How Comfortable Is Your Dinette Bed?

[MrLynn]

The main reason we want to upsize from our Casita is for a second, reasonable-size bed, which in the molded-fiberglass world means a four-person dinette/bed. Yes, I know that Casita and OIiver offer twin beds, but they are narrower than we want (30.5" and 30" respectively, and the Oliver Elite II is too expensive anyway). So who has four-person dinette beds? Escape. (There's also Big Foot, but they are even pricier than Olivers.)

I never hear anyone talking about regularly sleeping on the dinette beds. It means, of course, setting it up for sleeping at night, and back to dining/sitting daytimes, which can be a pain. But I can live with that, if the dinette bed is reasonably comfortable. The two-person dinette in our Casita, besides being only 24" wide, has really hard cushions and so wants a topper for sleeping. How are the Escape 19 and 21 dinette cushions?

Anyone here actually sleeping nightly in one?

[Bobbie54]

Which trailer(s) are you looking at? For two of you? For any of them you can have the 4 person dinette set up as a bed (with a mattress) and use the other dinette (2 or 4.) if there are only 2 of you. Even in a 17b. I got mine with the dinette but use it as a permanent bed. I did not find a topper over the cushions comfortable enough but I never took the bed down anyway so using a mattress made more sense.

[huskersteffy]

My 20 something son has slept on our 21C dinette cushions for one night. Next morning comment: Hard as a rock, Suggest a mattress topper.

[Rossue]

Rear dinette is my sleeping berth- kinda like dual master bedrooms that have become popular the last decade or so we do this to get a good night sleep.

A qualityTalalay 3" latex topper is the key for a super comfortable bed- and we can fold it long ways across the back of the U- shape dinette and still have plenty of space for two at the dinette. A Springfield pedestal makes the conversion to bunk very quick & easy.

Up front we use a 4" high density foam foundation and latex topper as well.

[JudyS]

I’ve slept 10 nights so far in our E19 dinette using a tri folding foam mattress (4” thick) on top of the Escape cushions, so a total of 8” foam. Super comfy. I like a firmer bed and this isn’t too mushy. Here’s the link to the one I have. I use the 25” wide x 75” long, but it also comes in a 38” width as well as even wider ones.
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B091JPL6...ing=UTF8&psc=1

[MrLynn]

Originally Posted by Bobbie54

Which trailer(s) are you looking at? For two of you? For any of them you can have the 4 person dinette set up as a bed (with a mattress) and use the other dinette (2 or 4.) if there are only 2 of you. Even in a 17b. I got mine with the dinette but use it as a permanent bed. I did not find a topper over the cushions comfortable enough but I never took the bed down anyway so using a mattress made more sense.

Our Casita is like your 17B, with a 4-person dinette/bed at the rear. We leave it set up as a bed, with a topper to moderate the hard cushions (and the cracks between them). The 2-person dinette bed at the side is too narrow. We added a couple of plywood boards and a piece of foam to extend it to 28", plus a topper, but that's still not comfortably wide, and it is a bother to set up and take down.

[kathytony1985]

Our 21NE cushions are not comfortable as a bed. If in the future we need to use it as such, we will opt for some kind of mattress topper.

[SFcamping]

We have a 17A with my wife sleeping on the permanent bed with the dogs and me on the 4 person dinette. I use a double width self inflating sleeping pad on top of the cushions. The sleeping pad is a perfect fit for the space and I attach the full sized fitted sheet to the pad instead of wrestling it over the cushions. I get a good night's sleep although it doesn't compare to the permanent bed.

I can compress, fold, then roll the pad resulting with something I can easily put in the under-bed storage area. Not as easily done with a foam topper.

[Gasguy]

Everyone who has slept on the dinette bed cushions in our 19’ agrees. It’s just okay for sleeping on your back & really sucks for side sleeping. Tried a mattress topper and it improved the comfort somewhat, however that created a hassle slowing the bulky thing when not in use.
Happy in between has been to zip open a 20 degree sleeping bag & lay it under the cushions.

[ghosthunter]

Well we are the odd ones out. We have a 15 b and sleep on the dinette cushions.
We do put down a sleeping bag type thing with pull out washable covers and maybe a quilt under that.
We sleep on our sides and sleep very well on it. four nights so far.

We eat and cook outside most the time. but the dinette table was replaced with a fold down table with push button. My wife puts it up or down as she wishes with no issues.

[HABBERDABBER]

The comfort depends on how tired you are, and how you sleep. I've slept on it a few times to distance from a snoring mate, with no additional padding used. A foam topper would help. We've used self inflating Therma-Rest pads atop the cushions in our old 16' Casita and that worked pretty well. One of those (the thicker the better) could be useful as it could be deflated and rolled up to save space, or easily placed on the main bed to get out of the way.

[sherminator]

We have a double dinette 21NE, and we leave the front dinette made up as bed full time, sleeping on the dinette cushions. We added a 2" mattress topper, along with a thick, flannel sleeping bag as a bottom "sheet". The mattress topper helped a lot.

We have had the trailer a year now and feel like we probably won't ever use the front dinette as a dinette, so I plan to make it into a permanent bed space (ETI hasn't agreed to make that an option yet) and have a custom mattress made.

[oldwave]

Originally Posted by MrLynn

The main reason we want to upsize from our Casita is for a second, reasonable-size bed, which in the molded-fiberglass world means a four-person dinette/bed. Yes, I know that Casita and OIiver offer twin beds, but they are narrower than we want (30.5" and 30" respectively, and the Oliver Elite II is too expensive anyway). So who has four-person dinette beds? Escape. (There's also Big Foot, but they are even pricier than Olivers.)

I never hear anyone talking about regularly sleeping on the dinette beds. It means, of course, setting it up for sleeping at night, and back to dining/sitting daytimes, which can be a pain. But I can live with that, if the dinette bed is reasonably comfortable. The two-person dinette in our Casita, besides being only 24" wide, has really hard cushions and so wants a topper for sleeping. How are the Escape 19 and 21 dinette cushions?

Anyone here actually sleeping nightly in one?

Actually Bigfoots are cheaper than Oliver’s, still pricey though, given the level of discounts at certain dealers about 10 to 15000 more than a loaded 21

[cpaharley2008]

We found the smaller bed in the E21C was perfect sized for the two of us. Thus we are getting a smaller, similar sized bed in the front of our new E19 and converting the rear queen bed into a large dinette area. Best of both worlds.....

[McBride]

We use a two inch topper for both beds and it works great.

[Akfishman]

I just spent 40 days sleeping on the u shaped dinette of our 21c. I added a thin foam (about 1 “ thick foam with a high and low kind of waffle pattern from Walmart) very inexpensive and it rolled up tight enough to put it and my sleeping bag under the seat of the dinette. I have the Springfield table mount which makes setup a breeze, usually 2-3 minutes from start to sleeping. I like a firm mattress but just the cushion was too hard. Adding the foam on top of the cushion made all the difference for me. My routine is I’m up early,
Make the coffee and setup the dinette while the missus catches a bit more sleep. We love the u shaped dinette and added the split back cushions for easy access to the rear storage areas.

[DougO]

We haven’t slept in our new E19 yet but in our Scamp we had a 3 inch memory foam mattress topper on the rear dinette bed that my wife thought was more comfortable than our $2000 memory foam mattress at home. I slept on the side dinette using an REI 1.75” backpacking air mattress that was very comfortable depending on how much air pressure I put into it. So far we have continued to use sleeping bags for our trailer camping. Maybe that will change as the E19 has a real mattress in the rear bed.