Nightstands, measured

A nightstand is the piece people buy on looks alone, because it seems too small to go wrong. Then it arrives and the drawer won't open past the bed, or the top sits so far below the mattress that the lamp lights your elbow. The problem isn't taste. It's the strip of floor beside the bed, which is narrower than almost anyone remembers it being.

The fit questions here are specific. How wide is the gap between mattress and wall — really, measured, not recalled? Does the bedroom door swing into it? Is there a radiator, an outlet you need to reach, or a baseboard heater that keeps the piece off the wall? And where does the top surface land against your mattress height, which decides whether the whole thing works from a lying-down position?

This hub exists to answer those questions per piece. Below, we're building a directory of constraint pages: each takes one real nightstand, lays its dimensions against common room situations, and issues a verdict with the working shown. No mood boards, no "editor's picks" — a fit or not, and why. While the directory fills in, start with the corner-space article for the general method, or measure your gap now so the verdicts mean something when they land.