Before you order
Sizing is why most dog beds go back.
Not quality. Not colour. Fit — and the industry does not agree on how to measure.
One large Australian brand measures from the base of the neck, which leaves the head out entirely. On a Labrador that is a 15 to 25cm difference. So a measurement you took for someone else's bed may not transfer to ours. It is worth two minutes with a tape measure.
Three steps, two minutes
Do these in order. The number you finish with is the one to compare against a bed, not your dog's raw length.
Step one
Measure the dog
Wait until they are lying stretched out on their side — not curled. Measure from the nose to the base of the tail. The base, where the tail meets the body, not the tip.
Step two
Add for how they sleep
A curler needs less room than a sprawler. Add the allowance before you compare your number to a size. Measure across the shoulders and add about 15cm as well.
Step three
Check the height
If your dog is older or stiff, how far they have to lift a leg matters more than the footprint. Climbing over a rim is the movement that hurts.
Which beds cover which dogs
Each bar is the range of external lengths that bed is made in. Take your measurement from the three steps above, then find a bed whose range covers it.
External lengths, taken from each product page. The usable sleeping area inside the rim is smaller on every shape except The Flat, which has no rim. Three beds are marked Confirming because we are still waiting on centimetre dimensions from the manufacturer — we would rather leave the row empty than estimate it.
How far your dog has to step
The same beds, measured floor to their highest point. For a stiff or elderly dog this is the number that decides whether they use the bed or sleep next to it.
These are overall bed heights from each product page. Only The Loft publishes an explicit floor-to-rim entry figure — 17cm across all three sizes, including the 110cm — and it is the only bed here where a large dog is not also getting a higher step. On the others the height climbs with the size, so read the low end of each bar: The Ridge is 15cm in Small but 20cm in Large. Four beds are still being confirmed with the manufacturer.
External size is not sleeping area
The number on the box is not the number that matters
External footprint is what you clear next to the sofa. Usable sleeping area is the flat surface inside the rim, and that is what decides whether your dog fits.
A rim can take ten to twenty centimetres off every edge, so two beds with identical outside measurements can give your dog very different amounts of room.
On a flat mattress, size up
There is no rim to make the larger bed feel oversized in the room, and the external size and usable area are nearly the same thing.
On a bolster or sofa bed, look at the rim
The jump in external size is often larger than the jump in usable space. If the rim is deep, take the larger size.
We size to the stretched-out dog even for beds most dogs curl up in. England's boarding kennel code requires a sleeping area twice the dog's lying-flat footprint; the New South Wales animal welfare code for boarding establishments requires enough space to lie with limbs extended. Both treat the stretched posture as the design case.
Dogs change position through the night. A bed sized to a curled dog is a bed they hang off at three in the morning.
Why we don't publish a breed chart
No breed standard anywhere publishes nose-to-tail length. Not the Australian National Kennel Council, not the American Kennel Club, not the Kennel Club in Britain. Standards give height at the withers, sometimes a weight range, and occasionally a body-proportion ratio measured from shoulder to buttock — which excludes the head and neck completely.
It goes further. The ANKC standard publishes no weight at all for Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, Border Collies or Australian Shepherds. So when a store tells you a particular bed fits a Labrador, that figure came from somewhere other than the breed standard.
And the dogs Australians actually own make it harder still. Two independent pet insurers both rank the Cavoodle as the most popular dog in the country, with Groodles and Labradoodles close behind. None is a recognised breed, so no standard exists. A Cavoodle bred from a Toy Poodle and one bred from a Miniature Poodle are genuinely different dogs, and the generation changes it again.
If you have a cross, measure them. A breed name will not tell you, and any chart that claims otherwise is guessing with more confidence than the evidence supports.
Got your number? Start here
Still unsure between two sizes — email us the measurement and we will tell you which one to take. We would rather spend five minutes on it than have a bed shipped twice.
