Dude.

• I’m glad that you’re at that economic stage that you’re worried about guests and decor

• if they care about how your private space is set up, they don’t need to be there

Take me, for example. I’m judgy as hell but I’ll never get an invite to your bedroom and that’s totally okay. Assholes like me don’t need to be over to your place making all these judgements. Your friends and lovers will be glad for your company and it’s all good.

Also, when I was a kid were were too poor for carpets to cover the rough flooring under some rotting carpet we pulled up, so to reduce the splinters from walking around someone gave us a bunch of blue latex paint that kinda sealed the wood a bit as it coated. We were definitely ‘no headboard’ poor but we got better.

Depends on the interior design

In a Victorian bedroom it’s out of place, in a modern it can be fine. In a Murphy bed it’s really odd

Honestly they seem out of fashion nowadays. It’s one more thing to move when you move, it cost a lot for very little, most people lack a tool set to attach it to the bedframe.

I like mine cause it stood my pillows from falling if the bed gets pushed or slightly, it’s also padded so when u was depressed and spending 18 hours a day on bed it was nice to sit against.

I wouldn’t be opposed to not having one though. As others have said, it kind of depends on the style you’re going for.

If you’re worried about appearing cheap, to people who visit your house, particularly the type of people that might judge a person for appearing cheap, and the opinion of that type of person matters to you, then yes, buy a headboard. Or, if this is like a survey and you’re asking for everyone’s individual opinion, I personally would not judge you as “cheap” for this, but everyone’s threshold for these things is different.

I bought a padded, fabric covered Chesterfield style one on eBay for about $100 AUD. It’s comfortable to sit up against and drink my coffee in the morning. I like the aesthetic but it’s definitely also a comfort thing. Cold hard wall or pillows falling down the back doesn’t sound appealing.

I like to hang my toes off the end of the bed, not a fan of headboards.

I just have a mattress on a slatted frame. I don’t see why the rest of the bed is required.

They are clutter magnets, we got rid of ours.

No.

I’ve only heard of that if you don’t have something below the mattress

Completely unrelated but I had a bed as a child that had a side board, with shelves.

When I’ve slept on a bed without a headboard, my pillow tends to fall off the end of the mattress as I push it around when I sleep. The headboard acts as a fence to keep the pillow on the bed. To me, a mattress sitting on a box spring held up by a frame doesn’t look so much cheap as incomplete. But since the bed is typically out of sight in a bedroom, people generally don’t sit around gazing at it.