Can You Use a Bedspread With a Footboard?

With hundreds of different bed and bedding designs and styles to choose from, some do-it-yourself home decorators may become confused about what styles they can and cannot put together in their bedroom. It is perfectly normal to put a bedspread on a bed that has a headboard and footboard.

The design of your footboard will have a significant impact on how you arrange your bedspread around it. Footboards can be solid or relatively open, short or tall and made out a variety of materials. All bedspreads can be used with a footboard, though some do fit certain styles of footboard better than others. Bedspreads can often be tailored to fit a specific bed or footboard style.

Tall footboards require that the bedspread be tucked into the gap between the footboard and the mattress. This will display the footboard and still leave the bedspread visible. Short footboards can either have the bedspread tucked behind the footboard or allowed to cover it.

Some bedspreads are designed for use with a low footboard or a four-post bed. These bedspreads are split at the bottom corners to allow the posts on the footboard to protrude through the bedspread without causing it to wrinkle or bunch.

Bedspreads that feature boxed corners are sewn so that the corners of the spread fall into a neat crease at the corners of the bed instead of creating puffs of extra fabric. A boxed-corner bedspread may create a neater look on a bed with a footboard than a bedspread that has ruffles of excess fabric on each corner. However, it needs to have at least a partial split -- perhaps 8 to 10 inches up -- to fit over the bed's rails where they connect to the footboard; otherwise, it will bunch up and look messy.