Bedside matters: eight space saving ideas for the bedroom

1. Clever designs

If you're not sure what kind of a bed head you'd like for your room you could save yourself a lot of legwork and check out the designs by Denise O'Connor of Optimise Design installed in the show houses at new homes development Dun Si in Portmarnock where she created about eight different headboard sets ups depending on space available. In a small room this wingback design, €1500 for the bedside tables and the headboard, wraps around the bed to make those sleeping in it feel cocooned from the rest of the room. optimise-design.com

2. Smart Headboards

This bespoke headboard by Gwen Kenny of Devine Design is made of birch ply that is sprayed with low-emission paint and upholstered in the finest Italian grain leather that adheres to Greenguard indoor air quality certification standards. But what makes this seemingly simple set-up really interesting is the fact that it each locker comes with a built in Bluetooth charging pad and reading light. It also has a secret compartment for hiding jewellery, passports or anything else you would prefer to keep out of reach. She won't say where it is but will say that it is magnet-operated. This design cost €2,800, inclusive of VAT, but could be made for less using less expensive materials. divinedesign.ie

3. Hardworking Bedside Tables

A bedside table or locker might just be a home's hardest-working piece of furniture. It has to has to multi-task as a mini library to accommodate your current reading material, as well as a reading light and alarm clock – if you adhere to a screen-free slumber spaces. It also has to find space for the countless youth-preserving unguents, a glass of water to keep you hydrated and maybe even a house plant, aloe vera produces oxygen at night and thus improving your air quality. It is also a keeper of all kinds of secrets. Ikea's Lierskogen is an adjustable height table that pops open to reveal your secret life. Available in white only it costs €55.ikea.com/ie/en

4. Floating Storage Space

The Cherche Midi bed by Eric Gizard for Roche Bobois has a leather-upholstered bedhead with an invisible base and can be ordered with a one drawer floating bedside table and a reading lamp that is only available in a black shade option from €9,870. The black-stained beech frame costs from €7,370, ex mattress, for a double. roche-bobois.com/en-IE

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What sold for €490k in Terenure, Dundrum and Irishtown

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5. Personalised Bedsides

Portuguese designer Luisa Peixoto has come up with a very simple solution to accommodating all your bedside needs with this set up in Porto. The built-in bedside lockers have deep buttoned, velvet-upholstered drawers to match them to the bed base. Each side has a different lamp, to suit the person sleeping on that side and also different framed art. The niches above allow each partner to customise his or her side of the bed to his or her needs and likes. It is also a compact way of fitting a lot of personality into a relatively small space. A good joiner can do something similar. luisapeixotodesign.com

6. Solo Sleeping

If you like to sleep solo then consider a less balanced bedside table set-up. Invest in a larger unit for your side of the bed, big enough to accommodate all that you need from underwear to accessories. A small table that can accommodate a second lamp and a glass of water is all you need for the other side for when you happen to have overnight guests. This also allows you to make better use of the wall space on this side of the bed. You could install open bookshelves, like those pictured in the Sir Joan Hotel in Ibiza town, and have room for double hanging space in an adjoining wardrobe. sirhotels.com

7. Clever Storage

Cube is a very clever storage system by Italian firm Novamobili. Essentially it is a series of different sized storage boxes that can be stacked on legs to create bedside lockers, chests of drawers or tallboys. As pictured in an offset  set-up it can be used as a low slung bedside table or for many other purposes including a side table in a living room or hall. It comes in a myriad of variations but the very cool rose and magenta lacquered version, pictured, costs about €1,935, ex delivery, from London-based Go Modern. gomodern.co.uk; novamobili.it/en

8. Laidback Luxury

For a sense of laidback luxury take inspiration from the penthouse suite of the Il Sereno hotel on Lake Como whose natural stone, bronze, walnut and glass interiors are designed by Patricia Urquiola. The warm walnut headboard base has a textured top with subtle strip lighting and bedside tables that give the form of free-standing lockers but take up 50 per cent of the space full-sized tables would occupy. serenohotels.com/property/il-sereno/