Field guide · Bedroom
Standard bed sizes in inches and the bedroom clearances around them — mattress sizes are standardized; bedrooms aren't. The frame adds inches, the doors swing, and the dresser drawers have to open. Here's the honest math, in inches.
| Size | Width × length | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Twin | 38 × 75 | kids, bunks |
| Twin XL | 38 × 80 | dorm standard; two make a split king |
| Full / Double | 54 × 75 | one adult, honestly |
| Queen | 60 × 80 | the American default |
| King | 76 × 80 | as wide as two twin XLs |
| California King | 72 × 84 | narrower, longer |
The frame adds 2–5″ on each axis. A "queen bed" on a floor plan is not 60 × 80 — with a typical frame it's closer to 65 × 85, and a wingback headboard or a storage footboard adds more. Poché's bed stencils are mattress footprints with the frame noted; when you shop a real bed, the listing's outer frame dimensions are the numbers that matter.
Worked honestly: a king with frame is ≈81″ wide. A 12-foot wall is 144″. That leaves 63″ to split between the two sides — a comfortable 31″ or so each, if nothing else lives on those walls. Put a 20″-deep dresser on one side with its 36″ of standing room and the sum is 81 + 20 + 36 = 137″, leaving 7″ for the far side of the bed against the 24″ it needs — so in 12 feet the dresser goes on the foot wall, or it goes. That's a lot of arithmetic for one corner of one room — which is why Poché just draws it on your plan and flags what pinches.
Twin 38 × 75, Twin XL 38 × 80, Full 54 × 75, Queen 60 × 80, King 76 × 80, California King 72 × 84. Those are mattress footprints. A frame adds 2–5 inches on each axis, so a queen on a floor plan is closer to 65 × 85 — and a wingback headboard or a storage footboard adds more still.
24–30 inches beside the bed on each side: enough to walk, make the bed, and open a nightstand drawer. Make it 36 where a side doubles as the main path through the room, and 36 at the foot when that is the route people actually take. Below 24, the bed stops being made from that side.
Just — and only if the side walls stay empty. A king with a frame is about 81 inches wide against a 144-inch wall, leaving 63 inches to split — a comfortable 31 or so each side. Put a 20-inch-deep dresser and its 36 inches of standing room on one of those walls and the arithmetic fails: 81 + 20 + 36 is 137, which leaves 7 inches for the other side of the bed, not the 24 it needs. In 12 feet a king and a dresser do not share a side wall; the dresser goes on the foot wall, or it goes.
Nightstands run 18–32 inches wide. Set them anywhere from flush to 12 inches off the bed — zero is genuinely inside the range, not a compromise. Match the pair to the wall you actually have: two 18s fit where two 28s will not, and a nightstand that overhangs the bedside walkway costs more than the drawer is worth.
36 inches. An open drawer is about 26 of that and you stand in the rest. Dressers themselves run 48–72 inches wide by 18–20 deep, so a dresser commits roughly four and a half feet of depth off its wall once the standing room is counted. That is why it so often decides which wall the bed gets.
US mattresses, in centimetres: Twin 97 × 191, Twin XL 97 × 203, Full 137 × 191, Queen 152 × 203, King 193 × 203, California King 183 × 213. A frame adds roughly 5–13 cm on each axis, and you want 61–76 cm of floor beside the bed to make it and get in.
Every row is a size this guide just settled, handed to the merchants as a search. It is the same dimension-seeded lookup Poché runs from a bed footprint on your plan — no product is being recommended here, only a size.
| Looking for | Target size | Sized searches |
|---|---|---|
| Twin | 38 × 75″ mattress | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| Full / Double | 54 × 75″ mattress | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| Queen | 60 × 80″ mattress · ≈65 × 85 framed | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| King | 76 × 80″ mattress | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| California King | 72 × 84″ mattress | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| Nightstand | 18–32″ wide | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
| Dresser | 48–72″ wide × 18–20″ deep | AmazonWayfairIKEA |
Some of the links above are affiliate links: if you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we show you — results are ranked by fit, never by payout.
Upload the plan you already have, drop a queen with real frame dims into the actual bedroom, and see the clearance halos before the bed ships.
Try it on your plan →