This is my guide to using IKEA LÖVA leaf bed canopies for an adult size bed, for example for co-sleeping in a family bed with your kids. This might also work well for adults with sensory needs. It involves 3D printed components, which can be ordered from a third party if you don’t have access to a 3D printer.

Information about safe bed sharing and co-sleeping info can be found at the lullaby trust website here.

My sleepless toddler

I share a super-king size bed with my two kids, age 4.5 years and 18 months. The 18 month old has difficulty staying asleep, from 2-4am he wakes every 40 minutes as a minimum and needs nursing back to sleep each time. He’s remarkably well rested. I am not well rested!! This is our family bed.

Holistic sleep recommendations

I’ve been dipping in and out of the holistic  sleep book Still Awake [hive.co.uk] by Lyndsey Hookway.

The book is a helpful resource, and has a table at the back which lists sleep issues and which pages have possible solutions.

The best advice I’ve got from the book generally is that his sleep will get better and to keep prioritising my own sleep until then.

I’ve definitely made progress with this, doing everything I can to make the most of the sleep I get.

These little things helped me

• More fresh air/sunlight in the morning.
• Prioritising my walks
• Gone back to weekly therapy to keep on top of my anxiety
• Stricter on caffeine/food/supplement type regiments to prioritise sleep
• Doing my absolute best to stay asleep in the night, don’t check time, don’t look at phone even if I feel quite awake. This has made big difference.
• Getting my eldest child a duvet instead of blankets so she doesn’t wake me up needing “a tuck in” when she’s got her blankets in a mess. I’d kept her in blankets as long as possible because it’s safer for the younger child not to have a duvet in the bed

Things that helped my kid

• Moved bedtime back from 7pm to 8pm so his his wakeful hours are closer to the morning (helps me too)
• Making the bedroom much darker
• Baby sleeping bag instead of blankets
• More milk before sleep:
  • I nurse him sitting up and awake for a while before he nurses to sleep so he’s had plenty of milk
  • I also found I can nurse him like this when he’s very overtired and upset and it calms him down before later nursing sleep (normally he would just fall asleep very quickly)
• Trying things like music and silly time before bed some nights to get him really relaxed and tired
  • This is a real joy for both kids but we don’t always have time.
• White noise machine (unsure if it helps him, I find it annoying)

Sleep canopy

One of the other things the Still Awake book mentioned was that a sleep canopy can help some children with these sleep issues. Lyndsey Hookway suggests they can help a sensitive child feel safer and more relaxed. Our bedroom is quite big with high ceilings and so I thought it was worth a try.

There are cute leaf shaped sleep canopies called LÖVA available at Ikea for for £12 [ikea.co.uk] however they are very much designed to go straight down the middle of a single bed. That wouldn’t work for a super-king bed.

3D printed bracket

I found a 45° mount for the LÖVA brackets at printables.com – kindly designed and made available for free by @smallthings. You can download the files here.

My brother has a 3D printer and he printed them and sent them to me next day delivery.

Which way round?

Its really important to choose which side of the bed you want the leaves to attach before screwing the brackets to the mounts. The bracket needs to point upwards with the mount facing the correct direction.

I decided I wanted two on the left side (the side my youngest sleeps on) and one on the right near my eldest. So I had two brackets angled inwards from left to right, and one the other way round, inwards right to left. It’s all a bit three dimensional!

I used screws like this to attach the LÖVA brackets to the 3d printed mounts

I did find a longer screwdriver helped me get the top screw in, the bracket is designed with the hole almost under the leaf holder, it’s tricky to reach.

Assembling the LÖVA leaves

I then put all the poles into the leaf canopy. It’s worth following the instructions. There’s a lot of tension in the leaves and I found them impossible to assemble in the wrong order. Even following the instructions my hands were very sore after! If you have fragile skin or arthritis, don’t assemble these leaves alone please.

Placement of the mounts on the wall

This was the hardest bit because the leaves are so heavy and unwieldy it’s almost impossible to hold them on the wall with one hand and look/measure/contemplate. I set up my camera to record me while I tried a few placements of the leaves, this was helpful.

I measured roughly my head hight while kneeling upwards on the bed, say if I was needing to give my kids medication or if one had been sick I would need to be able to do that without hitting my head. Because the leaves stand up at an angle from the bracket even quite low mounting seemed plenty roomy.

Attaching the mounts

I used screws and raw plugs like these below. I didn’t have any difficulty attaching them with an electric drill/screwdriver thought I did have to move the bed.

I used a piece of card as a template for the holes, measuring from the back of the mount. I marked the top hole on the wall fairly roughly then used a piece of card to to mark the placement of the second hole accurately. I don’t think the exact hight matters but the gap between the holes needs to be correct. Then I made a second video to decide placement of third leaf relative to the others once the first two were up.

End result

The kids absolutely LOVE the canopy! They adore it and find it very joyful an exciting, playing may games like “lions” and “crash-landing on an alien world”.

I am not sure yet if it will help sleep, but bed is certainly a place my kids love to be even more now, and I think my son does seem more “relaxed” when he’s awake in the night… but still awake so far. Time will tell. I feel this is a way to give my kids a sense of ownership over the bed that I also enjoy. I feel more comfortable when my daughters friends come over and they play there, it just seems more child friendly somehow. I haven’t had any issues bumping my head at all – I’m 5″8.

Some things of note

• Jumping on the bed is less safe as they now have to jump lower down past the bottom of my bed rails. No falls so far.
• It’s pretty hot under the canopy, it’s great in winter but not sure how this will go in summer even in the UK
• I think any lights on under the canopy (phone screen for example) feel more disruptive than before, including the portable white noise machine which lights up when settings change.