Cabin bed or bunk bed

This question I imagine has caused many parents a sleepless night in deciding what the best type of bed to buy for a child when the time arrives to upgrade their current sleeping arrangements. This is a dilemma that I recently had to go through with my daughter after months of putting off the inevitable I decided that I would redesign and redecorate her bedroom buying new furniture and accessories.

My daughter is 6 years old and is at an age where her opinion counts after all she it is her room and she is the one that will have to sleep in her new bed, so getting input from her was very important to me. The dilemma was which bed should we go for? as there are just so many on the market. The decorating of the room and the choosing the color scheme etc went pretty smoothly but deciding on the type of bed to buy was a headache.

We decided that we would initially rule out the different types of main beds one by one and decided that we didn’t really want a normal Divan style bed in her new room as they weren’t very modern anymore and there were just so many better beds available. This was a key factor as it then enabled us to concentrate on looking at other types of beds from an early stage. We then ruled out the platform bed as they were very stylish looking but were a bit dangerous for a 6 year old with their sharp edged corners. This pretty much left us with bunk beds and cabin beds. In order to help make the right choice we listed the pros and cons about each bed type in detail.

The bunk bed was an obvious choice to us as my daughter had just started to ask about friends staying over and would obviously help in terms of there being an extra bed. It was also appealing as my daughters room wasn’t the biggest and so the space it would save would be appreciated. However my main reservation about the bunk bed was that it was all a bit too boyish for my liking as I always associate bunk beds with brothers sharing in a large family. My other reservation was the style as bunk beds are not very appealing as there are effectively all frames and with a newly decorated bedroom would they make it look dated?

The cabin bed on the other hand was quite stylish in terms of looks mostly due the range of cabin beds on the market today. There are simply hundreds of different styles, themes, colors and shapes to choose from making it very easy to get a match for pretty much any bedroom décor. But the other advantage of the cabin bed was the raised bed which meant there was plenty of room underneath for additional storage areas and with my daughter’s smaller room became very appealing indeed. The area underneath the bed is not always used for storage as the higher the bed is the more you can fit underneath and I was amazed at the different variations of ideas that have been used from simple storage areas like shelves and drawers to more complex ideas that involve TV and seating.

In the end the choice became obvious and we opted for a cabin bed with a desk underneath and a small cupboard which my daughter loves. It maximises use of the space and provides my daughter with a place to read and do her homework, making everyone a winner.