring like supports that keep the mattress height way down while still supporting the mattress and diverting some of the pressure away from your bed’s rail system). You have a wide range of opportunities at your disposal.

As always, be creative, be informed, and ask questions before you commit. Best of luck, and again, happy new year.

Tags: bed, bedroom, Charles P. Rogers, Design, headboard

Post by Craig Jenkins.

Christmas is right around the corner, and Hanukkah is mere days away. Here’s a quick, fun holiday related question for everyone out there. So we all know what gifts we want to receive this time of year. This question relates to the giving of gifts, though. When buying a gift for a friend or loved one, do you pull a Santa and solicit family and friends for lists, or do you get them something you think they might want? Are you a thoughtful surprise gift-giver, or are you a more utilitarian one? Are you the type that thinks socks are great holiday gifts? If you are, please be advised that while everyone always NEEDS socks and items of that nature, NO ONE likes getting them as gifts. This is an unrecognized rule of the universe. Help make the world a better place. Break the cycle.

This is a bed blog, though, so let us get back to the business at hand. Let’s talk about dressing your bed. A quick and easy way to give your bed some third dimensional pop, some livelihood is to mix sizes and shapes of pillows. With pillows, shams, throws, boudoirs, breakfast squares, and more available on the market, you have multiple options for dressing your bed and introducing additional layers and textures into your bedding set up. Use your creative mind and experiment. Take care, and good luck.

Tags: bed, bedroom, Charles P. Rogers, Design, sheets

Post by Craig Jenkins.

Hey all. It’s been an unseasonably warm November and December so far, hasn’t it? Well if forecasts are to be trusted, that might be over. Winter weather might finally be coming on for the kill. Are you ready for sub-zero temperatures, epic snowstorms, and the like? (Or if you live in California or someplace with a more tropical climate, are you ready for… wind and rain?) I’m not. I am going to miss 2011’s graciously extended sweater weather season, although I will enjoy the extra time in bed that the colder temperatures normally lead to.

Speaking of beds, I wanted to run through a quick bit about purchasing a new mattress. Long story short, to pillowtop or not to pillowtop? Pillowtop mattresses come with a comfy layer of padding on the top side that serves a couple of practical purposes.

Firstly, a pillowtop mattress will often have the advantage of feeling softer overall than its counterparts on the market. This doesn’t necessarily make it the best thing on the market as some people prefer soft sleeping surfaces, while others prefer firmer, more supportive ones. As always, it’s a matter of personal preference. Pillowtops also provide a protective layer for your mattress itself, as they contain a buffer between the coils and your body. Comfort and support for both you and your bed.

Now on the flipside, pillowtop mattresses are not wired to be used on all sides. They can’t be flipped (see what I did there?) over like their normal innerspring counterparts can be, and flipping the mattress periodically is key in extending the lifetime and lasting firmness of the mattress. Now don’t think this counts them out. By no means. A series of clever mattress designers over time came up with one-sided pillowtop mattresses that don’t need to be flipped and keep their form without the need to be rotated top to bottom. So again, it really comes down to personal comfort and preference. Best of luck as always in finding the perfect fit. Take care.

Tags: bed, bedroom, biltmore mattress, Charles P. Rogers, mattress, Pillowtop mattress