Nightstand Sizing

You’ve spent hours, possibly days and maybe even weeks to create a bedroom that you have dreamed of for years. Grounded in comforting linens, sumptuous or relaxing velvets or perhaps even bronzed finishing touches—you realize you need the one last detail to even out the entire room.

The night tables. You may already have a matching pair picked out but perhaps you are unsure of how they match your bed. Or perhaps you’ve got a new hand-made frame coming and not sure how if your night tables will be the right size. Have you ever wondered what designers consider the right size a nightstand should be?

One of the most special rooms in your house is your bedroom. Spending more than a third of our lives in this room means that we should take extra care to ensure these rooms always grant us both ultimate comfort and a style that will last.

Having a nightstand should both complement the room and be functional enough that one doesn’t have to completely get out of bed or strain to reach important things you may set upon it.

Compare to Your Mattress

Designers will often draw the elevations of the bed in master bedrooms to check how every piece of furniture fits together. You will want the top of your mattress to be approximately the same height as your nightstand to begin with.

Choice

Since the standard of how tall your night table can rely on your mattress, you are afforded a few variables to further cater to your exact tastes. Most often, you can get away with having your night table two to six inches shorter than the mattress or taller—but going any further for either will skew the balance your furniture brings to the room. As well as feeling off, too short or too tall make the functionality of your night table less than ideal.

General Rule

Consensus amidst professional décor experts as well as furniture craftsmen is that nightstands should be on average 24 inches tall upward to 36 inches. These numbers have become average as the general height of a mattress tends to be 25 inches. Though not all mattresses, bed frames nor nightstands, like their owners, are the same. Variety is always an option when you are looking for hand-made, custom furniture. For custom-built beds, one should pair the height of their potential nightstands with what you’ve already acquired or own.

Style

An expert interior designer or a well-informed discerning customer with an excellent eye to trends and aesthetic will know that the style your night table is in can affect how it fits into your bedroom’s ornamentation. Once you have the size of the mattress to match your nightstand’s height, you can focus on matching styles.

Aligning the appearance of your night table to meet your bed’s headboard, if it has one, should be factored into the style choice of height as well. How the headboard scales with the wall and how that scales with your night tables will be important to consider as well when picking out how tall you want your nightstand to be. Keeping the harmony of your bedroom will be important to keep your sense of style and flow and is especially relevant to those who practice Feng Shui.

For an avant-garde or whimsical look, if you want your night tables to be taller than 30” or have a bed at that height, you can consider all sorts of other options to become a night table. A beautiful mahogany blanket chest with drawers or even a gorgeous antique half moon table could match perfectly with the recommended nightstand height recommendation and give your bedroom a unique flair.

Choose a set

When you find a trusted professional and expert not only in the field of interior design, but also a master craftsman of furniture, you can be assured that they have no doubt already considered everything for the customer ahead of time. Purchasing a nightstand made purposely to match a bedroom set, or that comes in a set is a smart means to make sure all design elements have already been considered, saving you the time of creating the look on your own. For followers and practitioners of the art Feng Shui, this arrangement may be the optimal choice for the balance of your bedroom space.

Aesthetics

Ultimately, as it often comes down to your personal aesthetic and mattress height, the goal of the height of your night table is to create a visible impression of scale and eye-pleasing aesthetic that will work for you day after day, or night after night.

Interior designers have no rules set when it comes to the height of your night tables due to the fact mattress sizes differ wildly between customer tastes as well as needs for their sleep. Factor in custom bed frames and numbers vary. Ultimately the best practices for choosing the right height for your night tables are simple:

• Measure the height of your mattress already on the bed.
• Keep in mind your bed’s headboard and any lamp lighting and how to balance a clean line between them.
• Choose a nightstand either the same height, or 2-6 inches taller or shorter. Anything more may be too extreme.
• Style and shape of a night table can affect how it looks or whether it looks well with your bed.
• Choose a night table from the set that comes with your bed or matches your bed.
• Your personal aesthetics.

These guidelines will have you well on your way to sleeping in harmonious, clean, visually stunning balance and décor with your new night tables exactly at the right height to bring your entire bedroom together.