A floor bed is not a style. It is the night you stop lifting them over a rail.
I remember the cot stage too well. They learn the rail is a suggestion. You hear the thud, or you don't, and that second one is worse. You start sleeping lightly. A floor bed is what we made for the moment after that: the mattress close to the floor, a low wooden frame, a step down that is a step, not a drop. Families also look this up as a Montessori bed. The idea is the same. The child joins the room, instead of being kept in a box they are already leaving.
We make two Hug Hug beds. Both come with a King Koil mattress. They are not two colours of the same idea. If your child is still small, through about six, I would walk you to the 80×160. From six, the 90×200, which can stay. Wood, edges, and what is in the box are compared here. This note is about whether you want a floor bed at all.
The night you switch
It is usually not a planned Saturday. It is a week of them standing up in the cot, grinning, and you doing the maths on how far the floor is. Dropping the cot base helps for a while. Then they are out anyway, and the rail has become theatre.
A low bed changes the deal. They get in when they are ready. They get out for a drink of water without a fall you spend the next day thinking about. You stop the lift. In the daytime the same bed is where they pile the animals and sit next to you while you fold clothes. Ours, the 80×160, can also be pulled against your bed or a wall, so a small child is close without being in your mattress. That is the co-sleeper way of using it.
The frame comes apart, which is why one bed can be a toddler bed, a sofa if you add cushions, two sleep spaces, or a floor bed plus a play table. You are not collecting six pieces of furniture. You are rearranging one. If you do split it into two sleep spaces, the second mattress is not in the box. I would rather you know that before the unboxing, not after.
Low is not the same as alone
I want this said the way I would say it to a friend. Taking the rail away does not take you out of the night. A child who can get out will get out. The path from the bed to the door should not include a sharp corner at knee height, a loose cord, or a chair they can drag to a window. Stay in earshot while they learn that the night is theirs to enter and leave.
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✓The room, before the philosophyClear the landing. A mat if the floor is hard. Nothing they can climb from the bed to a window.
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✓Not for a newborn, in my houseI would not put a baby who cannot move yet on an open floor and call it a method. The 80×160 is for the mobile years, when the cot has become the problem, through about six.
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✓You are still the adultThe first weeks, I would be in the room or next door with the door open. Freedom is the point. Abandoning them to it is not.
Why there are two beds
People buy the bigger one "so it lasts" while the child is two. It will last. It is also a beech and pine bed with smooth edges and the screws set in, written for children from six, and it stays one bed. It will not turn into a sofa or a second sleep space. The pillows in those photos are not in the order.
Both mattresses are King Koil, made with us, for the spine, without finishes I would not put in a child's bed. You should not need a separate mattress hunt unless you want that second sleep space.
What parents ask me
When climbing out stopped being a story and started being the night. If you are already standing by the cot waiting for the thud, you are late enough. If they are still tiny and happy in there, you are early. There is no prize for being early.
Some will try. That is why the room comes first, and why you stay close at the start. A floor bed tells the truth about a mobile child. A cot only postpones it.
If they are under about six, buy the 80×160 and let it change jobs. If they are already six, or you are furnishing a room they will still sleep in as a teenager, buy the 90×200 and stop expecting it to become a play table.
A bed they can get into themselves
King Koil mattress included with both. The second mattress, if you split the smaller bed, is not.
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