If you have ever stood in a small bedroom trying to work out where a chest of drawers, a blanket box and a wardrobe are all supposed to fit, an ottoman bed is usually the answer nobody mentions first but everybody wishes they had bought sooner. Instead of adding another piece of furniture to the room, it turns the bed itself into the storage.
How the gas lift mechanism actually works
An ottoman bed lifts from the base using a gas strut system, similar to the boot of a car, so the entire mattress platform tilts up as one piece. That gives you the full length and width of the bed as a storage cavity underneath, rather than a few narrow drawers along the side. It sounds like a small difference but in practice it is the difference between storing a couple of spare pillows and storing your entire off season wardrobe.
The lift itself takes very little effort even with the mattress on top, since the gas struts are doing the work rather than you lifting the weight directly. Most people find they only need one hand to raise it.
Choosing a style that still looks like a normal bed
One of the more common concerns is that a storage bed will look bulky or utilitarian, but that is not really the case with most ottoman frames on the market now. The Jaasiel ottoman bed in Dune linen has a soft pillow headboard that reads as a normal upholstered bed rather than a storage unit, and the storage only becomes obvious once you lift it. If you want to see the wider range before deciding on a fabric or headboard shape, our ottoman bed collection covers everything from tall panelled headboards to lower, more minimal designs.
Ottoman versus other storage options
It is worth comparing this against the alternatives before committing. A bed with side drawers gives you easier day to day access, since you are not lifting the mattress every time, but the total storage volume is much smaller. For a lot of people, the right answer is actually both, using drawers for things you need weekly and the ottoman base for things you only need seasonally.
If storage is not the main priority and you are choosing based on style first, it is worth looking at our upholstered bed collection more broadly, since ottoman mechanisms are now available across most of the popular headboard styles rather than being a separate category.
Getting the size right
Because the storage cavity depends on the overall footprint of the bed, it is worth sizing up if you are choosing between two widths and storage is a genuine priority. A king size ottoman base holds meaningfully more than a double, and the difference is more noticeable in storage volume than it is in the floor space the bed actually takes up. If your room can take the extra size, it is generally worth it for this specific reason.
