Strictly speaking, a bunkie board, also spelled as bunky, is a flat-shaped piece of board which sits in between your mattress and your bed’s surface. Today, however, we even can see metal and wood “boards” with slats, which serve the same purpose. A bunkie board is typically one to three inches in thickness, and its objective is to offer support for the mattress while taking up less space than those box springs do. This means it can work to increase the life span of your mattress while preventing it from sagging to ensure a better spinal alignment all-round.
This review looks at six of these fantastic products. Here we concentrate our efforts on those areas such as the type of materials used, their height and sizes available, and the board’s durability. We also consider any other details of features we believe are worth the mention here. These include, wherever applicable, their warranties and ease of assembling.
Taking a closer look at the marketplace for you, we’ve been able to identify those best-rated bunky boards and compiled all our findings into a fantastic practical table. Here you’ll find our own ratings for each product as well as their well-deserved nominations. Providing a thoroughly in-depth review on each of these five boards, we end with a top three list. Included with our research is also a detailed buying guide to help you further when making your own purchasing decision here. When combined, we aim to ensure you make the best bunkie board purchasing decision to match your own bedding and indeed sleeping requirements.
More features: anti-slip tape on the slats, foam and tape on the frame for quiet use
Top of our list here and our Editor’s Choice nomination, this is the Zinus Deepak Wood Slat Bunkie Board. It pairs wood slats with a steel frame to give a 1.6-inch profile that adds support under spring, hybrid and memory foam mattresses alike, with anti-slip tape across the slats to stop your mattress creeping out of place and foam and tape on the frame to keep it quiet underfoot.
The board is listed in the Full size at 73.8 x 53 x 1.6 inches and ships in a compact package for quick assembly, dropping straight onto platform beds, bunk beds and daybeds. No warranty details are listed for this one, and the makers ask that you confirm the measurements before pairing it with a frame that isn’t theirs.
More features: Quick Lock Construction, foam padded tape
Our budget pick nomination, and indeed other Zinus product, is that of the Zinus Gulzar Bunkie Board. This also gets our nod here for the best bunkie board for bunk bed as this model is recommended as the most ideal for use with bunk beds, day beds, and those recessed sit-in-platform bed frames only.
A strong durable and most sturdy of steel frame makeups, this offers a height of 1.6 inches and is available in a good selection of sizes from Twin, Full, and Queen to King. Once again, this is a lightweight model weighing in at just 26 pounds, and its overall measurements are 74 x 53 x 1.6 inches. There is an abundance of foam padded tape added to the steel frame here. This ensures it remains noise-free throughout use. It also has plentiful, non-slip tape inserted over the slats here to prevent your mattress from moving at all. Offering the most additional of support, this is great for those spring, memory foam, and a hybrid of mattress types. What’s more, it has a quick lock construction available, which is perfect for a faster and easier assembly process all around. Alongside its fabulous low price, you’ll also find the standard five-year Zinus warranty attached here.
Customers of the Zinus Gulzar Bunkie Board find this one of the most perfect of replacement boards that ensure no collapsing and a more improved bed structure overall. Claimed to be a quality board, it receives a fantastic five-star rating and is very highly recommended.
More features: split design, meets federal standards 1632 and 1633 fire code
The Zayton Wood Split Bunkie Board is fabric covered for a nice finish and it comes split in two halves. This makes it easy to carry, store and travel. You simply need to put the two boards together and it is ready to be used. This adds firm support to any type of bed to improve your back support and spine position for a deeper night’s sleep and fatigue reduction.
The stitch bonded fabric can support heavy weight and it provides consistent support under your mattress without moving around. You can use two boards side by side to fit a standard mattress. This product can extend the lifespan of your mattress, working with your mattress to provide renewed support and a firm, fresh feeling. It can be used with platform beds, bunk beds or even daybeds that have a supporting slat system.
With the Zayton Wood Split Bunkie Board, you don’t need to go to the expense of upgrading your box spring and mattress as you can immediately enjoy a better night’s sleep. They feel sturdy and provide an excellent fit, whether you want to protect your new mattress or breathe new life into your existing bed.
More features: ventilation holes for airflow; suitable for platform, slatted, metal and sofa bed frames
The Voyla Plywood Bunkie Board is our choice for bunk beds because it is built around a solid plywood core rather than ordinary MDF, which gives the mattress an even surface to sit on without stealing much headroom from the top bunk. The twin panel measures 38 x 75 inches and the board itself is only 0.4 inches thick, so it adds barely any height between the frame and the mattress.
Ventilation holes run through the panels to keep air moving underneath the mattress, and the 900D Oxford cover unzips completely when it needs cleaning. If you are kitting out a whole room, the same board is also sold in Full, Queen and King.
More features: two-piece split design, arrives fully assembled
The Spring Sleep Split Wood Bunkie Board is our pick for memory foam, because the 1.5-inch slatted wood panel gives foam the flat, even base it needs to stop dips and lumps forming. The stitched cover is a ventilation cover, so air can still move under a mattress that tends to hold heat, and it keeps the foam from resting straight on bare wood.
It arrives fully assembled in two halves, which makes it far easier to carry up a staircase or around a tight corner than one rigid panel. At 1.5 inches it adds almost no height, so it suits a bunk bed, a loft bed or a daybed where a box spring would sit too tall.
More features: two separate boards in one pack, no tools needed, suits slats or bars spaced up to 8 inches apart
Rounding off the list is the two-board option in the group, and it is the one to reach for when you have a bunk bed to cover rather than a single mattress, as it ships as two full twin boards instead of one panel you have to split. Each board is a 10mm twin-wall panel wrapped in Oxford fabric, with silicone grip on the underside so it does not slide around or creak against a metal frame. At just 0.4 inches thick it slides under the mattress without changing the height of the bed or showing beneath the sheets, and each one unfolds flat and goes in without tools. Do bear in mind that it is a support surface rather than a foundation, so it needs slats or a frame beneath it, and the maker rates its capacity by that structure rather than quoting a figure of its own.
Now you’ve had a read through the five reviews of our best-rated bunkie boards, you may have a clear idea of the better model for you. However, before you part with your money, why not take a few minutes to look at our brief but extremely informative buying guide below? This is where we take a little time to elaborate on those features we mentioned above, explaining in a bit more detail why we consider them the most important elements you should be looking at here. Then, with this guide alongside our detailed reviews, you should be in a perfect position to select the right type of bunkie board which will satisfy your exact sleeping requirements.
If you aren’t ready to purchase a bunkie board just yet or aren’t too sure about them overall, some people do instead used pieces of boards cut and fitted by themselves to achieve a similar effect. However, a proper bunkie board has many advantages, including:
We believe there are a couple of essential elements that you should always look out for before you consider purchasing a bunkie board. These include the board and cover materials, the height of the board, the range of sizes available, the durability offered, its ease of assembly, and last but not least, its cost.
The materials of your board may be a personal preference, and some can offer two types in its makeup. We’ve reviewed the most two common types of board material here in that of metal and wood board choices, with the Zinus Deepak offering a combination of the two.
In addition to the board type, you may notice that some bunkie boards are also finished with a covering. This is usually a specific type of fabric which just offers a more visually benefit and perhaps a little more comfort than bare wood or metal surfaces, for example.
Bunkie boards should not be extremely high in construction as their sole purpose is to offer a good level of support, not increase your bed’s overall height! For this reason, you’ll find that most of the bunkies you come across offer a height of around one inch to one and a half inches as standard.
All the boards reviewed here range from one inch to 1.6 inches in total, and we recommend ensuring your chosen model isn’t any higher than this.
When selecting your ideal bunkie board, you need to ensure that the chosen size works to the measurement of your bed base. The best way to do this is by removing the mattress from the bed and measuring both the length and the width of your bed surface.
We have made sure to include those boards which offer a good range of sizes here, and most models will cover Full, Twin, King and Queen as standard.
However, we do note that you should also account for any fabric or padding here in your measurements, especially if you intend on adding such additionals to your bed later on. If you have a little extra clearance, you can indeed pad your bunkie board up as appropriate.
Whatever size you end up choosing, you will most certainly need it to be big enough in its surface area to completely cover the slats beneath it.
Many people will tell you that a bunkie board preserves the life of their mattress as it keeps it from sagging. However, this will only work if the bunkie board itself works to offer such durability, therefore meaning it will last you for a good couple of years at least.
The best way to derive whether your board offers full durability is to read the product details in full, whereby it should mention how durable the board is. All these boards have been chosen for their high durability levels. However, we also think it’s a good idea to take a look at the level of warranty offered here as this may give you an additional sense of the company’s confidence in the longevity of their products.
Two great examples here are the Zinus Deepak, which builds its wood slats onto a sturdy steel frame, and the Zinus Gulzar, which offers a fabulous five-year limited warranty on its bunky board.
A good quality bunkie board should not cost the earth. After all, it is not offering to replace your bed base, nor your mattress. It is merely to provide additional support in between. Therefore, you should ideally be looking to spend under the $100 mark here.
The Zinus Gulzar is our budget pick here and perfectly highlights how easy it is to get a thoroughly useful highly rated bunky board for a smaller and lower cost of around the $50 mark.
With the highest model on the list here ever so slightly tipping the $100 mark, we’re sure you’ll find these prices perfectly adequate.
The great thing about bunkie boards is their minimal installation requirements! With almost nothing for you to piece together, for many it’s merely a case of taking the board from out of the box or packaging you receive it in and then laying it over your bed’s foundations, placing the mattress straight down over the top!
The Meliusly Bunkie Board Twin 2-Pack comes as two separate boards that you simply unfold and lay flat, one over each bunk, whereas the Zinus Gulzar allows a quick lock construction to make assembly as straight forward as possible, with the Voyla Plywood Bunkie Board using solid plywood panels wrapped in a removable zippered Oxford cover!
We hope by now, you have a better idea of what a bunkie board can do for you, alongside what factors of these fantastic features will apply the most to your individual needs.
Our top choice here is the Zinus Deepak. What we like most here is the combination of both a metal and wood board material combined together with non-slip tape that is featured on the wooden slats.
Second place goes to the Zinus Gulzar, which we believe offers an astonishing number of features and benefits but with one of the lowest of price tags attached! In third place, we’ve selected the Zayton Wood Split Bunkie Board because it’s the ideal option for split bed owners and those who value versatility.
Overall, we believe that all the five bunkie boards reviewed here are thoroughly effective at offering an all-around complete sleeping solution, ensuring a better quality of bed and indeed improved sleeping surface for a good number of years to come.
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