Dormitory projects rarely go wrong on the beds themselves. They go wrong between suppliers. The frames arrive on Tuesday, the mattresses on Friday, and the 50 x 70 cm pillowcases turn out to be cut for a different pillow. By then the container is at sea. We put the whole room on one bill of materials: one purchase order, one packing list, one arrival date.
What is in the package
Six line items cover a sleeping place from the frame up. This is the specification we quote against; the quantities scale with your room count.
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Single bunk bed | Black steel |
| Single mattress | 4 in / 10.16 cm thick |
| Pillow | 50 x 70 cm |
| Pillowcase | 50 x 70 cm |
| Single fitted sheet | Waterproof |
| Single blanket | Single size |
Nothing here has to be bought locally. That matters more than it sounds. Local top-up buying is usually where a fit-out loses its completion date.
Our factory makes steel beds, steel wardrobes and tables and chairs, so the room can grow past these six items without adding a second vendor. The production scope is on our metal bed manufacturer page.
Will it fit through the door?
This is the question we wish more buyers asked first. Measure the room's clear height, the corridor width and the door opening before anyone talks about bed counts. A bunk that clears the building entrance but not the room door is an expensive mistake, and it happens more often than it should.
Send the room drawing, or a marked-up photo with dimensions on it. We return a layout showing bed positions, the largest flat-pack component, and the clearance above the top bunk. If the ceiling is too low, we say so before production starts rather than after unloading.
How thick should the top-bunk mattress be?
Ten point one six centimetres. Four inches. That number is chosen together with the guardrail, not after it.
Effective guardrail height is the rail height minus the mattress thickness. Fit a thicker mattress from a second supplier and you have quietly reduced the protection on the upper bunk. Simple, and easy to miss when the bed and the bedding are bought separately.
Our frame is SGS tested to a 200 kg static load per sleeping tier. Guardrails, ladder fixings and the gaps between members are checked against the 10.16 cm mattress on one drawing, so the assembly is verified as a single unit. Test reports and compliance documents (EN 747, EN 1725, CE, ISO 9001) go into the project file.
For the frame on its own, steel sections, welds, test reports and the rest, our 10-question bunk bed buying guide covers the other half of the specification.
Will it survive a humid room with a new occupant every few months?
Ask to see the weld points and the tube ends on a sample. That is where rust starts on steel frames in coastal and tropical projects, whatever the datasheet says. Our frames are powder coated, and we would rather you inspected those two points yourself than took our word for it.
The mesh base lets air move under the mattress, and the frame sits off the floor so a mop can get underneath. The fitted sheet in the package is waterproof: it keeps sweat and spills off the mattress, which in a high-turnover room means the mattress itself rarely needs cleaning. Dark blue linen hides the wear that white shows after a month.
Who installs it, and when does it arrive?
Beds ship flat-packed, with fittings bagged and labelled per bed. Soft goods are baled separately and loaded into the same container, so there is one packing list and one set of documents. On a multi-block site we phase the shipment by block or floor. There is no point filling a corridor with bed frames while the first block is still being painted.
Production is scheduled against your move-in date, not ours. Give us the quantity, the destination port and the handover date and we set out a realistic schedule before you commit. We do not quote a lead time off a catalogue.
What happens in year three?
Ask a supplier how long they will keep sending the same bolts and the same ladder hooks. The answer tells you more than a comparison sheet does. Dormitory hardware wears out: a loose connector, a bent rail, a missing cap. Standardised parts let you replace one bed's fittings instead of retiring the batch.
We keep the bill of materials for each project, so a spare order three years later refers to the same part numbers. It is a dull detail. It is also the difference between a ten-minute fix and a new tender. A fit-out delivered at this scale, with phased shipments and a full furniture schedule, is documented in our Singapore worker dormitory project.
Which standard applies in your market?
Requirements change at the border. Frame strength and guardrail geometry, fire labelling on soft goods, and the papers your inspector wants to see are not the same in every country. Name the destination and the standard your tender calls for at enquiry stage; we build the document pack around it, including test reports, material declarations, assembly drawings and the packing list.
Bedding is the part buyers forget here. A mattress or a blanket can need a fire-retardant label even when the frame does not. Flag it early. The EN 747 dormitory guide explains the frame clauses in detail. Correctional and institutional projects follow the same process with tighter specifications; our prison bunk bed page covers that scope.
Frequently asked questions
What size mattress fits a standard single dormitory bunk bed?
Our package uses a single mattress sized to the frame, 4 in (10.16 cm) thick. If you are fitting out frames you already have, send the internal length and width of the bed base and we match the mattress and the fitted sheet to that measurement.
How thick should a mattress be on an upper bunk?
Thin enough to leave the guardrail doing its job. We specify 10.16 cm and check the rail height against it on one drawing, which is why we supply the frame and the mattress together.
Can beds, mattresses and bedding ship together in one container?
Yes. Frames travel flat-packed and soft goods baled, all on one packing list and one set of shipping documents.
Can you add wardrobes, desks and chairs to the same order?
Yes. Steel wardrobes, dining tables, study desks and chairs are made in the same factory and can be added to the project schedule, so the whole room arrives under one order.
What do you need to quote a dormitory project?
Room dimensions and door clearances, the number of rooms and beds, the destination port, the standard named in your tender, and the move-in date. A room drawing helps but is not required.
Send us the room, not a shopping list
Room dimensions and door clearances. Number of rooms and beds. Destination port. The standard your tender names. Move-in date. That is enough for us to come back with one bill of materials and a phased delivery schedule.
We have not put numbers on this page. A dormitory BOM moves with quantity, destination and specification, and a figure quoted without those three is not useful to anyone.
Completed institutional fit-outs are listed in the project section.
