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Good ol' Murphy Bed Pulls Together Small Spaces with New, Versatile Look
Dear Dr. Decor: My wife and I need separate works spaces. We must use our spare bedroom, which is our guest bedroom, for dual offices. We can't take up our workspace with a sofa bed. Yet, we wish we could have a place for guests to sleep over too. Dear Mary and Dennis: The solution to your similar questions is the same. Use a Murphy bed! For those of you who've never heard of a Murphy bed, basically it's a bed that pulls out from the wall. William L. Murphy invented it around the turn of the 19th century for his studio apartment. He wisely patented his wall bed in 1900, named it after himself and under that name the bed became famous. Of course nowadays many other companies produce what is generically referred to as "wall beds." Far from the clumsy, ugly (although very useful) wall panel of another era, today these beds are enthroned in sleek cabinetry, becoming an attractive piece of furniture. The beds typically incorporate new mechanisms that make them very easy to pull down and put back up. They can be housed in free standing units or custom built into your space. They are compact and can be as little as 16 inches deep. They are available in standard sizes: twin, full, queen and king. The hidden bed allows almost any room to have two functions. Murphy beds are great solutions for vacation homes, small studio or efficiency apartments, and multipurpose spare rooms, even family rooms. It can resolve the guest bed space dilemma for your condo, office and many other similar "sleepover" problems. I was amazed to find out that what I thought was an armoire in the dining room of a small suite my husband and I rented up north this summer, turned out to be a Murphy bed. By day we had complete use of the space and at night, a fully made up bed was pulled down from the cabinet. You can add surrounding cabinetry to your wall bed, depending on the room where you will use it. It can become part of an office, dining room, library and/or storage area. The unit can be worked into any style. Materials can range from laminate to fine woods. There are several other pluses besides being a great space saver: The mattresses are typically more comfortable than a sofa bed or futon mattress because they don't have to meet the criterion of being folded. Another plus is that you can store the bed back into the wall still made up. You don't have to unmake the bed and then remake it each time. Don't forget to make sure that the furniture in front of the pull-down bed is movable. You can order only the bed mechanism as do-it-yourself models ready to assemble or complete wall units from www.murphybedsnationwide.com.
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Dear Dr. Decor: We have a small vacation condo in northern Michigan. We would like to have guests sleep over, but we don't have an extra bedroom. Any suggestions? 
