My sister-in-law announced she was coming to stay for a long weekend, which meant the spare room — currently a half-office, half-laundry-pile triangle — needed to become a guest bedroom by Friday. A proper double wouldn't fit. A single bed left her teenage son to sleep on the sofa, which everyone hates. The fix turned out to be a daybed with a pull-out trundle: by day it's a sofa for the desk corner, by night it's two single beds side by side. Sorted, mostly.
I've spent the last few weeks looking at every trundle daybed Villalta carries, sitting on three of them, and quizzing two friends who've lived with one for over a year. What follows are the five I'd actually recommend, ranked roughly by price, with the honest catches each one comes with.
How I'm thinking about this
A few things matter more than the marketing photos suggest. First, the trundle has to roll out and lock at the same height as the top mattress — otherwise you've got a 4 cm step right where someone's hip lands at 3 a.m. Second, the daybed itself needs to read as furniture, not as a cot, when the trundle's stowed. Third, in a UK rental or Victorian terrace where the spare room doubles as something else, storage and a charging point earn their keep every single day, not just on guest weekends. And fourth — frankly — anything sub-£200 is going to ship flat-pack with MDF and basic slats, which is fine if you're honest about that going in.
1. The cheap-but-decent one — White Wooden Day Bed with Heart Design, £179.99
The white wooden day bed with heart cut-outs is the one I'd pick if a child's room is the brief, or if the spare room mostly stands empty and you can't justify spending more. It's solid pine with a painted finish, the heart fretwork on the side panels gives it a genuine personality (better than the bland "white box" alternative at this price), and the trundle slides on basic castors with no faff.
The catch: there's no storage, no USB, no upholstery — it's a bed-frame and that's it. The painted finish is decent but not lacquered, so a kid with a felt-tip pen will leave a mark. And at 3 ft single it suits children up to around eleven; for taller teens you'll want one of the picks below.
2. The grown-up budget pick — White Solid Wood Day Bed with Storage Drawer, £289.99
This one is the bed I'd most cheerfully recommend to someone furnishing a spare room for adults on a sensible budget. Solid wood frame (not MDF dressed up), proper slatted base on both the daybed and the trundle, and a drawer running underneath that swallows a duvet, two pillows and a folded fitted sheet — exactly the kit you need stowed somewhere in a flat where you can't dedicate a whole airing cupboard to guest bedding.
The trade-off is that it's resolutely plain. White paint, straight lines, no buttoning or velvet. It will look at home in a Scandi-style room or a renter's flat, less so in a heavily decorated Edwardian sitting room. The drawer also sits on the opposite side from where the trundle pulls out, so you need clearance on both long sides — measure before ordering if your room is narrow.
3. The clever one for tight room layouts — Grey Velvet 3 ft Single Daybed, £297.99
The grey velvet daybed is the pick I keep coming back to for awkward rooms. The L-shaped backrest is reversible — you can build it as a left-hand or right-hand unit — which sounds like a small detail until you've tried to fit a daybed into a room where the only sensible wall is the one with the radiator on it, or where the door swings the wrong way. The grey velvet is genuinely soft (not the scratchy polyester velvet you sometimes get at this price) and the prism-pattern stitching with button tufting reads more like a sofa than a guest bed.
Two things to flag. The velvet picks up dust and the occasional cat hair, so a small handheld vacuum becomes part of your weekly routine. And although the structure is sturdy — metal-and-wood frame, proper slats — the build is on the firmer side; if your guest is used to a soft mattress, throw a 5 cm mattress topper on top and tell them it's a feature.
This linen button-tufted daybed edges out the velvet ones for me when the room is going to be used as a daily home office or a teenager's bedroom. The integrated USB charging station on the headboard sounds gimmicky on paper; in practice it means the lead from a phone or laptop charger no longer trails across the floor to the nearest plug socket, which in a UK rental is invariably behind the wardrobe.
The grey linen upholstery is tougher than velvet — it'll cope with a school uniform thrown on the corner — and the buttoning is generous without tipping into chesterfield-pastiche. The honest caveat: the headboard is fixed (no reversible side here), so unlike the grey velvet pick above you can't reorient it once it's built. Decide which way the trundle needs to pull out before you start the assembly. A second pair of hands helps; the side panels are heavy.
Splurge: White Single Cabin Bed with Trundle, Storage and Bookcase, £427.99
The white cabin bed with bookcase headboard is the one to consider if the spare room is also doubling as a study, or if you've got a child whose entire bedroom is the size of a London box room and every cubic metre needs to earn rent. Underneath the daybed are two deep drawers; behind the bookcase headboard are open shelves sized for a row of paperbacks, an alarm clock and a bedside lamp. The USB ports are tucked into the headboard cubby so a phone charges out of sight overnight.
It's not cheap and it's not subtle — at full footprint with the trundle out, you're looking at roughly 200 × 200 cm of floor, plus clearance to open the drawers. Measure twice. The white finish is a melamine wrap on engineered wood rather than solid timber, which is what keeps the price in the £400s; treat the corners gently and don't drag it across a wood floor and it'll see out a decade.
What I'd actually check before you order
A few practical things that nobody mentions in the listings.
- Doorways and stairs. Most of these ship in a single long, heavy box (190 cm or so). If you're in a flat with a switchback stair or a narrow Victorian hallway, ring downstairs neighbours before you order or pay for a two-person delivery.
- Mattress depth. A trundle generally takes a mattress no deeper than around 15 cm; chuck a thick pocket-sprung king at it and the drawer below won't slide. Foam or hybrid is the safer call.
- Plug sockets. USB-charging headboards still need to plug into the wall — the cable is typically about 1.8 m. Check that's enough to reach without an extension lead.
- Bedding. A trundle is usually 90 × 190 cm (3 ft single, UK), so standard single fitted sheets fit. The top mattress is the same size, which is the small mercy of buying two single sets and being done.
The verdict
If I were buying one tomorrow for an adult guest in a typical UK spare room, I'd order the grey velvet daybed at £297.99 — the reversible L-shape solves more layout problems than any other feature on this list. If it's for a child's room or a budget that won't stretch, the heart-cut wooden one at £179.99 is the cheapest pick I'd put my name to. And if the room is genuinely doing two jobs at once — guest bed and home office, or guest bed and teenager's lair — the cabin bed with the bookcase headboard is worth the extra £130 for the storage alone.
By Emma Hartley for Villalta Home, May 2026
