Murphy bed vs. sofa bed
The short answer
A Murphy bed sleeps on a real mattress, up to 12″ thick, and gives the floor back when it is shut. A sofa bed gives you a sofa by day but a thin fold-out mattress by night.
- A Murphy bed takes any standard mattress up to 12″ thick, pillow top included. No box spring.
- Shut, it is a cabinet 15-7/8″ deep against the wall, so the floor is clear by day.
- A sofa bed is a seat first. If you need a sofa in the room, that counts for a lot.
- For a room that is slept in often, the real mattress usually decides it.
The mattress is the difference
A sofa bed folds its mattress up inside the sofa, so the mattress has to be thin enough to fold.
A Murphy bed doesn’t fold the mattress at all. The whole bed tips up into its cabinet, mattress and all. It takes any standard mattress up to 12″ thick, including a pillow top, at the full size for the bed: 60″ × 80″ on a Queen. No box spring is needed. The bed has its own solid deck of plywood, so there are no slats or bars to feel through it. A mattress isn’t included, so you can choose the one you would choose for any bed; What mattress works in a Murphy bed? goes through what works best.
The floor it gives back
Shut, a Murphy bed is a cabinet 15-7/8″ deep against the wall. The rest of the room is yours: a desk, an exercise space, a playroom.
A sofa bed is the size of a sofa all day, and when it opens it needs as much floor as a bed does. A Murphy bed needs that floor only when it is down: 87″ out from the wall for a vertical Queen, 67″ for a horizontal one.
When a sofa bed makes sense
If the room needs a sofa every day and a bed only a few nights a year, a sofa bed does both jobs in one piece of furniture. That is a fair trade for an occasional guest.
If the room is slept in often, by family who stay for weeks, by a teenager, or by you every night, the mattress matters more than the seat. You can still put a chair or a small sofa across from a Murphy bed when it is shut.
Opening and closing it
Making up a sofa bed means taking the cushions off, unfolding the frame and finding somewhere for the cushions. A Murphy bed is counterbalanced, so it comes down with a gentle pull and goes back up with a gentle lift, and it stays where it is put. Elastic straps over the mattress’s foot corners hold it in place when the bed goes up.
Storage beside it
A sofa bed is one piece of furniture. A Murphy bed can be a whole wall: on each bed’s page you can add side cabinets either side, in three drawers, doors, a drawer over doors, or open shelves. They are cut from the bed’s own plywood and finished in its color, with the same pulls, so the bed and its cabinets read as one piece. A tall cabinet beside a vertical bed lines up with its top.
Ordered together, a bed and its side cabinets are planned as one job in our shop, so they cost less than the same pieces bought one at a time.
How each is built
Our Murphy beds are built from 3/4″ hardwood plywood, maple on a painted bed and white oak on a stained one, sprayed in our own shop, with a cabinet that is screwed to the studs of your wall. The lifting mechanism is bought already engineered from a specialist maker, not invented by us. The bed is covered by our lifetime limited warranty.
See every style, priced live, on our Murphy beds page.
Questions we get
Is a Murphy bed more comfortable than a sofa bed?
It sleeps on a real mattress, up to 12″ thick including a pillow top, the same as any bed. A sofa bed’s mattress has to be thin enough to fold inside the sofa.
Does a Murphy bed come with a mattress?
No. Any standard mattress up to 12″ thick works, so you can choose your own. No box spring is needed.
Can someone sleep on a Murphy bed every night?
Yes. It is a real bed on a real mattress. Can you sleep on a Murphy bed every night? goes through what makes that work.
Ready to plan yours?
Every bed is priced live on its page, built to the measurements you give us.
