Under the bed is best used for things you need two or three times a year and want out of the way the rest of the time. Seasonal bedding, luggage, out-of-season clothes and spare pillows are all sensible choices. Keep out anything damp, anything edible, and anything you reach for daily.
September is when this stops being theoretical. The garden things come in, the summer duvet needs a home, and the spare room turns into the place everything waits to be dealt with. Below is what our team tells people when they ask, along with the questions that come up most often afterwards.
What should you store under your bed?
Store what is bulky, seasonal and dry. That covers winter or summer duvets depending on the month, spare pillows, suitcases and holdalls, out-of-season clothing, spare curtains and blankets, and boxed keepsakes you want kept but not on show.
The test is simple. If you would reach for it less than once a month and it takes up more room than it deserves, under the bed is the right home for it.
Put soft items in breathable cotton or canvas bags rather than sealed plastic. Fabric that cannot breathe holds moisture against itself, and a duvet packed away damp in September smells like it in December.
What should you not store under your bed?
Keep out anything damp, anything edible, anything you need every day, and anything fragile that will be forgotten about.
Damp is the main one. Bedding that has been dried on a rack indoors can still hold moisture even when it feels dry to the hand, so give it a proper airing before it goes away. Food and anything scented invites pests into the one room you would least like them in. Daily items are a practical mistake rather than a risk, because lifting a bed to reach your gym kit gets old within a week.
Paperwork and photographs are worth a second thought too. They are fine in a sealed box, but bedrooms swing in temperature more than people realise, and loose paper does not enjoy it.
Is it bad to store things under your bed?
No, provided what you store is clean, dry and contained. The concerns people raise are dust and airflow, and both are manageable.
With an open-legged bed, dust gathers under it whether you store anything there or not, and boxes simply make it harder to reach with a vacuum. An ottoman base closes the space entirely, so the area under the bed stops collecting dust in the first place. That is one of the quieter advantages of a storage bed and it rarely gets mentioned.
If anyone in the house has allergies, sealed containers and a proper airing once a season will do more good than leaving the space empty.
Where should you store winter bedding without an airing cupboard?
Under the bed is the best answer in most homes, because it is dry, dark, level and already there.
Lofts get damp and cold, garages get damper still, and the top of a wardrobe puts a heavy duvet above head height where nobody enjoys retrieving it. The space under a bed avoids all of that, and it keeps the bedding in the room it belongs to.
Fold duvets loosely rather than compressing them hard. Vacuum bags are useful for getting things in, though natural fillings prefer to keep some loft, so give anything down or wool a day to recover before it goes back on the bed.
What is the best storage bed for a small bedroom?
An ottoman base is usually the strongest choice in a small room, because it uses the entire footprint of the bed without needing any clearance around it.
Drawers need space to pull out into. In a room where the bed sits close to a wardrobe or a wall, that space does not exist, and you end up with drawers you can only half open. An ottoman lifts upward instead, so the room's proportions stop mattering.
That said, the two do different jobs and plenty of people are better off with drawers. An ottoman suits things you want a few times a year, since you lift the whole bed to reach them. Drawers suit what you want on a Tuesday, like bedding in rotation or children's clothes. Think about how often you will be opening it before you decide, rather than which holds more.
Our divan and ottoman bed bases come in every standard UK size, so the room can have the storage without carrying a bed that is too big for it.
How do you make a bedroom feel less cluttered?
Clear the floor first. A room feels the size of the longest uninterrupted stretch your eye can cross, so boxes along the skirting and bags on top of the wardrobe make a room read as smaller than it measures.
Moving that same clutter under the bed changes how the room feels without changing anything else in it. Nothing is thrown away, nothing is bought, and the room comes back.
The second thing is matching. When the base, the headboard and any blanket box share a fabric, the eye takes them as one piece of furniture rather than three separate purchases, and a room with fewer visual stops in it feels calmer. Skye Pearl and Linea Linen keep a room soft and quiet. Arran Flint has a Tweed Herringbone weave that adds texture without visual weight. Hugo Mink suits a room about to spend six months under lamplight.
Quick answers
Can you store clothes under the bed?
Yes. Use breathable bags rather than sealed plastic, and keep them to out-of-season items you will not need for months.
How do you store a spare duvet?
Air it fully, fold it loosely, and put it in a cotton or canvas bag under the bed. Avoid compressing natural fillings for long periods.
Does under-bed storage attract dust?
Open-legged beds collect dust underneath regardless. A closed ottoman base prevents it, which makes the room easier to keep clean.
Is an ottoman bed hard to lift?
No. Gas struts take the weight of the platform and the mattress, so it opens with one hand once it is set up correctly.
Made in Britain, and built to be lived with
Every base, headboard and blanket box at British Beds Direct is handcrafted by expert British craftsmen, made by British people for British people, with our manufacturing heritage going back to 2005. Everything is healthcare endorsed and covered by a five-year guarantee.
Complimentary Two-Man Delivery brings it to your room of choice within 3 to 10 working days, with your base assembled for you.
See the fabric before you decide
Storage is the practical half. Fabric is the half you look at every day, and it is the one thing a screen cannot tell you accurately.
Order a set of Complimentary fabric swatches, tape them to the wall where the bed goes, and look at them in the morning and again with the lamp on. Then have a look at the headboards and bases together, order in the same fabric, and the bed will read as one piece rather than two.
