Antique Day Beds
A day bed is a long, single-width seat with a frame made to take a mattress or squab, built for reclining in a room by day rather than sleeping in overnight.
Antique Day Beds
Two broad shapes run through the category. One is a padded frame in mahogany, walnut, oak or painted softwood, with the upholstery carried over a wooden carcass. The other is an open frame of cane, wicker or iron, where the platform itself is woven or the mattress sits on metal. Scroll- and sleigh-ended outlines turn up in both.
France supplies the largest share. "French" appears in 39 of 109 titles, and within that group the painted examples and the Empire, lit bateau and Louis XV-styled frames dominate. Chinese, Swedish, Scandinavian and unspecified Continental origins each appear only once or twice.
The second recurring type is English and Victorian: an upholstered frame on turned legs with castors, sometimes button-backed, sometimes built as an ottoman day bed with storage under the seat. Seventeen titles say Victorian, and upholstery is named in twenty-six.
Dating is loose. Only 59 of the 109 listings carry a clean year, with 32 filed simply as "19th Century" and a further dozen as Victorian. Where years are given the 1920s is the biggest cluster, so a category people picture as Georgian is in practice weighted towards the Edwardian and inter-war end. Anything before 1800 is exceptional.
Where The Range Splits
Timber sets the floor. Mahogany frames lead the count, with walnut behind them, and inlaid, flame mahogany, fruitwood, ebonized and parcel gilt work sits above the plainer painted softwood and the iron frames. Decoration widens the gap again: carved mahogany, gilt frames, bobbin turning, swan neck ends and Gothic or aesthetic-period detail all read well above a plain upholstered box on turned legs.
Surface cuts both ways. Original paint, aged paint and original castors are stated as selling points, while "newly upholstered" appears in eight titles and at least one frame is offered bare for reupholstery. Neither is a fault, but they describe different buys: one sells the age of the covering, the other sells a covering you don't have to replace.
Mechanism carries its own premium. Folding, campaign, steamer, reclining and adjustable examples form a small group of their own and behave as specialities rather than as the standard form. The few titles carrying a maker name, an attribution or an "in the manner of" phrasing cluster at the upper end of what has sold on Sellingantiques.
Antique Day Beds Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for day beds, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The most expensive day bed ever sold on Sellingantiques was a 19th century gilt chaise longue day bed, in August 2021.
The Antique Day Beds Glossary
- Day bed
- A long seat, usually single width, made to recline on by day rather than to sleep in overnight.
- Lit bateau
- French for boat bed: a frame with outward-scrolling ends of equal height. Several titles use sleigh bed for the same shape in English.
- Double ended
- A day bed with matching ends at both extremities rather than a head and a foot.
- Newly upholstered
- A title phrase used on eight listings to say the covering is recent rather than original.
- Ottoman day bed
- A box-based upholstered form with storage under the seat, appearing three times in the samples.
- Canapé corbeille
- A French basket-shaped settee and day bed form, named once across the listings.
Antique Day Beds: Frequently Asked Questions
How many day beds come up for sale?
About ten reach the market on Sellingantiques in a year, drawn from a pool of 109 listings.
Forty-six different dealers have listed one, so a dealer generally has a single example at a time rather than a run of them.
What period do most day beds come from?
The dealer-entered dates run from 1750 to 1930. Nearly half the category is dated by era rather than by year, with 32 listings filed as "19th Century" and twelve as Victorian.
Among the listings that do carry a year, the 1920s is the largest single decade, followed by the 1900s, then the 1880s and 1890s.
Are French day beds different from English ones?
They tend to be. The French group leans on painted frames and on Empire, lit bateau, Directoire and Louis XV shapes, with faux bamboo and canapé corbeille examples among them.
The English side is where the upholstered Victorian type sits: turned legs, castors, button backs and ottoman bases. Edwardian examples follow the same pattern.
What is a sleigh or lit bateau day bed?
It is a frame with scrolled ends of roughly equal height, curving outward like the ends of a boat. Titles use lit bateau, sleigh and Empire style for versions of the same idea.
The shape appears on upholstered wooden frames and on iron ones, so it isn't tied to a single material.
Do any day beds fold or adjust?
A few do. Wrought iron folding frames, a fold-down oak one, a military campaign folder and a mahogany steamer bed-chair account for a handful of listings between them.
They form a small group of their own rather than a variant of the standard form.
Are cane and iron day beds common?
They run quietly through the archive without ever dominating it. Wrought iron, cast iron and forged iron frames appear, along with a woven wicker example and caned oak and walnut ones.
Some cane frames are painted, which puts them close to the French painted group in look if not in construction.