Wall Bed & Murphy Bed Features

One at a time

Piston versus spring mechanisms

Piston mechanisms are counterbalanced to the mattress weight, come down with one hand and are quieter; spring mechanisms cost less and need a firmer pull. We specify piston as standard for anything a guest will operate unaided, and both are rated for tens of thousands of cycles.

Side towers

Full-height cabinetry either side of the bed, which is where the storage the room lost goes. Shelves, doors and drawers, and usually the place the bedside lamp and the socket end up so a guest has somewhere to put a phone.

An integrated desk

A desk that stays level and stays loaded as the bed comes down over it — the paperwork does not have to be cleared first. It is the version that makes a home office genuinely dual-purpose rather than nominally so.

A sofa in front

A sofa sized and positioned so the bed clears it on the way down without the sofa moving. It needs the deepest floor of any configuration, so it is the one we most often have to talk people out of in a small condo den.

Deco doors with matte glass inserts

Fronts on the side towers and, on some configurations, across the bed face itself. Matte glass keeps a tall run from reading as a solid wall of doors, which matters when the closed bed is the largest object in the room.

Drawers and cubbies

Drawers in the base of the towers for bedding, so the duvet and pillows live in the room the bed is in rather than in a hall cupboard. Open cubbies above for books and the things a guest sets down.

Crown molding and closing the ceiling

A wall bed run carried to the ceiling with crown molding reads as joinery; stopped short, it reads as furniture. In a room where the unit is nine feet wide and eight feet tall, that distinction is most of the finished look.

What the floor has to give up

A queen wall bed needs about eighty-six inches of clear floor in front of the cabinet when it is down. That is the number to measure before anything else, and it is the reason some rooms take a double rather than a queen.

Questions