A Guide To Nomad Furniture Premium Options

Nomad Furniture is a fantastic manufacturer of well built, affordable, natural platform bed frames.  In addition to the features that come standard with each bed frame, Nomad Furniture offers a variety of “Premium Options” to customize your platform bed.  These options can help accommodate specific requirements by your mattress manufacturer, help with additional support if necessary, and/or customize the look of the bed frame. With so many premium options, we know it can get confusing, so this blog post is written to help explain why you might want the different premium options.

Premium Rails

Nomad platform bed frames come standard with 3 ¼ “ side and footboard rails.  If you choose the premium rails option, this will upgrade the side rails and footboard rails to 5 ¾”.  Why might you want premium rails? Premium rails increase the strength of the bed frame by increasing the load bearing surface between the legs and the rails (this is where the hardware is located when you assemble the bed frame).  Premium rails make for a sturdier bed frame. Additionally, the look of the bed frame changes when you upgrade to premium rails. As you can see in the picture, with the standard options, the side rails are located slightly higher than the footboard rail.  With the premium rails, there will be a continuous line between the side rails and the footboard rail such that they will line up and sit at the same plane around the perimeter of the bed.  

Slat Upgrades

All Nomad frames come with wooden slats.  The distance between each slat is called slat spacing; standard slat spacing for all Nomad frames is 3 ⅛”.  There are a couple of reasons that you may need to upgrade the slats so that there is less gap between the slats. You may choose to upgrade the slat spacing to create a firmer foundation for your mattress or if the weight placed on the frame will be more than normal.

Another reason to upgrade to a smaller slat spacing is because some mattress manufacturers require spacing that is less than 3 ⅛” to provide extra mattress support.  Most standard innerspring mattresses work fine with the standard 3 ⅛” spacing. However, for a mattress with no inherent rigid structure, like a memory foam or natural latex mattress, the slats provide the structure.  If you placed a memory foam or latex mattress on slats that were 6” apart, the latex or memory foam would literally dip in between the slats and create a wavy surface to your mattress. Although we don’t sell memory foam mattresses at The Natural Sleep Store, it is our understanding that they should be placed on a surface that is almost solid; therefore, we would recommend the 1/2 inch slat spacing for a mattress like this. Most latex mattresses need to be placed on slats that are spaced between 1 1/2 and 3 inches; therefore, we would recommend the 1 ⅝ inch slat spacing for a latex mattress. Pocketed coil mattresses also often have specific requirements for slat spacing, which typically depends on the diameter of the support coils (manufacturers do not want the coils to press down between the slats which could damage the mattress). 

Headboard Gap

On Nomad platform bed frames the standard space from the top of the slats to the bottom of the headboard is 6 inches therefore depending on how thick your mattress is, your mattress might cover up some of the headboard making less of your headboard visible.  For example, if your mattress is about 6” thick, your mattress will come up to right where the headboard starts. However, if your mattress is 14” thick the mattress would cover up 8” of the headboard. Depending on the height of the headboard panel, this could cover up a significant amount of the headboard.  For example, with a 17” headboard panel*, this would only let you view 9” of the headboard. If you wanted to view more of the headboard, you would choose a larger headboard gap. You can choose a 3”, 7” or 10” bigger headboard gap. 

*Vista and Mesa Vista headboard panel heights are 20”.  

Mission, Rainbow, Sandia, El Paso, Full Moon, and Pinon Bed panel heights are 17”.

Placitas and Ranch Bed panel heights are 10”.

Taller frame option

The height of a mattress on a platform bed is typically lower than a traditional mattress and boxspring.  If you have a hard time getting in and out of bed, you might prefer your mattress to sit higher. Or if you prefer a higher profile aesthetically.  The slats on the Nomad frames sit at 12”, so add 12” to the depth of your mattress to find out how tall your mattress will be once placed upon the frame.  Nomad offers an option to increase the leg height 3 inches to bring the overall mattress height up to a height more typical of a traditional bed. As a custom option Nomad will also trim the legs shorter if you would like your bed closer to the ground, this is especially popular for kids beds (this option is not available online so please contact us to order). 

Y Supports

Y supports are legs that you can purchase that connect to the existing center supports. You would want to add this as an option if your mattress manufacturer requires a center leg that touches the ground.  Some people also add Y supports if their mattress is unusually heavy.

Footboard Option

The standard Nomad footboard is a continuation of the siderails, a single board that wraps around the foot of the bed. On some Nomad bed frames, you can choose to upgrade to a footboard that aesthetically matches the headboard, call or email for pricing and to order. 1-866-663-0859

Daybed options

For some Nomad platform bed frames, you can upgrade to a daybed configuration. What this is, is a bed where both of the ends (headboard and footboard)  are at a 28 inch height, please call or email for pricing and to order. 1-866-663-0859