Bed base
component of a bed that supports the mattress
A bed base, sometimes called a foundation, is the part of a bed that supports the mattress. The bed base can itself be held in place and framed by the bedstead (bed frame). In the United States, box-spring bed bases are very common (to the point where 'bed base' and 'box spring' may be used synonymously, and the term "platform bed" is used for any other type of bed base). In Europe, sprung slats are much more common.
Typically the measurements of a foundation will be about 1–2 inches (2.5–5.1 cm) shorter than the measurements of a mattress.
Types
Floor beds
Floor beds have no bedframe; the mattresses are laid straight on the floor.
The oldest known human beds are 77,000 years old; they were found in the Sibudu Cave in South Africa. They are made of layers of sedges, rushes and grasses, collected from the uThongathi River which runs directly below the sandstone cliff. The beds are mostly made of river wild-quince (Cryptocarya woodii), which repels insects when crushed. Such beds continued to be made at the site for 40,000 years.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bed base” is component of a bed that supports the mattress. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through base, component and supports, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1807059. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bed base” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.