Antique French Beds
A French bedstead is a head, a foot and a pair of side rails, made in wood, iron or brass, and sold to be slept in.
Antique French Beds
The bed as head, foot and side rails took its familiar decorative shapes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the bed was the main piece in a furnished bedroom. Iron and brass frames followed in the nineteenth century as a lighter and cheaper alternative to timber. Both strands turn up throughout the category.
The form you are most likely to meet is a wooden-framed head-and-foot bed with padded panels, widened to king size. One in three titles on Sellingantiques contains the word "king", which makes modern mattress size the most-stated fact about a French bed here, said more often than the timber. "Newly upholstered" appears in 67 titles outright, so re-covering before sale is routine.
Beyond that, the category splits into recognisable branches. Upholstered wooden frames, including corbeille and bergère shapes and low-end beds, run to roughly a sixth or a fifth of listings. Painted and gilded frames account for about one in seven, iron and brass bedsteads for around a sixth, caned bergère panels for under a tenth, and sleigh, bateau and daybeds for a small steady slice.
Dates run from 1800 to 1930, with 892 of 1,107 listings carrying a clean year. The weight sits in the early twentieth century: 297 listings dated to the 1900s and 285 to the 1920s. Nineteenth-century entries divide between precise decades and period words such as "19th Century" or "Victorian", which read as approximations rather than dates.
What Separates Them
Width does more work than anything else. Super king and 6ft frames sit at the top of the range, while single and 3/4 beds cluster near the bottom. Widths run from single frames up to the occasional two-metre or 6ft-plus bed, and the largest are the ones that reach the top.
Decoration and timber pull in the same direction. Carving appears in 124 titles, with gilt, gilded and ormolu mounts recurring among the higher-priced entries. Plain oak and pine sit low; burr walnut, plum pudding mahogany, birds eye maple, amboyna, satinwood, kingwood and rosewood sit higher. Painted and gilded surfaces are a branch of their own rather than a step up.
Completeness counts too. Listings that add matching bedside cabinets, a bedroom suite or an included base sit well up the range, and headboard-only entries sit at the very bottom. Pairs behave the same way: 93 titles say "pair" and 22 say "matching", and paired singles sit above comparable lone singles.
Antique French Beds Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for french 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.
Dates on Sellingantiques run from 1800 to 1930, and most listings carry a clean year rather than a period word.
The Antique French Beds Glossary
- King size
- Widened to take a 5ft UK king mattress, often with the width stated as 5ft. The single commonest description in the category.
- Super king
- Widened further, usually given as 6ft or around two metres. Fifty-three titles say "super" and 43 say "super king".
- Bedstead
- Head, foot and side rails as a frame, without base or mattress. Twenty titles use the word.
- Newly upholstered
- Re-covered before sale rather than in its original fabric. Sixty-seven titles say so explicitly.
- Corbeille
- A curved, basket-shaped head and foot, sometimes described as demi-corbeille. Thirty-three titles.
- Lit bateau
- Boat bed, with scrolled ends of equal or near-equal height. Sleigh bed is the English name for the same form, and appears in 30 titles.
Antique French Beds: Frequently Asked Questions
Why do so many say king size?
Because these are sold to be slept in. One in three titles contains the word "king", and size language dominates the headings ahead of timber or period.
Widening is common practice in the trade. Frames made for narrower French mattresses are re-sized with new side rails to take a 5ft king or a 6ft super king.
What period do most of them date from?
The dated field spans 1800 to 1930. Two decades carry more than half the archive between them: 297 listings dated to the 1900s and 285 to the 1920s, with 143 in the 1910s.
Nineteenth-century beds appear too, some given a precise decade, others labelled simply "19th Century", "Victorian" or "Edwardian". Those are period words, so read them as approximations.
Are these beds always wooden?
No. Brass appears in 100 titles and iron in 86, and the two often turn up together in one frame.
Wooden frames still dominate, in walnut, mahogany, oak and painted finishes, and upholstery is described in a sizeable minority of listings.
What does corbeille mean on a bed?
A curved, basket-shaped head and foot. Thirty-three titles use it, and some say demi-corbeille where only one end takes the shape.
It usually comes with upholstery. Corbeille frames sit within the padded-panel branch rather than the caned or iron ones.
Do these beds come with a mattress or base?
Often not. "Bedstead" means head, foot and side rails as a frame, and 20 titles use the term.
Some listings do add a base, and those tend to sit higher in the range, as do beds sold with matching bedside cabinets or as part of a bedroom suite.
How many turn up for sale each year?
About 82 French beds are listed on Sellingantiques in a year.
A hundred different dealers have handled one, so almost every dealer who carries them carries only a handful at a time.