TV Bed Questions We Get Asked in the Showroom

We've been fitting TV Beds for over a decade, and a fair chunk of every showroom visit is the same conversation. Somebody stands there, half convinced, asking if there really is a TV in the footboard. So rather than try and sell you a TV Bed online, we thought we would describe how the conversations we regularly have in the showroom. 

Good idea, or gimmick

It genuinely splits down the middle depending on how you actually watch TV in the bedroom. If yours is on a wall you never quite liked, or balanced on a chest of drawers with a rat's nest of cables behind it, this solves that outright — off, it's just a bed. On, it's a bed with a TV in it. Nothing left half-finished about the room either way.

Where it stops making sense: if you're the type who has something on in the background while you're getting dressed or packing a bag. The lift takes a few seconds each way, and that's fine for settling in for the evening, less fine if you're in and out of the room every ten minutes.

What's actually inside the footboard

There's a bracket on a motor, basically. The foot of the bed has a compartment built into it, and depending on the model, that's either its own separate lift or part of the ottoman storage base. Remote goes press, telly rises. Press again, and it drops back down, and the footboard shuts over the top like nothing was ever there. First-time customers see it done in the shop, and most of them ask us to do it twice.

Underneath, it's a linear actuator, the same sort of motor you'd find lifting an adjustable bed base, just mounted vertically and carrying a bracket instead of a mattress plate. It drives up and down on a screw thread, which is why a decent one glides rather than judders, and why a cheap one whines and jolts at the top of its travel. Most have a soft-stop built in so the telly doesn't clunk into place, and a manual override or crank handle tucked away somewhere, in case the power's off and you still want it down.

The bit that actually catches people out

Not the screen size. Nearly everyone gets that right. It's the weight. A 55" TV from one brand can weigh close to double what a 55" from another brand weighs, and the motor's rated on kilos, not inches. So before anything's ordered, check the model number on the back of your TV, not the number on the box it came in, because "up to 55 inch" doesn't tell you what it weighs.

Also worth a minute: the VESA mount pattern needs to match the bracket, and curved or very thin panels don't always sit well even when the numbers technically line up. 

Things nobody puts in the brochure

It's a motor. Motors can need attention eventually, so it's worth actually reading what the warranty covers on the mechanism, not just the fabric and frame. Upgrading your TV down the line means staying inside whatever weight the frame was built for, unless you fancy a new bed alongside the new telly. And moving house is a slightly bigger job than unscrewing a normal bed frame, since the TV needs disconnecting properly first rather than just hoiking the whole thing into a van.

None of that's a reason not to buy one. It's just what we'd want to know if we were the ones buying it.

Sizing, and the storage question

King size is what most people land on in the end, mostly because a double-footboard TV can feel a bit small once there are two of you watching from farther back. Most king-size TV beds double as ottoman storage too, so you get the hidden telly and a proper gas-lift storage base under the mattress without losing any floor space to either. Capacity varies more between brands than people expect, so it's worth asking for actual litres rather than taking "has storage" on its word.

Adjustable bases with a built-in TV lift exist, but there are fewer of them about, since combining the two is more fiddly to engineer than either on its own. If that's the combination you're after, ask whether the lift and the adjustable base run off the same controls or separately; it matters more than people think if one ever needs fixing without the other.

Bring your telly's model number in if you want us to check it against a frame before you commit to anything; that's a five-minute job for us and saves a headache for you. Browse our full range or feel free to pop into the showroom and feel free to ask us as many questions as you like!