Nightstands are of great importance in the bedroom. Despite their accentuated finish as any other pieces of furniture in the room, you need to use them as perfect beside storages, in their full potential.
However, being a piece of integral furniture for the bedroom, what do you put in them?
Your nightstand should not miss an alarm clock, a nightstand lamp, and sleeping gears including, earplugs and eye masks. You can also have a section for placing a glass of water or any medicines, as well as another section for your valuables, including jewelry, phones, and other electronic devices.
In addition to decoration in the bedroom, the nightstand serves other important purposes that you may not be aware of.
Make sure you read ahead for more detailed info on this important furniture.
What Do You Put in Nightstands?
Contents
Although it has a beautiful appearance in your bedroom, the nightstand provides a lot of functionality that very few people utilize. These include the use of the drawers as essential storage for valuables safe from prying eyes.
However, the basic items kept in nightstands include:
Bedside Electronics
These include your phone and a working pair of headphones. You must have noticed how risky it is to sleep with your phone in the bed after waking up and finding it on the bedside rug.
That means, had it not been for the rug, you would have repair costs depending on the type of phone.
A cool pair of headphones that you won’t want to sleep on will ensure you get a good night’s sleep, as you will have to soothe yourself into sleep by listening to a cool piece of music that soothes you into sleep.
For their safe handling, you can simply place them on the bedside table.
Alarm Clock
Due to their LCDs, these clocks are a good way to wake up without damaging your eyes.
It is certainly better than checking your phone at night, a practice highly condemned by doctors because of probable eye problems from phones displays.
Nightstand Lamp
The lamp provides soothing ambient lighting, allowing you to read your favorite novel in bed. With its energy-efficient bulbs and LED colors, it can match any theme in the room.
Reading Material
This includes magazines, novels, and other materials that are less harmful to your eyes at night. Reading also happens to be a great way of winding a long tiresome day.
A Glass of Water
Many people like to carry water to their beds. As such, the nightstand is the best place to place it in your reach, where you won’t need to step on the cold floor to get it.
Sleeping Gear
If you are easily disturbed by noise or too much light at night, you may need to place your earplugs and sleep masks where you can easily reach them even when deep asleep.
Valuables
After long exhausting days, you may easily drift off to sleep and wake up a few minutes later still wearing your wristwatch, earrings, and necklaces. Your nightstand is the perfect spot for them, so you do not have to mess with your already sweet sleep.
How Close Should Your Nightstand Be to the Bed?
A nightstand should be close to your bed, ideally within one to two inches of it. It should be at the same height as the mattress and should not be higher or lower than the bed.
However, you can move it closer to the bed or farther away from it, depending on your tastes.
The fact that a room isn’t complete without a nightstand means that you need to make sure it has both a unique style and a unique taste, both in terms of the type of material, color combinations, and functionality.
An open table or one with plenty of drawers can serve as a secure place to secure most of your possessions or valuables.
However, the room’s spacing is the deciding factor in determining where the nightstand should be placed. Since some rooms may be quite confined with very little space left for the bed and its companions, it takes into account both the bed’s location as well as the organization of the entire room.
In such a situation, you might consider whether you want to reduce the size of your bed or if you want to give up the nightstand despite its importance.
However, since the latter is not an option, you should read on for more arrangement details to fit your bedroom’s perfect arrangement. Here are the main things for you to consider in your setting up of the nightstand:
- Are you comfortable reaching out to the nightstand from your bed, as it should be, or do you want the nightstand to be a centerpiece in the room?
Regardless of whether the spacing is an issue or not, you may not be into too much furniture in the room. In that case, you should consider having the must-have furniture only in the room. However, these will depend on several factors, including the room’s theme as well as the presence of any other furniture.
- Do you plan to use the nightstand in another way, such as as a mini-study table?
As much as a bedroom should have a study table far off the bed. The space factor could be limiting the location of more furniture in the room, considering that you not only need a nightstand but also a dresser, a closet as well as the study table, though the latter is perfectly out of your own choice.
When you require additional functionality from your nightstand other than its use at night, you may have to put it higher than your mattress’ level and place it near a window where you can study conveniently during the day. Therefore, based on how the bed is arranged, the nightstand may be distant from it.
Apart from the study table, the nightstand can also double up as a dresser, such as in Glams bedroom. However, either of these will take into account the size of the nightstand, as I have explained towards the end of this article. Make sure you check it out.
Do You Need Two Nightstands?
Having two nightstands is entirely dependent on your tastes and preferences as well as the need for them. However, if you are in doubt about the need for a second nightstand, you might look at the following when setting up your room.
A sense of privacy is something that every human has and may feel aligns with their tastes. If you share a bed with a spouse or sibling, it would be appropriate for each of you to have his or her nightstand. However, this will still take into account the room’s arrangement as well as its spacing.
Having one side of the bed against the wall can make positioning the nightstand hard. since the structure should be within a hand’s reach of the user unless the user intentionally places it elsewhere.
Do You Have Excessive Spacing in Your Room?
The arrangement of some extra-large rooms may need to be unique and spacious as to be pleasing to the eye from any angle of the room. Nevertheless, you may have to take a lot of factors into account to arrange or fill such a room to achieve the desired beauty.
The best thing to do in such a situation is to locate the bed in a unique spot in the room and to have nightstands on either side of the bed. It doesn’t have to be about sharing a bed but rather about balancing the aesthetic symmetry in the room.
What’s the Right Size for a Nightstand?
Nightstands need to be at least 28 to 30 inches tall and about 20 inches wide on average. Nevertheless, these measurements are for a standard nightstand.
You do not have to align yours to either of these measurements since bedroom spacing differs.
So when making your nightstands or buying new ones, it is best to consider your room’s design layout.
