When furnishing student accommodation, it's important to keep both style and practicality in mind. Students want to be proud of where they live, and quality furnishings certainly help. But there's no point in furniture if it can't be used properly. Imagine your communal dining area only has a small table installed. It's a stunning table, but there are 10 students all trying to crowd around it to eat. Instead, some decide to leave, and they miss out on what would have been a good bonding experience.

The same thinking applies across every part of a scheme. Study bedrooms need storage that actually holds a term's worth of belongings, and communal rooms need enough soft seating that people aren't competing for a place to sit. This is why most operators work from furniture packages built around how each room is used, rather than buying piece by piece. Always be thinking about how students will take to your furniture. If it suits their needs, then you're contributing to a better uni experience.

A student's furniture requirements are similar to everyone else's, split between their own room and the shared spaces.

For bedroom furniture, they'll need as a minimum:

• A bed and mattress
• A wardrobe — a double wardrobe where the room allows, since storage is the most common complaint
• Bedside table
• Desk and chair for studying

For communal areas:

• Soft seating — a sofa and armchair as a minimum
• Media unit
• Coffee table and sideboard
• Dining table and chairs

There are two main things you need to know about student furniture; it needs to be durable and it needs to be safe. Items bought specifically with the target market in mind will last a lot longer than pieces purchased from the average high street shop. Sourcing your furnishings from student accommodation furniture specialists ensures pieces are strong and low maintenance.

Furniture also needs to be safe. This is why LOFT can source and supply furniture that is Crib 5 compliant, including mattresses and upholstered soft seating, where fire performance matters most. Our delivery team will assemble and install all furniture as well to guarantee it has been constructed safely and securely. Before leaving the property, safety checks will be carried out as well.

A furniture package covers everything a room needs to be handed over ready to live in. For a typical study bedroom that means the bed, mattress, wardrobe, bedside table, desk and chair. Communal areas are specified separately, with soft seating and dining furniture sized to the number of residents sharing the space.

Furniture packs can be built per room type and repeated across a scheme, which keeps specification consistent and makes reordering straightforward when a piece needs replacing mid-tenancy.

Yes. Room dimensions, resident numbers and brand standards vary between schemes, so furniture solutions are usually specified against your actual floor plans rather than picked from a fixed list. That might mean a compact wardrobe in a smaller room and a double wardrobe in a larger one, or a different soft seating layout in a lounge that doubles as a study space.

Most student accommodation uses small doubles at 4ft, which balances comfort against floor space. Beds should be paired with mattresses appropriate to a contract environment — they see far heavier turnover than a domestic mattress and need to hold up across multiple tenancies as well as meet fire regulations.