When designing a new bedroom or redesigning your own, it’s easy to overlook all the possibilities when it comes to the bed itself. You’ve probably heard of a California King mattress – they’re not difficult to find, and many stores also carry California King sheets. Simple enough, yeah? But California King beds aren’t nearly your only option for mattresses bigger than the standard King (also referred to as an Eastern King bed): some oversized mattresses are nearly twice the size! If you’ve got a couple huge dogs or a few toddlers who often have nightmares and crawl into bed with you, chances are a California King bed isn’t going to help you out much in terms of sleeping space.
California Kings are actually 4” narrower than an Eastern King - they’re just longer than one. They’re a better solution for beds for tall people than they are for co-sleeping families. Luckily, several other state-named (and one Canadian-named) oversized mattresses exist, and you can easily get one custom made by a company who makes bespoke beds.
Let’s take a look at the world beyond California –
Comparing Giant Mattresses: from California to Canada
Texas King Mattresses: The Texas King bed blows a California King away in terms of length. You can keep those dogs at the foot of the bed and still have enough space to lay straight. Texas King-sized sheets have to be a whopping 98” long to fit one of these guys. And at 80” wide, you’ve got 4” more width than a standard King and 8” more than a California King.
Wyoming King Beds: Wyoming King mattresses are a perfect square, and a great solution for people who want something bigger than a King, but nothing so crazy as a Family XL. At 84”x84”, you’ve got nearly 50 square feet of sleeping space. That’s some luxury ‘ish if we’ve ever seen it. Wyoming King beds usually need to be made custom, like most of the oversized beds, but you can easily get custom bedding made for a Wyoming King right along with the mattress. Custom mattress manufacturers have it covered – it’s kind of what they do.
Alberta King Mattresses: Okay, we’re going to visit Canada for like, 2 minutes (eh). And no, we have no idea why this size of custom mattress is named after a foreign province when all the others are named after US states. It’s curious, that’s for sure. Alberta King beds are where things start to get mega: they measure 96”x96” – 8’x8’. That’s 64 square feet of sleeping space. Some of us have bedrooms not much bigger than that!
Florida King Beds: Alright, we’re back in the US. Florida King beds are a very little-known size of custom mattress. They have a length close to a standard King: 80” as opposed to 78”. However, these monsters are 108”, or 9’, wide. You know that little Queen size mattress all the adults in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sleep on? If they had bought a Florida King bed instead, they probably would have been a lot more comfortable. With 9’ of width, even a bed hog couldn’t pull enough of the sheets on a Florida King mattress to cause anyone to be coverless. Not to mention that if your partner, kids, dogs – whoever – sleeps hot, you’ve got plenty of room to roll to the cool side of the bed.
Alaskan King Beds: Alaskan King mattresses are the hugest of the huge at 108”x108”. Once again, a mattress the size of a small bedroom – literally 81 square feet of sleeping space. You’ve always got to get an Alaskan King mattress and its bedding custom-made, but that’s not a bad thing; it means you can design the mattress to your exact specifications – foam, memory foam, latex, with cashmere or cotton covers. You’re already going all-out with the size, might as well go all-out with the construction and the linens as well.
Alaska King not Big Enough? Custom Mattresses can be Made Even Bigger
While Alaskan King mattresses are the biggest of the named mattresses, custom mattress makers can make even bigger mattresses. Hey – some of us need a lot of room. If 9’x9’ still isn’t going to cut it, you can have a Family-sized bed made in virtually any measurements. The difference between Family-sized beds and Alaskan King beds is that Family-sized beds are closer to “normal” measurements in length, but are super wide.
A typical Family size bed is 80”x120”, and a Family XL tends to be 84”x144”. That’s literally 12’ of sleeping room. You’ve obviously got to have a pretty big bedroom to pull off a Family XL, but it’s a great idea for big families who co-sleep or who like to have cozy movie nights all the time.
Too Tall for Even Oversized Mattresses? Consider Extra Long Mattresses Instead
California King Mattresses: Like we said, California Kings aren’t even as wide as a standard King – their real advantage is the extra length of the mattress, making it a great option for people who have a regular-sized bedroom but want a bed that’s extra long. At 84” long, a California King mattress and its bedding can accommodate people over 6.5’ tall without having their feet stick out from under the sheets and off the edge.
Custom Mattresses for Tall People: It’s 2022 – the best custom mattress manufacturers will make you a completely made-to-measure, custom-sized mattress by hand. You want something crazy like a Full size mattress that’s a foot longer than it should be? Do it. You want a custom radius bed so you can stuff an extra-long mattress into a smaller room with space to walk around it? Go for it. If you can dream it up, we can make it, and we can make custom fitted sheets for it as well.
Athlete Mattresses: An ideal sleep solution for one or two super-tall people is an Athlete size mattress. It’s a good idea as well for those who want an extra tall bed with a lot of foot-of-the-bed room, but don’t need or can’t accommodate an insane width. This custom-size mattress is 108”x80”, giving you the length of the giant Alaska King bed with a width just shy of a Wyoming King.
Things to Consider before you Choose an Oversized Custom Mattress
If you’re about to get overwhelmed by all of these mega-sized beds, don’t worry – choosing is about to be easier than you’d think. When shopping oversized custom mattresses, there are several factors about yourself and your home you need to suss out before you put that credit card info on the purchase page. More often than not, the answer to these questions will narrow down your possible choices.
Size of Your Bedroom: This one’s pretty obvious, but not to be ignored. Obviously, if your bedroom is 12’x10’, you’re not fitting a Family XL in there, and you likely don’t want an Alaska King bed either, lest you have to shimmy between the bed and the wall for the rest of that mattress’ life. You need to consider the size of your room, but also the other bedroom furniture (read: end tables, dressers, vanity, etc.) and room for moving around in mind.
An easy way to visualize your desired layout without lugging furniture back and forth is to tape out the floor space each piece of furniture will take. Maybe before doing this you thought that a 12” margin between the bed and the wall would suffice, but when you tape the layout you realize that is not going to work. For vague reference, the minimum recommended room size for an Alaska King bed is 14’x14’, and 12’x12’ for a Wyoming King bed.
Getting the Mattress into Your Room: The devil is in the details; do not overlook the path your new bespoke bed has to travel through your house to get to your bedroom. You might have a mammoth loft space as a master bedroom, but the only way in is up a spiral staircase or a fully-enclosed set of stairs. Memory foam mattresses are flexible, but squeezing a 12’-wide mattress up some narrow stairs is simply against the laws of physics. Sorry, guys. That old Victorian house is beautiful, but maximizing bed space while retaining the ability to actually get the bed in there is a bit more complicated than a new build with wide open staircases and double French front doors. Often, the box spring (if it needs one) and the bed frame itself are even more limiting factors, so consider those as well.
Who Sleeps in Your Big Bed?: Why are you looking at custom made mattresses, anyway? Do you really need an Alaskan King mattress, or does it just sound awesome? Hey – if the logistics fit, it’s not like you’re required to sleep with a certain number of people or pets in order to buy an oversized mattress like an Alberta of Florida King; treat yo’self.
But if you are going for practical over fancy, think about all the people who might sleep in your bed regularly – and don’t forget the dogs, cats, house goats – whatever watches TV with you on the couch – and calculate how much space each person/creature needs. Add that all up and decide which widths of oversized custom mattresses would work for you.
What’s Your Budget?: At the end of the day, you might be able to fit a Family XL in your bedroom, but we’re not going to lie to you – they’re expensive. We recommend deciding your budget and then working out your priorities: construction, comfort, quality and size. There’s a bell curve specific to each person as to what combination of those four factors makes their ideal custom mattress.
Finding Custom Made Sheets for Any Size Bed
You might be thinking, Okay, so I’d love a huge mattress in my bedroom, but I don’t want to deal with hunting down sheets and blankets that fit it right. This is going to be an especially difficult challenge if your bed has custom radius or cut corners. But it’s actually not difficult at all. The best custom mattress manufacturers are a one-stop shop: custom-made bedding, custom-made mattresses, custom-made bed frames. And who better to make sheets perfectly fitted to your unique mattress than the people who made the mattress? No one; that’s who.