Review | Ikea Malm Bed Frame & Hövåg Mattress

This is the first bed John and I have bought together since we moved in together three years ago. When we moved to our old place back in July 2018, we took John's bed from his house with us and it did us pretty well until a couple of months ago. After being put together and taken apart so many times, the bed was starting to give up and the mattress wasn't doing too great either so we decided to treat ourselves to a brand new (bigger) bed frame and mattress from IKEA.

Ikea Malm Bed Frame with Sage Green Duvet

I'm going to be completely honest from the start and tell you that my first impressions of our new bed weren't great and I actually contemplated returning it but now, I absolutely love it and look forward to a great night's sleep every night.

Our experience with this bed is one that I think many have had but maybe haven't talked about online so today I wanted to review our new bed and talk about about our first impressions, the problems we faced and how we resolved them.

IKEA MALM King Size Bed Frame with Four Drawers

When looking for our bed, I wanted something that would be really simple and versatile. John and I have always had a double bed so we wanted to upgrade to a king size that would give us a little more room and not cost the earth. When shopping online, all the beds we found looked so expensive for what they were and they all seemed to be ottomans which we didn't want. IKEA had, by far, the best prices and also a lot of affordable options for the style of bed we were looking for.

Front view of IKEA Malm Bed

After a little look online, we decided to go with the MALM king size bed frame with four drawers in white. We didn't really like the wood colours and I really wanted something light and airy for our bedroom which is why we settled for the white frame. 

The Four Drawers

We picked up the bed with the four drawers because we wanted as much storage space underneath the bed as possible. The drawers are pretty big and slide under the bed on wheels with ease. They are detached from the bed so you can pull the drawers out all the way. They're super sturdy and I was happy to see that the base wasn't that horrid thin wooden board that pops up but instead a thick base just like the front and sides. A great quality drawer!

The drawers do bump the price of the bed up a lot. The king size bed frame alone is £179 but with each pair of drawers it goes up £50 meaning four drawers puts the bed's price up to £279. I wasn't sure at first but now that I have them, I can see they're worth it - especially now that I've seen the quality of the drawers. 

Lönset Slatted Bed Base

When you're buying an IKEA bed, you're asked to choose which slats you want with it and there are two options: the Luröy and the Lönset. The Luröy are your classic roll out slats that attach to the frame of the bed and the Lönset slats are slotted into rubber holders on a wooden frame that sits on top of the metal inner-frame. The Lönset also has two different types of slats that are placed on certain parts of the bed base to increase comfort and adjust to your body weight. 

The Luröy is set in the main price of the bed but if you choose to go for the Lönset slats, like we did, it'll bring the price of your bed up by another £50. For us, we chose to do this because we wanted a bed that would last and give us the most comfort. As a busy working couple, our sleep is important to us and having had month's of uncomfortable nights of sleep, we wanted the best IKEA could offer us and even with the extras, it was still cheaper than some of the other beds we had seen online!

Lonset Slats Bed Bade

The Lönset bed base is also made up of two frames which sit snuggly in the bed frame on top of the metal inner-frame. We love these slats and how sturdy they are and believe they're the best of the two options but this is where we started to have the issues.

Putting it all together

IKEA beds are pretty simple to put together and this one was no exception. We were impressed by the quality of the bed and it went together nicely. Overall building the bed took about two hours and we didn't have a problem until it came to the slats sitting on the bed frame.

Little tip: read the instructions on how to put the slats together carefully - don't tighten the frame until all the slats are in the rubber like I did. It'll make your life easier, I promise!

When it was all done, we put the bed base into the bed frame and we noticed it had a little wiggle room. We expected it to be a little snugger than it was and we had about a 5cm gap for the bed base to move. We didn't think this would be a problem and thought that once we put the weight of the mattress on top it'd be fine and wouldn't move but we were wrong.

Inside the wooden frame there is a metal frame that keeps the bed's shape and holds the slats in place. We discovered that when we put the slat bed base in, the wooden base rubbing against the metal frame caused an awful lot of noise and so it would creak and squeak every time we moved in bed! Even if I was just moving my foot! I cannot tell you how irritating this was as we'd just got rid of the last bed for this reason. No amount of tightening, re-building or adjusting of the position of the slats fixed this problem.

How we ended up solving the problem

Going back onto the IKEA website, I searched the reviews for any fixes anyone had come up with and I didn't find anything. I searched online and couldn't find much either. A lot of people complained in their reviews about this same problem and we were worried this would be something we'd have to put up with now that the bed was built.

With that said, we didn't give up trying to find a solution and John ended up going online and buying a 5 metre roll of thick adhesive felt for £11 on eBay to place between the Lönset slats bed base and the metal inner-frame. We were going to try anything to fix this ridiculous problem.

Lonset Slats Bed Frame

After sticking down the felt onto the metal frame, we placed the base back down, the mattress back on top and then sat on the bed to hear the most beautiful sound of silence! That little roll of felt fixed all our problems with the bed and we instantly fell in love with it! (You can actually see the felt under the slats pictured above.)

It's a shame that it took us looking for our own fix to sort this out because this is something so many customers are experiencing and could be something IKEA could provide with the bed to avoid this problem in future.

Hövåg King Size Mattress

Last but not least in this review, I wanted to tell you a little about the Hövåg mattress. The Hövåg mattress is a pocket sprung mattress that is medium/firm in firmness. It comes rolled up making it easier to take home and needs about 48-72 hours to settle before you sleep on it. The instructions say 72 hours but we actually only left it 48 because we were getting fed up of sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the living room.

Hovag Mattress with a white bedsheet on top

Compared to our previous pocket sprung mattress, this is a great mattress. I don't know a lot about mattresses but I know that for the couple of weeks I've had it, it has been comfortable, soft, supportive and breathable. It's also quite a thick mattress. A king size mattress is just £229 which is a lot cheaper than a lot of the mattresses you can find online and has a 25 year guarantee!

Our final thoughts

I'm not going to lie, I hated the bed at first because of all the noise it was making. It was so bad, and I wish I was overexaggerating, but it woke us up a few times the first few nights we slept in it. This alone nearly got us disassembling the bed to send it back but the adhesive felt solved everything. Having spent so much money on a bed, it's still disappointing that it took an £11 roll of adhesive felt to fix the problems we were having with a £329 bed. A bed that expensive, (or cheap even!) shouldn't have these kinds of issues.

Ikea Malm Bed Frame and Sage Duvet Bedsheets

Nevertheless, with the issue now fixed, we really love the bed and we now see it as a worthy investment. It's comfortable, sturdy and it looks great. Since fixing the creaks, we haven't had a single issue and I'm glad to finally have a nice big bed that I look forward to sleeping in every night.

I always loved the MALM furniture and its sleek and simple look. Now that we have the bed, we plan on updating our bedroom furniture soon with the MALM chest of drawers, dresser and a PAX wardrobe. I really want to paint one of the walls too but I'm not 100% sure yet. I think with all the white furniture a sage green wall would look gorgeous and really add a relaxing feel to the room. We'll see but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with this room now.

I'd love to know what your thoughts are on the IKEA Malm bed frame or the Malm range in general, especially as we're looking to buy a few pieces from it soon. Let me know your thoughts in the comments or you can DM me on Instagram: @athomewithcatuk!

2 comments

  1. I have this bed, I love it! I love that IKEA has all the matching other storage to match too!

    Courtney x

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