Highly recommend this bed!! Definitely a heavy box, you need two people to unbox and assemble (one might be doable but just to hold everything up). We easily assembled this with no issues, it is SO sturdy, we've been sleeping on it for months with no issues now. The bed is meant to be used WITHOUT a box spring- if you have a normal mattress on it, the headboard is plenty tall enough even above pillows. If you use a box spring, yes the headboard will be much shorter. We have a queen mattress with a pillow top and there is plenty of room on the headboard above our pillows.