Today’s wall beds are lighter, easier, fancier and flexibly designed. Find out more.
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Whether you want a home office to pull double duty as a bedroom, or you live in a cramped condo that craves more space, a Murphy bed has you covered. Just as the guy who invented it discovered.
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In the late 1800s, William Murphy, as the story goes, wanted to entertain a pretty young opera singer. But he lived in a studio apartment with his bed right out in the open, like an invitation. Social norms of the day would have set his San Francisco neighbours’ tongues a-wagging. So he designed a way to slap a mattress on a metal frame that would fold up and, abracadabra, disappear behind a closet door, instantly transforming his one-room apartment into two rooms — parlour by day, bedroom by night.
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In fact, when he got the idea in 1911 to build a company around his magically burrowing bunk, he first called it the “Disappearing Bed”. When he later obtained a patent for his invention, he changed it to the more pragmatic but pedestrian “In-A-Door Bed”. But everyone kept calling it the “Murphy Bed”, so much so that by 1989 an appeals court cancelled the trademark and ruled the term generic.
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Westcoast Homes
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More than a hundred years later we’re still calling them Murphy beds, or wall beds, and these handy hideaways are still very much in use. But they’ve undergone quite a few changes since the heavy, unwieldy ropes and pulleys used to stash them away at the turn of the century.
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Remaking the bed
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Today’s wall beds are lighter, easier, fancier and flexibly designed with optional add-ons like cabinets, night tables, shelves and desks.
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Darryl Adrian, co-owner of Murphy Wall-Beds of Canada in Victoria, says his company’s spring system units make it easy for just about anyone “from seven to 97. You can lift it with one finger in a second or two, even fully made with sheets, blankets and pillows.”
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He says the depth of his Murphy beds, at 16 inches, do not intrude into a room. “There are some systems that can be 22 or 24 inches or more, but that defeats the purpose. We also have a single bed that folds down in a hallway. We’ve even taken two single beds and stacked them to make Murphy beds into bunk beds.”
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Ilona Beed, sales manager at California Closets in Vancouver, says customers consider Murphy beds as a way to reclaim floor space while still offering a place to sleep.
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She says that while sales have always been brisk, they really got a bump during Covid when many people were turning second bedrooms into home offices. “They still wanted the bed with nightstand and cabinets to store linens, but they also wanted the space to work at a desk with shelves. A Murphy bed gives them both. And people have visitors throughout the year — for the summer, Christmas, Thanksgiving — there’s not a time of the year when people aren’t thinking about creating multi-functional rooms and freeing up valuable floor space.”
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Which style for which space?
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Both Beed and Adrian offer a free consultation that includes designers coming to your home, taking measurements, making note of your storage needs, and listening to your goals and requirements. They’ll then create a virtual model using 3D software, so you can visualize how your bed will fit into your space.
