Antique Four Poster Beds
A full-height bedstead standing on four corner posts, built to carry a canopy and curtains that shut out draught and gave the sleeper some privacy in a cold, shared room.
Antique Four Poster Beds
Two materials dominate. Mahogany accounts for 46 of 143 titles and oak for 29, with brass or iron frames a smaller group at 13. The single most common thing you'll meet on Sellingantiques is a carved mahogany poster bed of the 19th century, described by the mattress it takes.
Half of these beds are sold by size rather than period. 'King' appears in 37 titles, 'size' in 34, 'super king' in 14 and '6ft' in 8. That tells you what they are: working beds, sized or converted to take a modern mattress, not frames kept behind rope.
Both canopy types sit in the same category. A full tester runs the length of the bed on all four posts; a half tester covers the head end only. Singles turn up too, sometimes offered as a matched pair.
Beyond the mainstream run there are oak tester beds in 17th-century taste, brass and iron bedsteads including half-testers, and Anglo-Indian and Colonial beds in teak or ebony. Then the one-offs: a Chinese red lacquered marriage bed, a French pine sleigh four poster, an American tiger maple Federal bed, and a mahogany four poster made for a dog.
The Range
Attribution does the heavy lifting at the top. The highest-priced beds carry a period cabinetmaking name or a firm attribution, while entries titled simply 'four poster bed', with no wood, no date and no size, sit at the bottom. What the title claims tracks the range closely.
Width matters after that. The widest examples stated are 6ft super kings, and they lead; singles and narrow doubles cluster low. Carving pushes upward as well, and the samples name Greek-key work, spiral carved posts, fruitwood inlay, original painted decoration and, once, porcelain mounts.
Within the metal group, all-brass frames reach the upper end while wrought iron and brass, or cast iron, sit below them. In oak, genuine early beds dated c1600 to c1696 stand near the top of the range, whereas '17th century style' and Jacobean-style frames carrying 1920s and 1930s dates sit mid-range. The style label and the making date are not always the same thing.
Antique Four Poster Beds Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for four poster 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.
Half these beds are described by mattress size rather than period. King appears in thirty-seven titles on Sellingantiques, super king in fourteen.
The Antique Four Poster Beds Glossary
- Tester
- The canopy frame carried on the posts above the bed. A full tester runs the whole length, usually with a cornice and provision for drapes.
- Half tester
- A canopy over the head end only, carried on two posts or a bracket rather than four. Common in the 19th century and found here in brass as well as wood.
- Bedstead
- The frame itself, as distinct from mattress and base. Titles use it interchangeably with 'bed'.
- King size / super king
- The modern mattress the frame has been sized or converted to take. Stated in around half of all titles.
- Divan base
- A modern sprung base fitted inside an antique frame, noted on one English oak bed.
- Colonial Raj / Anglo-Indian
- Beds made in India in European taste, often teak or ebony, and frequently large.
Antique Four Poster Beds: Frequently Asked Questions
Can antique four posters take a modern mattress?
Half the category is described by mattress size rather than by period, which is the clearest sign of how these are sold. 'King' turns up in 37 titles, 'super king' in 14, 'double' in 14 and 'single' in 11.
The widest stated are 6ft super kings. The smallest are single four posters, occasionally offered as a matched pair.
Which woods are most common?
Mahogany leads, in 46 of 143 titles, running from Georgian and Regency through to Edwardian singles. Oak follows with 29, including carved oak and tester beds in early taste.
Other woods appear only once or twice: Portuguese and Portuguese Colonial teak, Anglo-Indian ebony, Chinese hardwood, American tiger maple and French pine.
How reliable are the dates dealers give?
Loosely used. The biggest single bucket is '19th Century' at 30 listings, followed by 'Victorian' at 19, and both are shorthand covering anything from the Regency to about 1900.
Only 53 of the 143 listings carry a clean year, and the dated field runs from 1800 to 1960. Read '18th Century' (9 listings) and '17th Century' (8) the same way.
Are there 20th-century four poster beds in the archive?
Yes, and they are a real part of it. Eight listings are dated to the 1920s, eight to the 1900s, and dated examples run as late as 1950.
Several of those are oak frames made in 17th-century or Jacobean taste, which is why a style label and a making date can sit a long way apart.
What about brass and iron four posters?
They are the smallest of the main groups, about one title in eleven. The samples include all-brass four posters, wrought iron with brass, cast iron finished in gold, and brass half-tester bedsteads.
All-brass examples reach the upper end of the range. Iron-and-brass frames sit lower.
Do many dealers handle these?
Around 16 four poster beds are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, so it's a category that moves slowly.
Forty-seven different dealers have handled one. No single dealer owns the field.