It couldn’t come at a worse time. Just tonight you’ve given your new IKEA mattress a test run, and you got lucky – you’re finally going to get a good night’s sleep. Then, suddenly, as you blissfully turn over in your sleep, you come crashing down to earth. Or to the floor, anyway. #$@%!!  What just happened?

Your bed slats fell through your bed frame, that’s what happened. The question is why. And the answer is inside…

See additional IKEA Bed resources at the end of the article, after the jump!

IKEA Bed Frame Fail

Think you need replacement bed rails? Or maybe a new bed frame center support? Probably not. You may well have neglected to purchase (IKEA doesn’t do a great job of informing you that you need this piece) or install the cross-brace support which is intended to help provide support underneath the slats and prevent the kind of fail shown below:

According to Chuck Shapiro of APART/Together in the Philadelphia area who is one of our resident experts, and a veteran IKEA installer with over 23 years of experience,

The slats shouldn’t be sliding off – either they are the wrong size, or the bed was assembled incorrectly.

When you install the slats, they should be rolled out from one end to the other, with the first and last slat “hooking onto” the small plastic piece at either end of the “L” rail and mid-beam. This will be tight in the beginning, but over a short period of time, the cloth webbing will stretch out enough to allow the slats to sit flat and properly.

There are also metal cross braces which should be installed between the mid-beam and “L” rail, to keep the sides of the bed from bowing out and allowing the slats to fall through.

When all of this is done properly, you shouldn’t have any more problems. If you do, you might consider using a piece of plywood instead of the slats.

But if you’ve assembled your bed frame correctly and the bed slats are still falling through, there are some simple fixes dreamed up by IKEA Fans members and posted in our forums. Check it out: Bed Slats Keep Falling Off: What Should I Do?

See also: How to Find Storage without Getting Out of Bed or Twin Bed Storage

IKEA Mattress Reviews

Tags: bed slats, IKEA Bed, IKEA hacker, IKEA Mattress, IKEA Mattresses

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 12:25 PM by Susan and is filed under IKEA Bedrooms, IKEA hacks, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.