Definitely a lot shorter than expected, but it was incredibly straight forward and easy to put together by myself! I really do love how it looks. So just a heads up though, I thought I'd be smart and get bed risers before it came in to try to raise it up, but you can't use them because of how the supports are set up both outside and underneath, so that sucks a little. The cats can't even fit underneath to try to hide from the dogs, you really don't have a lot of clearance. But overall, I do love it