By Daniël Nieuwlaat, inventor of the Bedbinder
Some of my biggest business customers for a product made for couples aren’t couples at all. They’re hotels.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever checked into a hotel or B&B as a couple and found two twin beds pushed together. Now keep it up if you enjoyed the gap in the middle. Not many hands left.
That gap is why hotels in Italy, Germany, France and Spain buy from me, along with many B&Bs and vacation rentals in Italy. They want one room that sells two ways: two separate beds for business travelers, one big bed for couples. Below is how that works, including how to put a bed bridge on your mattresses in about a minute.
The bed bridge was born in a hotel room
Picture this. Landgraaf, the Netherlands, 2007. After a full day of snowboarding at SnowWorld, I walk into our hotel room, toss my coat into a corner and drop onto the bed.
My girlfriend flops down next to me. The TV is on, and all I want is to roll over and hug her. Then the inevitable happens: the mattresses slide apart under us.
She looks at me. “This isn’t going to work, is it? Not like this.”
I push the mattresses back together once, and right away I see how easily they’ll slide apart again. I’ll be doing this all evening, I think. So I stop, and we each spend the night on our own mattress.
The next morning, I’m standing in the shower of that same hotel when it hits me. These mattresses need to be tied together. Putting something between them makes no sense.
The bed store had a different idea
Back home, I walk into a bed store. A saleswoman asks if she can help me.
“My mattresses keep sliding apart,” I tell her.
“Make up the bed with one double mattress cover,” she says.
But I already have one, and the gap is still there. So she walks me past anti-slip mats, then foam bridges. An anti-slip mat doesn’t hold your mattresses together either, I think. It just delays the problem.
Most hosts still try that today. A foam bridge or gap filler fills the gap, but it holds nothing. So the mattresses still slide apart, often the same evening, and the foam drops in between.
A foam filler in a sliding bed is a doorstop for a door that’s already open.
That’s why the newer idea works the other way around: a tension strap made for mattresses, like the mattress strap from Bedbinder Deluxe. It goes around both mattresses, not between them, and turns two loose mattresses into one.
How to rent one room two ways
Imagine a Thursday night. Two colleagues on a business trip check in, each with their own twin bed.
On Friday they check out. You push the two beds together, lay the wide band, 31.5 inches across, flat on top in the middle, and run the three nylon straps underneath. You click the buckles shut underneath and pull the straps to light tension, just tight enough that the mattresses can’t separate. That takes 60 seconds.
Next comes a mattress pad, then one large fitted sheet over both. Under that sheet, the band disappears. Two twin XL mattresses side by side measure 76 by 80 inches, the size of a King. So that evening, a couple checks into a king room.
On Monday you reverse it. Unbuckle the straps, slide the beds apart and make them up separately. Same room, different guest.
What changes for guests and hosts
Your guests get one sleeping surface, with no ridge of foam down the middle. My customers put it in their own words in their reviews: “Gone was the gap.” Or, shorter: “We can cuddle again.”
For hosts, details count. Together, the band and straps hold 1,212 lbs. The band comes loose at both sides, so it goes in the washing machine at 86 °F. And if a buckle ever breaks within 7 years, you get a whole new Bedbinder.
When it’s the wrong tool
I’d rather tell you before you buy. On an adjustable base where only the head end moves, it works: place the band a little lower, on the flat part between the hinges. But if both the head and foot ends adjust, I don’t recommend it.
With wooden bed sides, the mattresses can’t slide apart, so a foam filler can be enough. The honest catch: you’ll feel a bump.
I never did get that hug in that hotel bed in Landgraaf. Your guests can. Because a double bed is only a double bed when two people can meet in the middle.
