What is a California king?
A California king is the largest standard mattress available on the market, measuring 72” wide and 84” long. Worth noting is that a California king bed is the longest bed available on the market, but not technically the widest. A standard king mattress is actually the widest, clocking in at 76” wide. It is, however, only 80” long. The California king mattress derives its name from the Golden State, which is where it originated in the late 1940s. A Los Angeles mattress merchant reportedly coined the term, deeming the suburban houses cropping up in Los Angeles’s post-WWII building boom large enough to warrant bigger mattresses. Many argued that the longer length was only beneficial for the very tall, and that investing in extra width over extra length would be wiser. This spurred the creation of the King mattress, which is also sometimes termed the “Eastern King,” to differentiate itself from its western counterpart.
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Lead image by Laure Joliet / Design by Chloe Warner
