twin bed frame inside dimensions?

[Joshua Layne]

I am going to be building a loft bed and a normal twin bed (under the loft at a 90 deg) for my two boys and while wikipedia (and mattress vendors) are great for the dimensions of the mattress (38" x 75" according to the vendor, 39" x 75" according to wikipedia), how much should I go over for spacing (sheets/comforters/etc) - I don't want the mattress to be bouncing around in the frame (I do mean that figuratively...) Seems like 1 inch total side-to-side and 1 inch top-to-bottom should be plenty on spacing, but I have searched the forum and seen recommendations of 1.5" width and 3!!!" length. What do you all think?

Thanks in advance.
josh

[Joshua Layne]

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[Jamie Buxton]

My experience is that mattresses are generally smaller than their nominal dimensions. You could build the beds to the nominal dimensions and still have room for bedclothes.

Or you could acquire the mattresses you're going to use, measure them, and skip all the speculation.

[Joshua Layne]

Thanks for the reply, Jamie. Yeah, I agree that the best would be to just get the mattress, measure them and go from there, but I also was thinking that it would probably be best to build the beds at a bog-standard size, so that when they (hopefully) outlast the first mattress, it is easy to get something else that fits. I was hoping that somebody had built one from a plan or something and could provide the inside dimensions, as strangely that seems to be a tough thing to find on the internet. I could also buy a plan, but it seems silly for this one set of dimensions...

-josh