A bedside surface when there is no room for a table

A bedside table needs about 400mm of floor beside the bed and a lot of bedrooms do not have it, particularly a bed pushed into an alcove or against two walls. The job itself is small: somewhere for a glass of water, a phone, a book, reading glasses and whatever comes out of pockets. None of that needs a table. It needs a flat surface at roughly mattress height, within arm's reach of a pillow, that will not be knocked off in the dark. Here are the heights and depths that work and the five ways to get one without floor space.

What the surface actually has to do

Five items, in order of how much trouble each causes if it has nowhere to go. A glass of water, which must not be knocked over. A phone, which needs a cable reaching it. A book, which is heavier and larger than people allow for. Glasses, which get sat on or stood on if they end up on the bed or the floor. And the handful of small objects that come out of pockets and otherwise live on the floor.

That is a footprint of roughly 250mm by 200mm, not a table. A surface 200mm deep and 250mm wide will take all five if the small things go in a dish rather than loose.

The two requirements that get missed are an edge and a height. Without a lip or a raised rim, the glass goes over at some point, usually in the dark. And a surface much lower than the mattress means reaching down and groping, which is how the glass goes over in the first place.

Heights and reach

The surface wants to be at or slightly above the top of the mattress, which in most beds is 550mm to 650mm from the floor. Level with the mattress is ideal: you can slide a glass on and off without lifting it over an edge.

Reach from a pillow is about 500mm for most people without sitting up, so the surface needs to be within that from where a head actually lies, not from the corner of the bed. Measure it lying down rather than standing, which sounds precious and is the difference between a shelf that gets used and one that holds dust.

For a wall shelf, a useful rule is to set the top of the shelf 50mm to 100mm above the mattress and no more than 300mm from the side of the bed horizontally. Any higher and you are reaching up for a glass in the dark, which is worse than reaching down.

Five things that work instead of a table

A wall shelf is the first and the best, because it uses no floor at all and can be set to exactly the right height. It needs to be properly fixed, because it will take a hand pushing down on it when somebody gets up in the night, which is a much bigger load than a glass of water. A compartmented unit like the coffin wall shelf gives a flat top plus somewhere enclosed for the small things, and at wall mounted depth it does not narrow the walking route beside the bed.

A stool or a small chair is the second, and it is often the answer in a rental, because it makes no holes and can go elsewhere. The caution is depth: a seat is usually 400mm square, which is more floor than a narrow bedside table would take.

A deep windowsill is the third, if the bed happens to be beside a window. Free, already there, usually at about the right height, and the only issue is condensation in winter, which means not standing books on it.

A hanging pocket or caddy over the side of the bed frame is the fourth, and it is the one that costs almost nothing and works surprisingly well for a phone, a book and glasses. It cannot hold a glass of water, which is the limit.

And a wall mounted swing arm lamp plus a dish is the fifth, which is to say: give up on the surface and solve the items separately. The lamp goes on the wall, the glass goes on the floor on a coaster, the phone goes in a pocket caddy, the glasses go in a dish on the shelf. It is less tidy to describe and perfectly fine to live with.

Keep the lamp off the surface

A table lamp eats most of a small bedside surface and then puts its own cable across it. A wall light, a clip on lamp on the headboard, or a swing arm at roughly shoulder height when you are propped up reading all free the whole surface and give better light on a page.

Height for a bedside wall light is around 1.1m to 1.3m from the floor for most beds, which puts it above a sitting shoulder and lets it angle down onto a book rather than into your face. Anything adjustable is worth more than anything decorative here.

If the light has to stand on the surface, make it the smallest footprint you can find and run the cable down the wall behind, not across the shelf. A cable crossing a bedside shelf is what pulls the glass of water over.

Small objects need a container, not a surface

The thing that defeats small bedside surfaces is not volume, it is loose items. Earrings, a ring, coins, a hair pin, a lip balm, a charger. Spread out, those cover the whole surface. In one dish, they take 100mm.

So the single most useful object on a small bedside surface is something with a well in it. A small brass dish on legs does this job and will also take a candle, and a skull with an open cranium does it while keeping spectacles off the bed, which is where they otherwise get sat on. Anything with sides will do, and the point is that it has a rim.

Second most useful is a coaster, because a bedside glass stands overnight and leaves a ring where it stood. A coaster with a recessed centre also stops the glass sliding, which on a narrow shelf is doing more than protecting the finish.

And then a rule rather than an object: one thing in, one thing out. A bedside surface accumulates faster than any other surface in a house because things are put down there in the dark and never picked up in the morning.

Fixing a shelf above a bed, properly

This is the one place where a badly fixed shelf lands on somebody's head, so it is worth doing with the right anchors. Find the studs with a magnet, which locates the screws in the plasterboard, and fix into timber where you can. In masonry, drill and plug properly. In plasterboard with nothing behind it, use metal cavity anchors rated for the load, not the grey plastic plugs in the packet.

Allow for the load being pushed down and outward rather than hanging straight. Somebody levering themselves up in the night puts a surprising force on a shelf edge, and that is the force that pulls a fixing out of plasterboard.

Then think about what is on it. Nothing heavy or hard directly over a pillow. If a candle is going on a bedside shelf, it goes on a non combustible dish, nothing combustible within about 100mm, nothing hanging above it, and it is out before anyone is asleep. A candle beside a bed is the one place where unattended becomes unattended by somebody who is unconscious, and that is the reason not to have one lit there at all.

Questions people actually ask

How high should a bedside shelf be?

Level with the top of the mattress or 50mm to 100mm above it, which is usually 550mm to 700mm from the floor. That lets you slide a glass on and off without lifting it over an edge, and it keeps you from reaching up in the dark.

What do you do if there is no room for a bedside table?

Use the wall. A shelf at mattress height within 300mm of the side of the bed does the whole job with no floor space, and a wall or clip on light frees the surface. A stool, a deep windowsill or a hanging caddy over the bed frame all work as well.

How deep does a bedside surface need to be?

About 200mm deep and 250mm wide is enough for a glass, a phone, a book and glasses, as long as the small loose items go in a dish. A raised lip or a recessed dish matters more than extra depth, because the usual failure is a glass knocked over in the dark.

Is it safe to put a candle on a bedside shelf?

Not lit. Anything burning near a bed is a flame beside somebody who may fall asleep, which is exactly the situation to avoid. An unlit candle on a shelf is fine, and if you light one in the room, do it elsewhere and put it out before bed.