Owners keep coming back to how sturdy the Simba Sherwood Solid Ash Bed feels, and the build explains it: a pale ash frame with a spindle headboard and sprung slats beneath your mattress. The open sides and low foot rail give it a lighter look than an upholstered bed.
It suits you if your bedroom is built around visible timber and you like to read sitting up against the headboard. Ash is a wood I'd choose for furniture that lasts, and I'd buy this frame in a Simba sale. The catch is noise: owners mention creaking more than any other fault with the frame, so avoid it if a creak when your partner turns over would wake you.
The Sherwood's ash frame has pine inside and rubberwood slats
The timber is the best reason to buy the Sherwood, as long as you know where the ash stops. The composition line gives solid ash for the frame, solid pine for the inner rails down both sides and for the upper part of the centre rail, and rubberwood for the slats. The pine sits where your slats rest on the side and centre rails, so the big "Solid Ash" wording deserves that smaller print.
"UK Timber Regulation" means legally sourced timber, not a quality grade or British manufacture: Simba says furniture makers in Vietnam build it. The ash is washed to a subtle sheen, and with a spindle headboard there's no fabric to mark.
Your slats sit in two rows either side of the centre rail, 15 a side in a double and 16 in the bigger two. Simba splits them into three zones for hips and shoulders, which in plain terms means wooden slats that bend a little under you. Simba doesn't say how the zones differ, so leave zoning out of your decision.
Sherwood owners report creaking, often around the slats
Creaking would make me hesitate, and it turns up among otherwise happy owners too. Of those who pin it down, a few put it down to the slats in their plastic holders, a couple to the joint where the headboard meets the side rails and one to the centre support. Earplugs never did a thing for me, so I wouldn't make them your plan.
Some of it settles as the slats bed in, and Simba sent one owner a furniture engineer who fixed it. Others still hear it after tightening every screw. Go round every bolt again after your first fortnight, and if the noise survives that, report it to Simba rather than packing cardboard round the joints, as one owner did.
Plenty of owners call it sturdy, and several say theirs makes no noise at all. A few found rough or sharp edges on the slats and holders, and two found splinters in their mattress, so run your hand along every slat first.
The Sherwood king needs 214cm of floor length
Measure your floor before you order. The king is 157cm by 214cm (about 5ft 2in by 7ft) with the feet on, and the super king shares that length at 187cm (about 6ft 2in) wide. The double is 142cm by 204cm (about 4ft 8in by 6ft 8in). There's no single or small double.
Every size stands 100cm (about 3ft 3in) at the headboard, the only height given, so if sitting on the side with both feet on the floor matters, get the slat height from Simba. Owners are happy here: a few, including one owner in her late 70s, find it easy to get in and out of, and many keep storage boxes underneath.
One owner notes a middle leg under the centre rail that the photos don't show. Assembly needs two people and minimal tools, whatever the "effortless" wording suggests. Ask Simba for the slat gap and a weight limit before you add a heavy hybrid, because neither is published.
The Sherwood makes more sense at a sale price
Simba's price is the usual problem, so buy it in a sale or with your mattress, since Simba prices the frame lower in a bundle. The obvious cheaper rival is the Hip Hop Wooden Bed Frame at Bensons for Beds, also natural ash on arched sprung slats. Its spec says solid ash and ash veneer, so the extra money on the Sherwood buys solid timber, which is the part I'd pay for.
The 200-night trial covers the frame, with free collection in most of the UK, which is useful with the noise complaints in mind. Skip the accident cover offered at checkout.
What to buy instead
If you'd rather have solid slats than sprung ones, look at the Penelope Wooden Bed Frame at Dreams: solid wood on slats that stay flat rather than flexing, with a woven fabric headboard panel and a walnut finish, though fabric is the part that marks. If it's the price, the Durham Wooden Bed Frame at Bensons for Beds is cheaper and on sprung slats, but it mixes solid wood with pine and MDF and comes painted white or pewter.
