Silk & Snow wooden bed frame review: A Thuma dupe that's a fraction of the cost and just as stylish

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I bought a bed frame in 2020 when I moved into my first house. It was a midcentury modern platform bed with a spindle headboard, and while I loved the style, issues arose. Assembling it was a chore; the instructions were confusing, and I assembled it incorrectly, which wasn't great since it came with so many screws and tools. Not to mention, the spindles began to break after two years.

As someone who tests mattresses often, I wanted a sturdier bed frame, one that had a durable headboard and a design that made it easy to assemble. I'd seen Japanese joinery bed frames – or bed frames that slot together without screws and tools — gaining popularity, but most, like the internet-favorite one sold by Thuma, were expensive. When I learned about Silk & Snow's Wooden Bed frame, I was impressed. The company started out by selling mattresses, so moving toward a Japanese joinery bed frame made sense.

Suffice it to say, I was eager to test the Silk & Snow Wooden Bed frame. Made of sustainable wood with three headboard options, the bed frame is sold at an affordable price, costing a few hundred dollars less than Thuma in every configuration. I ordered a king-sized bed frame with a boucle headboard. Read on for my in-depth review about its setup, durability, and overall looks, and discover where it sits among the beds in our best bed frame guide.

What is Silk & Snow?

Silk & Snow is a Canadian-based company that sells sustainably sourced and ethically made bed and bath essentials, including mattresses, bed frames, bedding, towels, and more. The company was co-founded by Albert Chow and Kenneth Mo and launched in 2017 with a single memory foam mattress. Headquartered in Toronto, Silk & Snow focuses on three main tenets: better materials, thoughtful manufacturing, and transparency. Sustainable materials and practices are core to the Silk & Snow brand and its products. In the case of the bed frame, both the acacia wood and the natural rubberwood are sustainably sourced in Southeast Asia. The company uses a manufacturing facility in Vietnam with eco-conscious practices to cut the wood, while a woman-founded company in Vietnam constructs the bed frame. Silk & Snow also works with Veritree to restore forests and plant trees.

Our review of the Silk & Snow Bed

I assembled a king-sized Silk & Snow wooden bed frame with the boucle headboard in my master bedroom and have slept on it nightly for the last few weeks. I did not use it with a Silk & Snow mattress but with my existing latex organic mattress. Since it's a platform bed, no box springs were necessary, and my existing mattress can sit right on top.

The Silk & Snow wooden bed frame uses a tool-free Japanese joinery technique  

What makes the Silk & Snow Wooden Bed Frame unique is that it is designed in the traditional style of Japanese joinery, which means the different pieces fit together without tools or screws. Each piece has a joint or slot for another piece to fit into. After assembly, you have a sturdy and durable platform bed.

The bed frame has a modern look with thick legs that taper slightly at the end. You can add cork pads to the bottom of the corner legs to prevent the bed from moving or shifting along the floor and protect flooring. 

The bed is available in acacia or rubberwood, with three headboard options

After removing the packaging and pulling out the items, I was impressed right away by the materials. I liked how the acacia wood looked natural and wasn't covered with any kind of coating that made it glossy. A natural look is preferable to me.

Customers can choose between three different headboard designs — a wooden headboard in acacia or natural rubberwood, a rattan headboard with the blonde rubberwood frame, or a cream-colored boucle headboard (which is what I tested) with acacia wood. The boucle headboard slipcover can be removed and washed. The boucle headboard cover is soft and very stylish. I liked the cream color as it matches my room style.

Assembly is tool-free, but you'll want a partner to help you

While Silk & Snow does advises that two people assemble the bed, I was able to do most of the assembly on my own. It would have been nice to have had a second person, if only to ensure that all the pieces were handled with care and the job was done quicker. I did seek assistance with the headboard.

The king-sized Silk & Snow Wooden Bed Frame arrived in three large, heavy boxes. I used a dolly to move them into my bedroom. One of the boxes was damaged though thankfully none of the materials were affected. The pieces — sideboards, footboard, headboard, slats, and legs — fit together easily, and I had no issue putting the headboard on, which is the only piece that requires screws. The boucle cover is held in place with a hidden zipper on the front and back of the headboard. It can be removed and washed.

While the center beams were slightly tricky to fit into the headboard and footboard, the biggest issue I had with assembly was fitting the center support legs. They fit into the center beams but didn't quite touch the ground, even when I unscrewed the leg adjusters as much as I could. (I added floor protector pads on the bottom of the legs to protect my historic wooden floors. Only with those pads did the center support legs slightly touch the floor.) Silk & Snow says the adjusters should be 0.25 inches from the floor. However, this means that the center support legs fall down when you move the bed. (You can't put the bed in position until the headboard is placed on the bed). It was very frustrating and difficult to fit the center support legs back on because I had to remove the slats and have a friend hold the bed frame up so I could slip them back on — but this usually resulted in another center support leg falling down. This is the only part of the bed frame that I wish had screws.  

My mattress fits in the middle of the bed frame, with about two inches of the frame visible around the mattress. I would have preferred that the slats were further down so that my mattress could sink into the frame. As it is, my mattress goes slightly over the two-inch perimeter. This may be because of my particular type of latex organic mattress.

It took no time at all to disassemble the bed for moving

One of the biggest benefits of a bed frame that doesn't require screws and tools to assemble is that it makes disassembly easy. We know that people move homes or like to move their bed frames to different rooms, and it can be difficult to disassemble bed frames with lots of screws. (Disassembling my old bed frame was not easy and parts of it broke because it wasn't made with real wood and required a lot of screws.)

I made sure to disassemble the Silk & Snow Wooden Bed Frame after assembling it. The task took way less time than it did to assemble. All you have to do is unscrew the headboard and remove the center support legs, the center beams, and the side and footboards. While most of the pieces lifted easily, one joint (bottom right corner of the bed frame) was a bit tighter. It was easy enough to pull it apart once I disassembled the other joints.

The bed frame is durable and sturdy, not to mention attractive.

So, how did I sleep on this bed frame? The Silk & Snow Wooden Bed Frame was very comfortable to sleep on. It felt incredibly sturdy along every joint and in the center of the mattress. Equally as sturdy was the headboard. I could lean up against it and watch TV in bed or read without causing any issues (my previous headboard, a spindle headboard, broke if you leaned against it).

I loved the look and style of the bed frame and headboard. It's stylish and timeless. A wooden bed frame won't go out of style. While the boucle headboard material is "in" right now, I like that I can remove the slipcover (and that it's not tufted). Perhaps Silk & Snow will offer other slipcovers in the future that I can replace the boucle cover with for a new and updated look.

Cons to consider

There are so few cons related to the Silk & Snow Wooden Bed Frame, though I do have to admit that I wish the center support legs were better designed. The center support legs barely touched the ground when I fitted them in place, so of course, they fell down when I moved the bed after adding the headboard. You are instructed to add the center support legs first and then put on the headboard. Once the headboard is on, you can move the bed to the position you'd like it to remain. However, in doing this, the center support legs inevitably fall, and you have to remove the slats and lift the frame to add the center support legs again. While the bed is designed to not need any screws, I wish the center support legs were screwed onto the bed in some manner so they didn't fall.

The only other drawback — and it's a minor one for sure — is that you will need someone to assist you with putting the headboard on the bed frame. While the rest of the bed can be assembled by a single person, the headboard cannot. Solo individuals will have to seek assistance.

The bottom line

The Silk & Snow Bed Frame is proof that a Japanese joinery-style wooden bed frame doesn't have to be expensive. You can have a quality bed frame that doesn't require screws or tools to assemble, and it can look stylish and be made with sustainable wood. Although I may have had some trouble keeping the center support legs in place when moving the bed, I haven't had any issues since, which leads me to confidently say that this bed is well worth the buy.