Buying guide
Where guests sleep when there is no guest room
A guest bed is the worst-earning piece of furniture in a house: it is used five nights a year and takes up room the other three hundred and sixty. This guide is about the two ways of solving that: the bed puts itself away, or the bed you already have stores things.
Disclosure: Abatible takes part in the Amazon Associates Programme. If you buy through our links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. The scores do not depend on that commission. More detail.
The three answers, and who each one is for
The folding bed with a frame is the only one that feels like sleeping in a bed. It stands off the floor, it comes with its mattress, and the good ones fold flat enough to slide into a wardrobe. It is the expensive answer, and the difference shows on the first night.
The mattress that folds is the sensible answer for most people. It folds in three, weighs under seven kilos, goes on a shelf and costs less. In exchange you sleep at floor level, which at some ages is a problem and at others is not.
The air bed is the one that disappears completely: deflated it is a bag. It is also the one that punctures, so it answers "two nights a year" and not "someone is staying a month".
And the bed with storage does not answer where the guest sleeps: it answers the other half of the same problem. If the bed you already have swallows the winter bedding, you free a whole wardrobe, and that might be where the folding bed finally fits.
Our picks
Best overall
JAY-BE CE70 Compact Folding Bed
The one that best balances how little it takes up stored, how well you sleep on it and what buyers say about it.
A single folding bed that closes to 10 cm thick and weighs 7.9 kg, with its mattress included and no assembly. 7,933 ratings averaging 4.4.
The cheapest
Luxchoice Single Air Bed 99 cm
At £53.99 it solves the problem without committing to anything: if nobody visits this year, you have not lost much.
A 190 by 99 cm air bed 22 cm thick, taking 150 kg, with a rechargeable USB pump that fills it in about two minutes. 626 ratings averaging 4.2.
How many litres a bed holds: nobody publishes it
It is the problem of this whole category and it is worth saying plainly: no maker publishes how many litres its bed holds. Not one, in either country we have looked at. In every other section of this site we can tell you how much goes in; here we cannot, because the figure does not exist. We leave it empty rather than estimate it, and if a seller quotes you one, ask where it came from.
What you can check yourself: a lifting base needs room to lift. A side-opening base needs clear floor down one side, a foot-opening one at the end. In a small bedroom with the bed against a wall or wedged between two, that is what decides whether the storage is usable at all. Measure both sides before choosing which way it opens.
Where the folding bed actually lives
A good one folds to around 10 cm thick by 70 cm wide and just under a metre tall. That slides into a wardrobe, into the gap between the fridge and the wall, or behind a door. A mattress folded in three is a block roughly 65 by 75 cm. An air bed is a bag on a shelf.
Measure that gap before buying. It is exactly the same mistake people make with folding desks: they measure where the thing will be used and forget to measure where it will be kept.
Frequently asked questions
Do you actually sleep well on a folding bed?
On a good one, yes, and the difference is the mattress. A proper core on a sprung or slatted base gets close to a normal bed; fabric stretched over tubes, which is what the cheapest ones are, survives one emergency night and not much more. This is the category where what you pay shows most, and where a lifetime frame guarantee tells you something the specification does not.
A folding mattress or a folding bed?
If the guest is young and comes rarely, the folding mattress wins easily: it costs less, weighs under seven kilos and goes on a shelf. If older people stay, or somebody stays for weeks, the bed with a frame earns the difference, because you sleep at normal height and get up without help.
How much room does a folding bed take when stored?
The one here folds to 10 cm thick by 70 cm wide and 95 cm tall, which in floor area is about five per cent of what it occupies open. That is the figure to ask for, and most makers will not give it: of the four in this section, only that one publishes what it measures folded.
Is a bed with a lifting base worth it?
It holds more than anything else here, and in a bedroom with no wardrobe it is often the only volume left. Two warnings. The mattress is usually not included, so the real price is the bed plus a mattress. And it is heavy and fully assembled in place: you build it once and it does not move again. Worth knowing that in Spain we recommend none of these, because the ratings there are poor; here they are not.
Is an air bed a real answer or a last resort?
For two or three nights a year it is the best value on the page, and it is the only thing here that needs no storage gap at all: deflated it is a bag on a shelf. But it is PVC. It punctures, a puncture ends it, and it loses a little pressure overnight in a cold room. Buy it for occasional guests, not for anyone staying long enough to notice.
Compare them yourself
The products in this section set against each other, with the charts overlaid and the best value in each row marked.
Open the comparison tool