Hotel bed was so high I couldn't transfer onto it and spent the week on a sofa cushion, how do you stop this happening again?

Well. We've just got back and I need to get this off my chest before I book anything else. Accessible room, proper wet room, wide doors, we did all the checking this forum taught us and it was honestly a lovely bathroom. And then the bed. The bed was ENORMOUS. One of those hotel beds with a thick base and a mattress on top like a wedding cake, and the top of it came up to somewhere near my chest when I was sat in the chair.

I cannot transfer up onto something that high, not with my husband helping, not with anything. The hotel were very kind and had no idea what to do. They offered a different room, same bed. In the end my husband took the sofa cushions off and I slept on them on the floor of the room for six nights, which at 68 is not the holiday I had in mind, and getting up off the floor in the mornings was its own adventure.

So what do people actually do? Is there a number I should be asking for, and is it the bed or the mattress you ask about? And is there anything the hotel could have done on the day that we didn't think of, because I felt like nobody in that building had ever been asked.

Brenda that's grim and I'm sorry. For what it's worth I've had the opposite problem, a bed so low my chair seat was a good 15 cm above it and I had to drop down onto it and then haul myself back up in the morning, so it cuts both ways. Same root cause though, nobody measured anything.

What I ask for now is the height from the floor to the TOP of the mattress, in centimetres, with the bedding on. Not the bed frame. The mattress is where you end up.

Adding the hoist side because it's the same problem from a different angle. My wife's mobile hoist needs the legs to go under the bed, so a divan base with no gap underneath, which is exactly the wedding cake style Brenda's describing, defeats it completely. I now ask for a photo of the gap under the bed and how many centimetres it is, as well as the mattress top height. Twice now a hotel has offered to swap the divan for a frame bed from another room when I asked far enough ahead.

Thing I didn't know until last year: some hotels DO have a height adjustable or profiling bed in one of their accessible rooms, but it's often only one room and they don't advertise it. Worth asking outright.

Brenda1958 said:

is there a number I should be asking for, and is it the bed or the mattress you ask about

Brenda, I am so sorry, and I want to say clearly that a week on the floor was the hotel's failure, not yours. To answer the direct question: the number to ask for is the height from the floor to the top of the mattress with the bedding on, in centimetres, and the number you compare it to is your own seat height when you are sat in your chair on your cushion, measured the same way. A lateral transfer is easiest when the two are within a few centimetres of each other, and it gets hard quickly once the gap is more than about 5 cm in either direction. Most wheelchair seats with a cushion sit somewhere around 45 to 55 cm from the floor. Standard hotel beds tend to run 55 to 65 cm to the mattress top, and the tall boutique style bed you met can be 70 cm or more, which is exactly why it felt like a wall. Derek's low bed is the other end of the same problem.

What the hotel could have done on the day, and this is worth knowing so you can ask for it next time, comes in three sizes. The smallest fix for a bed that is too high is to take the mattress off the base and put it on the floor, or on a lower frame, which sounds undignified but is a proper transfer height and a firm surface, and I have done it in a great many rooms. A bed that is too low goes the other way with bed raisers, which some hotels keep in maintenance and most do not. The bigger fix is swapping the bed, which as Neil says a willing hotel can do from another room if you ask before you arrive rather than at the desk. The biggest is a hired profiling bed delivered to the room, which needs the hotel's agreement and 2 to 3 weeks with a local hire company, and which I have only ever managed on stays of a week or more. For the hoist users reading, the clearance under the bed is a separate number again and a divan base gives you zero, so ask for both.

On the booking side, the reason nobody in that building had been asked is that bed height is the question people forget, even people who have learned to ask about the shower. It sits in the list I use in the questions to ask before booking, and the wider picture of what actually separates a usable room from a hopeful one is in accessible accommodation. Ask for the mattress top height, ask for a photograph of the bed from the side with a tape measure against it, and ask in the same email whether they have a height adjustable bed in any room, because the answer is sometimes a surprised yes.

Where I stop, as ever: what transfer height is safe for you, and whether a mattress on the floor is a sensible surface for your body to get up from at 68, are questions for your own OT or physio, who know your transfers. I can tell you which numbers to demand. What they mean for you is theirs.

Quick one, the tape measure photo works for beds exactly as it does for doors. I've started asking for it as a matter of course and the good places send it within a day. One sent a photo of a bed with a chair pushed against it, which told me more than the number did.

Thank you all, and Marnie especially for the numbers, which I've written on a card and put in my handbag. Sat in my chair on my cushion I'm 49 cm, which I had never measured in my life.

Booked somewhere for October. Asked for the mattress top height and got 58 cm back within the day with a photo of a tape measure held against it, and they said they can take the mattress off the base if I'd rather, which I might well do. Also asked if they had an adjustable bed anywhere and they said no but they've written it down for the refurb, so possibly some good comes of this. Physio says 58 is fine for me with my husband on the far side. No sofa cushions this time.