Be My Valentine, but Let’s Buy a King-Size Bed and Spread Out

Robert Pagano and his girlfriend, Tracy Jones, weighed the pros and cons of switching to a king from a queen last year. The couple, who live in Las Vegas, had been getting on each other’s nerves when they were stuck working from home.

“We hoped a bigger bed would help us avoid arguments,” Mr. Pagano said. “But we were worried the extra space would lead to less cuddling.”

They took the plunge and haven’t regretted their decision. “The extra space is great, and there is still a lot of cuddling,” said Mr. Pagano, who is 32 years old and is the co-founder of a mattress review website. He said he has noticed an uptick during the pandemic of people searching his website for larger beds.

Until the 1940s, most Americans were able to get enough sleep on twin or full mattresses. Mattress makers started selling larger sizes in the 1950s and 1960s, advertising them as better for sleeping. They chose the names “queen” and “king” to lend an air of desirability, making bigger beds a status symbol. It wasn’t until 1999 that queens became the most popular size, according to industry executives and trade groups.

Americans also weigh more, according to the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, and want more space. Tall people have long craved larger mattresses.

“All I want is a king-size bed,” Kenyona Thomas told her husband last year when Dylan asked what she wanted for Christmas. The couple—she is 5 feet 9 inches and he is 6 feet 5—had been squeezing into a queen since they got married in 2020.

“Dylan was too long for the queen, so he had to bend his legs toward my side,” said Ms. Thomas, a 23-year-old marketing coordinator, who lives in Memphis, Tenn. “I’d wake up grumpy and need my space. But we were stuck at home, so I didn’t have any space.”

It didn’t help that their two cats, Ash and Astro, also slept in the bed. “My husband was on one side, the cats were on the other—I couldn’t take it anymore,” Ms. Thomas said.

The situation has improved since their bigger bed arrived in November. “Now, when I go to sleep it’s almost like he’s not in the bed,” Ms. Thomas said.

Queen beds are still the most common size in American homes, but the demand for king beds, which are usually about 16 inches wider than queens and around the same length, outpaced every other size during the pandemic, according to the International Sleep Products Association, an industry trade group.

“King beds are by far the preference now,” said Scott Thompson, the chief executive of mattress maker Tempur Sealy International Inc. Kings account for half the sales of its Tempur and Stearns & Foster brands, up from 40% of sales before Covid-19. “This is a permanent shift,” Mr. Thompson said. “We are on a health-and-wellness kick that will continue after the pandemic.”

King mattresses and California kings—which are slightly narrower but longer than standard kings—represented 20.4% of mattress sales in 2020, up from 19.5% in 2018, meaning about 225,000 extra mattresses were sold. All the other sizes either declined or were roughly unchanged, according to the trade group. Industry executives said the trend has continued.

“In a steady industry like the mattress business, that’s significant movement,” said Gerry Borreggine, chief executive of Therapedic International, a mattress and bedding company.

The shift has led to a shortage of king-size sheets and bedding sets, some industry executives said. Last year, the number of sold-out king-size sheets exceeded the number of sold-out queen sheets by more than 100%, according to Edited, a retail analytics company.

Once Vicky and Mickey Popat swapped their queen for a king in 2020, they started hosting movie and dinner nights in their bed with their children, Sanum, 12, and Sohum, 8. One recent evening the family watched “Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania,” while snacking on burgers and fries.

“Before when the kids would come into the bed, we’d really have to squish,” the 39-year-old Ms. Popat said. “Now, there is enough space.”

When it comes to sleeping, the Orlando, Fla., couple prefers to stay close. “Even though the bed is bigger, we still snuggle,” said Mr. Popat, 42. “We meet in the middle,” added his wife. This Valentine’s Day, the couple plans to watch a double feature in bed—the first movie with their kids and the second on their own.

More than half the U.S. adult population shares a bed with another person, according to Panagiotis Mitkidis, an associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has co-authored research on sleep. One study he conducted found that co-sleepers had more REM sleep and less fragmented sleep than people who slept alone.

Sleep specialists said more space can lead to more restful slumber. This is especially true during the pandemic, when insomnia and other sleep disorders have been on the rise due to heightened stress. People who have been cooped up at home are spending more time in bed working and watching television, which also can disrupt sleep.

“Bed is for the three S’s—sleep, sex and sick,” said Lauri Leadley, a clinical sleep educator and president of the Valley Sleep Center in Phoenix “If you can have more room and be less disturbed by your partner, you will get a better night’s sleep.”

Of the U.S. consumers who purchased a king-size bed during the pandemic, 15% said it was to get extra space from their spouse, according to market research company Branded Research, which surveyed more than 17,000 U.S. consumers in January.

Victoria Cornell often had to wake her husband, Joel, in the middle of the night to stop him from snoring. Now that the couple, who live in Ontario, Canada, traded their queen for a king, “I can just roll over to my end of the bed,” said Ms. Cornell, a 36-year-old blogger.

Tired of bumping into each other at night and waking up cranky, Stefan Palios and his partner, Marty Butler, splurged on a king bed when they moved from their Toronto apartment to a Nova Scotia house last year. Mr. Palios, a 29-year-old freelance writer, said the bigger bed has done wonders for their relationship.

Now, when Mr. Butler, 29, a registered nurse, wakes for early shifts at the hospital he no longer disturbs his partner. Mr. Palios said, “It makes for a more peaceful house.”

Write to Suzanne Kapner at [email protected]