Dammit! I haven't posted in here for a long time so I forgot to do "more inside." Please fix that! Thanks.

We have this bed and box spring, and I am very appreciative. Without getting all *wink wink nudge nudge* about it, we need a strong backboard and frame...ifyouknowwhaddamean. It's just one of those things.
Platform beds, while quite lovely and rather pleasing to the eye, tend to be, um, how shall I say... less than sturdy.

I think it's a newer trend. I don't use one, just my mattress (a futon / regular mattress hybrid) on a slatted frame. A friend of mine has a top mattress with a kind of built in box on the bottom. Its about 3 inched of the bottom with a regular mattress attached to the top. Honestly, I never understood the box spring. It always seemed excessive to me. Of course, the wink-wink-nudge-nudge is few and far between in my life.

I sleep on a futon. It's a bed and a couch! Bedcouch.

Sure. Keep repeating that to yourself.

Miss L, that type of bed seems to make its own box spring level for support, making it more dependent on your mattress.
If box springs works for you, great, but maybe you want to check out the world of memory foam or those egg crate mattress tops.
It's a wide wide world of bedding before you even get to frame support versus box spring. Old beds, like antique beds, often have frame support (read as planks) instead of a box spring and odd sized mattresses as well.
It's all about what makes you most comfortable and what you can spend, sleep pod or framed canopy.

I use a box spring just for the extra height. This probably hearkens back to my salad days, when just a mattress set on the floor was just too far down for me to tumble when tired/drunk/stoned/in the throes of passion/I've said too much haven't I?

A mattress and box spring can only fall through the floor.
Look, ma, no legs.

Mattress is 1 inch of memory foam on 3 inches of superdense foam, on a futon frame. Easy to lift and move, really firm to sleep on and I'm only about 14" off the floor. Moving mattresses and boxsprings suck, and the foam doesn't lump up like a futon does over time. I can't recommend it enough, if you like that kinda thing.

Oh, checked your example, and yeah, like that. There are so many different types of foam mattresses that you can probably find one that mimics a regular mattress type that you're used to. To get the box spring thing, try this. Friend of mine bought one, and it's very much like a box spring feel. And no, it doesn't creak with a lot of *movement* like you'd think. We tried it out. har! My mattress is basically this. Yeah, they're Ikea links, but they're actually decent products, and not Ikea PartikleBörd crap.

Also, (me without a fully equipped woodshop, but) a lot of things can be made and customized (whether you want to satin finish every surface is another story, but), really, if you have an idea of what you want, a craftsman can make it for at least a comparable price.
Twin Peaks, Kansas or canopied sleigh bed, most of it can be found on the cheap in back alleys, "antique" shops, etc. or customized and made, by you, for you.

My son had a mate's bed when he was younger. It was like your example except it had a solid wood platform, not slats. The sheets would not stay tucked in! The fitted bottom sheet was fine but the top sheet kept pulling out because there wasn't the normal grip between the mattress and box spring holding the sheet in place.

I switched to the platform/slat style bed and haven't missed the boxspring at all.

Speaking of W Hotel beds--after a recent stay at one, I've been thinking about getting one of their feather beds. That thing was great.

I like having the box spring so that I don't have to crawl up out of bed in the morning. I like being able to just swing my legs over and stand up out of bed.

I had a great bed with one of those extra-thick mattresses, no box spring, and an awesome bed frame. I loved it. It looked great and was really comfortable. I am healthy, have no back injuries or problems, but I did have increasing stiffness in my back, more and more. I figured, hey, I'm getting older and this is what happens.

A few years after getting it, I spent a month away from home on a work assignment. I was in the same hotel the whole time, in a regular bed with mattress and box springs. I suddenly realized about 3 weeks in, that my back was fine. No stiffness, no soreness. It was my bed at home that was making my back ache.

Now that bed is in the guest room and when I sleep on it for a night or two, no problem. But my regular bed has a mattress and box spring.

I'm not saying this will happen to you but if you get a new bed and eventually start to feel achy, consider it might be the lack of a box spring.

I love the look of platform beds. They are very stylish and give a room the look of more space. The ones you linked to are even better because they have storage drawers. That's always a plus.

Like other people here, I like the box spring and mattress combo because I like the height.

I have an antique bed, and we had to cut down the box spring to make it fit - beds were shorter in length back then. So between the antique frame, the box spring, and the new matress, the bed is really high off the ground.

Aren't you a pretty pretty princess?
i helped a friend try to adjust an antique bed. We ended up having to cut new slats and figure out if she could go without the box spring, because her ceiling weren't very high, and falling up is harder than falling down. Heaving oneself up into bed make me think of bunk beds and jail, but observing the world from a padded platform island nation of comforters and pillows?
Kinda ossem.
Those little bed stairs can be adorable, but so can a nice bench seat, or one of my favorites, the ottoman. Big upside: relatively cheap and easy upholstering can introduce color, pattern, or just give a nice visual pop.

Oh, for high ceiling and custom beds.

i so want to design your bedroom now.
Good thing i gotta go.

I had a slatted bed for years and I was SO happy to go back to a box-spring about four years ago. There is just so much more *give* to a mattress with a box-spring underneath. Every time I rolled over on the slats I felt (and heard) the slats, and I was always aware that there was wood right under me. I wouldn't go back.

My problem is that right now I have no frame. I have the box-spring and mattress right on the floor, because I hate squeaky frames, and the metal rails that came with my mattress were both squeaky and the whole thing was rolling around every time I turned over (which I think I do more than most people.) I feel like a university student but at least I'm silent when I'm tossing and turning, and I wake up in the same place I fell asleep.

I have a boxspring, but I went from a futon to a traditional bed a couple years ago. The mattress was enough to finish my budget, I couldn't afford a platform or slat bed, too. I just use the little metal frame that came with it. (I took the wheels off).
I don't think I'd like a platform bed, though. Part of me does, since it is sleek and clean looking and would fit in with my more asian themed decor. But my stuff is mostly asian by way of a heavy dose of steampunk, so it might just be overkill. If I was a woman of wealth I would buy this headboard from West Elm in a heartbeat.

I prefer platform beds, and haven't had a box spring (ensemble bed) since I was a kid. I like the idea of air circulating all around as I sleep. A good platform bed will have tensioned slats - curving upwards, not lying flat - for 'give'. My first non-ensemble bed was a futon mat I made myself at a workshop, on a base of pallets. I had that for three years before a kind friend made me a futon base for my birthday!

I love my bed, it was handcrafted from an Australian hardwood most often used for outdoor furniture, kwila, and is really heavy, has some gorgeous wrought iron and wood detailing and has withstood without complaint 9 years and a 16,000km move so far. I want my grandchildren to sleep in this bed, and barring a housefire they probably will. I need a new mattress though, this one had a 15 year guarantee but I think putting it in a shipping container for three months might have voided it! It's starting to get pretty saggy in the middle.

Actually I don't think platform beds are what I'm talking about - on google images they are all quite low. I'm talking about a regular, high, slatted bedframe.

And wikpedia tells me a platform bed is what I'm talking about, after all. Juggling nomenclature can get confusing!

Ooh! I have the same setup as MonkeyButter. But my back has started aching more and more. I think I need a new mattress.

I think you should keep your boxspring and mattress if you're comfortable on it. If you get something different it could turn out to be uncomfortable for you.

Thanks for all of the feedback & ideas!!!!

I ended up deciding to just hold off on buying a headboard or platform bed for the time being. Found one of those fancy Hotel Collection bed skirts on sale at Tuesday Morning, and I'm just gonna just buy some bed risers so I have storage underneath the bedspring. Simplicity is good. :)