Beds

A bed (listen) is a piece of furniture or location primarily used as a place to sleep. more...

Home
Bath
Bedding
Furniture
Bedroom Furniture
Armoires
Bed Frames
Bedroom Sets
Beds
Bunk Beds
Day Beds
Full Beds
King Beds
Queen Beds
Trundle Beds
Twin Beds
Dressers, Chests
Floor Mirrors
Mattresses
Nightstands
Other Bedroom Furniture
Vanity Sets, Benches
Children's Furniture
Dining Room Furniture
Kitchen Furniture
Living Room, General...
Office
Gardening & Plants
Home Decor
Lamps, Lighting, Ceiling...
Patio & Grilling
Pools & Spas
Rugs & Carpets

To make beds more comfortable, the top layer is frequently a mattress. Originally these were bags of straw for most people and filled with feathers for the wealthy. Eventually new fillings such as cotton and artificial fillers became common. In modern times most mattresses use springs, solid foam, latex, water, or air. As time passes more and more people are looking for a better sleep, spending a large percentage of our life in a bed it has become a more recent realisation for many to attribute health deteriorations to what they lay on. Water resiliant fibres (natural and synthetic), latex, synthetic foams and a combination of a huge range of different spring technologies all with their different benefits.

The second layer is the box spring Inner-sprung Base. The box spring or "divan" is a large mattress-sized box containing wood and springs that provide additional support and suspension for the mattress. Adding this feature to the mattress it has been calculated that it improves the overall life of the unit by 68%.

The third layer is the bed frame. The bed frame lifts the mattress/mattress-box spring off the ground.

A dust ruffle, bed skirt, or valance sheet may be used to make the bed frame match the rest of the bedding.

For greater head support, most people use a pillow, placed at the top of a mattress. Also used is some form of covering blanket to provide warmth to the sleeper, often bed sheets, a quilt, or a duvet.

Also, some people prefer to dispense with the box spring and bed frame, and replace it with a platform bed style. This is more common in the European region.

History

Early beds were little more than piles of straw or some other natural materials. An important change was raising them off the ground, to avoid drafts, dirt, and pests.

The Ancient World

The bed of Odysseus, a charpoy woven of rope, plays a role in the Odyssey of Homer. A similar bed can be seen at the Museum of Welsh life at St. Fagans, Cardiff. Ancient Romans had various kinds of beds for repose. These included:

lectus cubicularis, or chamber bed, for normal sleeping;; lectus discubitorius, or table bed, on which they ate—for they ate while lying on their left side—there being usually three people to one bed, with the middle place accounted the most honorable position;; lectus lucubratorius, for studying;; and a lectus funebris, or emortualis, on which the dead were carried to the pyre.;

Read more at Wikipedia.org