The French antique bed moved to my daughter’s bedroom

The last time I wrote about my daughter’s bedroom was when I shared my cheap ways to decorate a teenage girl’s bedroom after painting it a dark blue and adding some fun other touches. So I thought it was about time for an update since we moved the French antique bed into her room over the holidays.

I’ve mentioned before how lucky I was to find this bed at 16 years old at an estate sale in France and have cherished it ever since. I always had an eye for antiques thanks to some special influences like my parents, grandmother and my boyfriend’s mother who was a French antiques dealer. It was fun to see the things she would find in Brittany.

A new location for our favorite French antique bed

If you do a Google search for French antique bed, Empire Style Day Bed, French sleigh bed, antique French Provincial style sleigh bed or 19th Century French Empire Style Day Bed, you will find lots of similar beds for sale at places like 1st dibs, Chairish or independent antique dealer’s websites. Chairish has one right now (click HERE) for $2397. Wow, right? This one HERE is almost identical to ours but doesn’t have a price mentioned.

These types of French antique beds are either made of walnut or cherry wood and have only one decorative side, with the other plain side having to be pushed against a wall like a day bed.

Reason for moving the bed

Since it is from the 19th Century, it required a custom mattress because it is much shorter than standard current beds which ended up being the problem that we had with our son growing a lot over the past year. He was suddenly unable to comfortably stretch out in this bed and my daughter started to beg us to move it in her room instead. I tried to fight this for a while because I didn’t know where to move her huge headboard to that I built. I have also loved sneaking into her queen bed at night when my husband was snoring too loud which is impossible to do in the smaller French antique bed.
The final push came when we decided to host a German exchange student in the spring who definitely wouldn’t fit into the smaller bed. My son will give him his room while he moves into the basement for the time of the visit.

So over Christmas break, we moved the queen memory foam mattress into our son’s room. He is very happy with being able to spread out. And our daughter is thrilled with having more space in her room to hang out with friends and snuggling into her smaller French antique bed that she was wanted for so long.

Work in Progress

She loves the bed. As you can see, the kitties love it too, especially when they get to snuggle on her new dark blue micromink throw with the sun shining in. It’s such a soft blanket.

I say work in progress because the other side that I didn’t photograph is sporting a disheveled bookcase. It is falling apart and when funds allow it, I will head to Ikea to get her a new piece.

Over the bed, we hung her new Billie Eilish album covers (HERE and HERE, frames HERE) that she got for Christmas and her favorite Stranger Things poster.

Her room is so difficult to photograph with the darker wall color and especially when the sun shines into it. You can even see the dust particles flying gin the air 😉

I couldn’t help myself and had to snap a ton of photos of the furry children again. As always, they had to be with me every step of the way.

It all worked out perfectly because the brass swing arm lamps didn’t have to get moved and the macrame chair either. It all was kind of meant to be and fit right in.

Our favorite Stranger Things Poster and a matching frame which I didn’t have but I found a silver frame in the basement that worked well too even though it was a little bigger but we don’t mind the white matting around the poster. My daughter and I love this show so much! This poster, in particular, is perfect for her dark blue room.

Source list:

rug (sold out) | Billie Eilish cover HERE and HERE | album frame HERE | Stranger Things poster HERE | blue throw HERE | macrame chair HERE | similar lava lamp HERE | curtains HERE | shibori lumbar pillow HERE | black and white pillows HERE | swing arm lamps HERE | lamp shades not available anymore at Target | jeans Euro shams from Ikea, similar ones HERE or HERE | white and blue chandelier also from Ikea

Let’s go back in history for a bit…

The old location of the French antique bed

Below is the bed in our son’s bedroom. This was my favorite spot for this beautiful bed. It was inevitable that he’d outgrown it at some point though.

You can see more of the room and sources HERE.

Now the search is on for a platform bed for my son’s room. The height of the mattress and box spring are just way too bulky. Also, the online bed skirt options are also not making me happy. Maybe Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist will come through for us.

If you can’t find an antique or want some current affordable options, then check out the below daybeds:

Tschüß,