In old movies and TV Shows, I have seen Murphy Beds. But I have never seen a murphy bed in real life. Granted I have not frequented many older inner city apartments, where I would guess they are the most popular.
I have always thought murphy beds are a great idea especially in small spaces. I live in a smallish house (~1200 sq ft), but in my nieghborhood it is one of the larger houses. It seems like my house (and similar), a murphy bed would be a perfect fit.
Are murphy beds a thing of the past? or are they still a desirable design feature?
I had one in my very first cheap apartment in Ketichikan AK. Didn’t know any better. Didn’t mind it. It was a one room place. I haven’t seen one IRL since. I don’t think I folded it back into the wall more than a few times, but then again, I didn’t have any visitors.
My Uncle’s 1920’s era apartment in Sacramento, CA had one.
The problem with them is you don’t really save that much space, since to use it on a regular basis you’d have to keep that wall clear. In a small apartment, you’d probably really want that walls space.
Yeah, I was always under the impression that a futon or fold up couch made more sense.
I love the scene in Family Guy where Quagmire’s being chased through his house, and every time something gets bumped into a bed appears. There are several murphy beds.
My sister’s studio apartment has one…this is in Hollywood in a re-done apartment building.
A love seat size sofa normally sits in the space, it’s moved to the side when the bed comes down.
In homes, I think sleeper sofas kinda took over the Murphy bed market.
An interior decorator friend of mine came up with an interesting idea to increase the feeling of space in an office/extra bedroom. She built a platform that conceals a mattress. The platform is ~9" up and that’s where her computer desk resides. She can pull out the mattress, from beneath the platform, when she has overnight guests.
Curiously, there’s a Murphy bed built into the cabinet in the lovely house I currently rent. Even curiouser, my Mother-in-law is visiting, and Ms. Attack and I are in the MB as of last night. Its quite comfy, but not as big as our usual queen-sized.
Many years ago, a friend patented a freestanding version of a Murphy bed and we bought one. It’s pretty convenient, though it helps that ours is a queen size.
It’s in the wall in the back room. We used to use it when I was little, sometimes for sleepovers because it’s like a double or full size or something at least big enough for two little girls to fit on. Haven’t used it in years, though, because it’s uncomfortable and I think broken.
It’s an old house, though. I’m not exactly sure how old, but old enough that we can’t buy any replacement parts at Home Depot. So I don’t know what that says about murphy beds still being in use.
You can get a contraption now that is a desk most of the time, and turns into a Murphy-type bed–for a guest room. Pretty neat.
I did live in a studio with a large Murphy bed for a while. I thought it was quite nice (though I didn’t sleep on it, I had the futon and the roomie had the bed). True, you couldn’t use that wall, but you did get the floor space during the day, and it was easier to move around the place. (The roommate was the worst I’d ever had though; she had…issues.)
I had one in a previous apartment. It was actually one of my main reasons for renting there, as the idea of a Murphy bed was just too awesome to pass up.
A fun discovery that year: You can put the bed down without the footrest so that the head of the bed is slightly higher than the foot. The ladies love that particular angle, if you know what I mean. Wink wink, nudge, nudge Never would have thought a Murphy bed would have been a chick magnet, who knew.
My second apartment in college had a pull out bed. It was a small apartment in building built in the early 1900’s The apartment had a small living area, kitchen, bath and a glassed in back porch. In the center of the north wall of the living room was what looked like a built in china hutch that covered the area between the doors to the kitchen on the left and the bathroom on the right. When you pulled on what looked like the bottom four drawers a queen sized bed rolled out.
It worked well in the space but the whole apartment was designed around little space saving details. The kitchen had built in ice boxes. Small boxes in the exterior wall that at one time held ice to keep your perishables cold. There were little holes in the bottoms to let the melt water drip out. The doors folded down to make a small side board. The whole building (8 units) was built this way it was very cool, for a college student.
We have one. We bought it for my wife’s parents to use when they visit (they come from Ireland for weeks at a time). It’s a full-size bed in a beautiful maple cabinet in the guest bedroom. We could have gotten a sleeper sofa, but this bed is much more comfortable. It takes no more floorspace than a sofa would, though it is much taller, of course. It cost a fortune, but most of the expense was for the solid maple and maple veneer plywood cabinet, not the Murphy bed mechanism or the mattress.
Among our plans for upcoming home improvement adventures will be building a queen-size sideways Murphy bed for our guest room/home office to replace the space-hogging queen-size futon we have now.
I posted this anecdote somewhere around here. It involved my father and my uncle (circa 1949), drunk…in their underwear…seeing what it’s like to be folded up in the murphy bed…and my horrified aunt and her co-worker walking in…and an airborne can of beans that made contact with my uncle.