Assembling the West Elm Emmett Bed: What Actually Happens
West Elm ships the Emmett in three boxes. The headboard and footboard come in one, the side rails and slat system in another, and the hardware bag is tucked inside one of them like everyone hopes you'll find it by luck. I spent about 75 minutes on mine, working alone with a cordless drill and the included Allen wrench, which immediately bent at a 15-degree angle when I tightened the first cam lock. You're better off grabbing a proper 5mm hex key from a hardware store before you start. The Emmett is a low-profile platform bed with a solid wood frame and upholstered headboard option. It uses cam lock and dowel joints throughout, which means no visible screws on the exterior once it's together. The slat system is adjustable in height — you can set it to the low position for a streamlined look or raise it an inch or two for more clearance underneath. The center support leg is mandatory. Skipping it will void the warranty and sag the middle rail within six months, probably less if you're over 200 pounds combined. Here's how the process actually goes. Unpack everything and lay out the parts. Sort the hardware into piles — cam bolts, cam nuts, wood dowels, and the small screws for the center bracket. Don't skip the sorting step. I learned that the hard way when I mixed up the longer and shorter cam bolts and spent twenty minutes trying to force a connection that was never going to work.
Start with the headboard. Insert the dowels into the pre-drilled holes on the side rail channels, then align the footboard and slide the side rails in. Tighten the cam locks with a steady hand — don't crank them. The moment you feel resistance, stop. Over-tightening strips the internal threads of the cam nut, and West Elm doesn't send replacements. You'll be ordering from their parts desk and waiting two weeks for a single $3 component. The center support leg goes next. Position it under the middle of the long side rail and secure it with the provided bracket. Level it by adjusting the foot — there's a threaded collar you turn to raise or lower until the leg makes firm contact with the floor. If your floor isn't level, which most apartments aren't, you may need a thin washer or folded cardstock under the foot to stop wobble. Finally, lay down the slats. They clip into the side rails with a simple press-fit mechanism. No tools needed. I found that starting from the center and working outward keeps the slats evenly spaced without forcing them. The slats themselves are spaced about two inches apart, which is fine for a standard foam or latex mattress. If you're using a memory foam that specifies a solid or closely-spaced base, you might want to buy an additional slat pack from West Elm — they sell them separately for around $40.
One thing the instructions don't mention: the headboard fabric on the upholstered version has a tendency to shift during assembly. When you're tightening the side rail connections, the frame moves slightly and can pull the fabric panel out of alignment on the inside. I had to remove the headboard cover, reposition it, and snap it back into place after the frame was fully assembled. Take five minutes to check the fabric before you consider the job done, or you'll notice a wrinkle every time you walk into the room. The biggest pitfall people run into is skipping the torque check after the first night of use. The cam locks settle when the frame bears weight for the first time. Go back through every cam lock after 24 hours and give each one a quarter-turn if it feels loose. This takes about four minutes and prevents the squeaking that half the Reddit threads on this bed complain about. If you're dealing with a tight space or need to assemble this in a hallway because your bedroom is too small to work in, the process gets noticeably harder. The side rails are 83 inches long and unwieldy alone. Having a second person for the headboard-to-rail connection saves your wrists. Alternatively, you can assemble the side rails to the footboard on the floor first, then stand the whole thing up together, but that requires two adults and a careful lift to avoid cracking the dowel joints.
Get the Full Details
I also replaced the stock center support bracket with a heavier steel one from a home center — the original is stamped thin sheet metal and flexes under lateral load. The upgrade cost about $8 and eliminated a creak that developed around month three. West Elm's customer service confirmed the stock bracket is within spec, but "within spec" and "doesn't sound like a percussion instrument at 2 AM" are two different things.
