There is a time when living the suburban dream is ideal. You have kids running around the house, a couple of dogs, and visiting friends and family over the holidays. Having a big house is something to enjoy and be proud of, but then the kids grow up and all that space becomes impractical, so you start dreaming of a two-bedroom condo in the city. No more yard work on Sunday afternoons, no more painting the peeling paint in the house, no more worrying about the roof, sounds wonderful, right? But where does the family stay when they visit? Two bedrooms are not a lot of space and it would be ideal to be able to use the second as a home office or study and not have it cluttered with bedroom furniture. The best way to optimize space and function is with a Murphy fold-down bed.
This bed is stored in a wall cabinet that opens and the bed folds up. Cabinets can be included in the design of a home office or study and this will give your guests a comfortable night’s sleep. Having an inflatable mattress on hand is great for those emergency overflow cases, but you want your guests to be comfortable and sleep in a real bed and in a private room, not on the floor or in the living room.
The Murphy bed has been around since the late 1800s, when people moved to cities and lived in small one-bedroom apartments. It was impractical, not to mention inappropriate, to host guests in the only room that had a bed, so this invention grew out of a need for more usable space. Not only could you get beds that lowered from the wall, but larger pieces of furniture were designed to hold a folding bed.
Over the past 150 years, populations have moved to cities, out of cities, and now, once again, to cities. Having a beautiful 3,000-square-foot home in the suburbs works well for some of us, but more and more people are drawn to the comforts of city life. Empty nests, young professionals, and even families are drawn to the bustle of the city. This creates the need to solve the space problems that come hand in hand with apartment living.
Living in smaller spaces just requires more initial planning and a creative approach to using your space. Rather than having a space for everything, certain spaces must serve double duty and it is impossible to allocate space for a guest bedroom. That is unless your home office is converted to private bedrooms simply by opening a cabinet. So whether your kids are home for college or your parents are joining you for the holidays or you just have friends from out of town, you don’t need to rearrange the whole place to provide an inflatable mattress in the living room. You’ve thought it through carefully and your home office will magically transform into a comfortable haven for your home guests. The Murphy fold-down bed solves the problem of having bedrooms when your square footage is not large.
