A Murphy Bed or Wallbed is a bed that flips up at the head end for storage inside a closet. To achieve this, the mattress is attached to the bed frame, often with a bolt at each corner. Murphy beds are used for space-saving purposes, much like a trundle bed is. Due to space limitations, most Murphy beds do not have box springs. Instead, the mattress usually lays on wire mesh. Most Murphy beds are also not equipped with headboards, footboards or bed rails.
On the most well-known style of Murphy bed, the head end is permanently mounted inside a large closet located in the wall of a bedroom or living room. This type of Murphy bed (and its closet) is usually concealed behind a pair of closet doors. In some cases where construction budgets were tight, there are no doors. Instead, the bottom of the bed is a solid panel. When folded up, this solid panel appears to be part of the wall.
Less typical variations of Murphy beds included one type that was mounted on a swing arm. This arm pivoted the bed between room and closet. On another type, the head end was on casters. This allowed the bed to be stored in any large closet and rolled into any room for use. In many cases, the closet where the Murphy bed was stored doubled as a standard clothes closet.
A similar type of bed is the hideaway bed, first patented in 1885 by Sarah E. Goode. A hideaway bed also folds up when not in use, but is not concealed behind a wall or closet, instead serving double use as a shelf or desk.
William L. Murphy applied for a patent for the Murphy bed in April 1, 1916 and was granted Design Patent D49,273 on June 27, 1916. Murphy started the Murphy Wall Bed Company and began production in San Francisco. In January 1990, the company changed its name to the “Murphy Bed Co. Inc.”
These beds make appearances in movies as they lend themselves to slapstick humor in which people are trapped when the bed folds into the upright position, carrying the person on the bed inside. For example, in Stanley Kramer’s famous comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the smarmy Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) gets thrown from the fire truck ladder, through a window and onto a Murphy bed, which prompty retracts into the wall.
In Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, a hotel’s neon sign advertises “Murphy Beds — Charming to the Unsophisticated”.
In 1989 an appellate court held that the term “Murphy bed” is no longer entitled to trademark protection because a substantial majority of the public perceive the term as a generic term for a bed that folds into a wall rather than the specific model made by the Murphy Bed Co.
Murphy beds are now commonly in use in hotels as a second bed for families that have more than four people and cannot fit into one hotel room otherwise. They are also most commonly used in homes with limited square footage, such as mobile homes and apartments.
External links
- The History of Murphy Bed
- “Aladdinettes Are Equipped With Murphy Wall Beds” (from 1922 Aladdin Homes Catalog) — Sales brochure article that describes swing-arm Murphy Beds.
Murphy Bed Companies
- WallbedFactory.com - The nationwide leader in factory direct Murphy Beds and Wall Beds
- More Space Place
- America’s Murphy Bed Store
- AmericanMurphyBed.com - The wall bed Sales and Information source
- Boone_Wallbeds.com - Your Murphy Bed or Wall Bed Manufacturer
- Murphy Beds Direct.com - Factory direct Murphy Beds made in the USA
- Wilding Wallbeds - Quality All Wood Factory Direct Murphy Beds
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