I am not a fan of footboards, unless they are very low and you can't bump your feet on them.

You do not need a headboard (however, I like them). You could just use several pillows to serve as a headboard.

By the way, is your bed going to remaining in the same place you have it now?

I also do not like footboards, I hang my feet over the end of my bed and a footboard would just get in the way. I do like headboards, I think they finish off the look of the bed.

Our platform bed has a low headboard and very low footboard (inch or two below the top of the mattress). I like both because it gives the bed a certain quality of "completeness". However, our bedroom is small so we've both smacked our shins on the footboard when rounding the corner too quickly. Luckily it has rounded corners so less painful ha ha!

The boys have captains beds, neither headboard nor footboard. It's fine for them and they just prop up with many pillows to read.

We bought all our beds secondhand from CL so they were good quality for very low cost. Ours is a teak mcm-inspired bed with two of the rolling slat-type of supports for the mattress (latex, which we bought new and paid 5x the cost of the bed) and the boys both have captains matching styles of oak beds with solid plywood as mattress support (they also have new mattresses, cheaper with inner springs)--we painted their beds both dark grey blue to match. I see matching oak headboards, desks, dressers and shelves on CL often so if they ever have space for additional furniture it will not be difficult to find secondhand as well.

Slats or plywood both seem to be adequate mattress support, though I think the plywood for them is better able to withstand the jumping :-/

I think foot boards are a given. I'm short so they don't bother me at all but a headboard is a must.

In regards to the bed though, you say you have a small room, ours isn't that big either so to help with storage we opted for a platform bed with drawers under it. They've grown a lot in popularity and there lots of styles to chose from. Also if you're handy and are so inclined, they're a pretty easy DIY project and instructions are readily available online.

Drawers would be a definite plus. There's a wall of closets with louvered bifolds not shown in these pictures, but more storage is always way better.

Yes, bed will be staying where it is--it's by far the best placement for it. I moved it last summer after living with a far worse arrangement for years and I love it!

I'll tell you what you want to avoid. We have this bed below, and while I love the way it looks, see the wood that kind of sticks out running across the base of the bed? I have banged my shins, toes, etc. so many times getting back in the bed in the middle of the night. It's kind of dangerous.

yes! my son has a bed with a low post at the footboard side, and I've already bashed my leg on it multiple times! A definite plus to an upholstered bed (which I hesitate on for other reasons, like kids barfingin the middle of the night... harder to clean...)

I personally find a bed without a headboard to be very uncomfortable. The pillows tend to slide off the end, especially if you sleep with more than one pillow.

That was my suspicion. So, I think I'll narrow the search to beds with a headboard.

Not sure what you mean specifically by platform? The way I use it, it means no box spring but slats. When you go to www.allmodern.com, you can search for platform.

https://www.allmodern.com/Beds-l12-c365870-O3005~Platform.html

I bought a fairly inexpensive one with an upholstered headboard, making sure it was high enough,so I could put storage drawers underneath. They completely disappear, so are not pretty. It came in one big box that I moved upstairs by myself where I assembled the bed. I'm actually very impressed by the quality.

I wonder what color I should get... gray seems iffy, as it may clash with my wall color. I just painted last year and really don't want to do it again. Black?

We have a 1980's teakwood platform bed from Scandinadian Deisign. No footboard, only a headboard and floating end tables, and a wall mounted light strip. It's as lovely now as it was when we invested in it.

We had a platform bed that had the ledge-of-death running around the sides. I can't tell you how many times shins were banged. It was the worst design ever! Don't go there.

When we moved I only kept the leather headboard (which we really like) and tossed the rest of the bed. I ordered this one from Overstock and used our headboard.

https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Prima-Bonded-Leather-King-Bedframe-by-Christopher-Knight-Home/11211223/product.html

The only problem we have had is one of the cats brought a mouse into the house, tortured it for a bit, let it get away, and it died under the bed. Since it's so low to the ground you can't see underneath so we didn't think to look there for the source of the stench. In a desperate attempt to find the source I took the king mattress and box springs off and found the teeny-tiny mouse with a fang hole in it's head.

oh dear god, Rory! That must have been terrible!

seagrass_gw, what do you mean by floating end tables? were they attached to the headboard in some way? I'm also going to be looking for one new bedside table--I don't care if they match, but the one by the wall is too big. We need something thinner there.