The Bed: An Element of Staging for Our Homes and Our Lives
By Bill Primavera
The Home Guru
As Published in The Examiner, The Putnam Examiner and The Yorktown Examiner
When it comes time to stage the home for showing to prospective buyers, the bed should be considered for updating, according to my wife who knows about such things. In this regard, I guess I’m in a time warp.
Barely had I accomplished the feat of centering a bedspread just right, so that it draped down perfectly evenly on all sides and at the foot of the bed, and pulling the top tightly along the pillows so that they formed perfect rolls, when my wife told me that full bedspreads are out, way out, in the modern home. It does no good that we happen to live in an historic home.
Suddenly we’re in the world of “bedding” and the bedspread has given way to comforters, duvet covers, quilts and coverlets, throws and designer covers. There is now a pile of stuff on our bed that could crush somebody if it tipped over. And there is the daily ritual of taking 20 pillows off the bed at night and replacing them the next morning, always in the same arrangement. To me, it’s a pain, and hardly a challenge for a guy who grew up so proud of his hospital bed corners.
But, come to think of it, why shouldn’t we devote attention and care to the bed, considering that it is the venue in which we are conceived, born in, spend our young years procreating in , spend one-third of our lives sleeping in, and end up dying in? And, nary a day goes by that the bed is not referenced in our arsenal of metaphors and similes: “bed of roses,” “bed of nails,” “getting into bed with them,” “politics makes strange bedfellows,” “they made their bed, now let them lie in it!” and, in the publishing business, we “put the book to bed.”
To me, just finding the most comfortable mattress in the world was my most important objective, and I succeeded at that. I’m still working on a perfect pillow. But, I must listen to all suggestions for best “staging” a home for showing.
Besides all the new bedding accoutrements on the market, the bed must also be considered as a piece of furniture. Being a tall guy, I don’t like having any kind of footer to stymie my stretching out, so today our bed is merely a carpenter-designed headboard attached to a steel frame. Our first bed was a canopied tester bed and, being mere slips of creatures when we first married, we thought that anything larger than a double bed would take an extravagance of space. Somehow through the years the bed became too small for us, and we upgraded to a moderate queen size.
The history of the bed goes back to 10,000 BC but sleeping conditions were somewhat primitive for all but kings and pharaohs until the 17th century when down was used in mattresses for the first time. Throughout history, various vermin occupied human sleeping space, and that was just accepted as a fact of life. It wasn’t until the late 18th century that the invention of the cast iron bed and the cotton mattress made sleeping space less attractive to critters. But, even today, we are sometimes horrified by news reports of bed bug infestations that result from travel to hotels by vacationers and business travelers.
The first coil spring construction for bedding was patented in 1865, and in the 1930s the inner spring mattresses and upholstered foundations appeared. And each decade after provided new innovations: futons in the 1940s, foam rubber mattresses in the 1950s, waterbeds in the 1960s, and airbeds in the 1980s. Today we have practically unlimited choice in our bedding, such as new types of foam mattress cores with “memory” and high-tech adjustable sleep sets where there are various controls that are important, especially when shared, such as the selection of numbers to regulate different firmness on each side of the bed.
When prospective buyers view a bedroom, however, no one cares what’s under the covering, much like their not caring about what’s inside the walls. Their perceived value of the entire home will be influenced by whether there is a 1950s-style chenille bedspread on a low bed with a dip in the middle or if there is a high, plump bed with an assortment of coordinated accessories in contemporary colors. The latter will convince the prospective buyers that the sellers have taken care of and have updated the home, evidenced by the care they have taken with their sleeping space.
The expression “sleep tight” developed centuries ago when ropes were tightened through a wooden bed frame to hold the mattress level, but figuratively speaking, you can sleep tight knowing that a smart looking bed contributes greatly to a smart looking, well-staged home.
Bill Primavera is a Westchester, NY-based realtor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and marketing practitioner ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) who can be reached for questions or comment directly at 914-522-2076.
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