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A Murphy Bed, or wall bed, fold-down bed, or pull-down bed, is a cleverly designed piece of furniture with a hinge at one end, allowing it to be folded up and tucked away vertically against a wall or in a closet. This type of bed is especially practical for small spaces like studio apartments, dorm rooms, mobile homes, and cruise ship cabins.
The bed’s name comes from its inventor, William L. Murphy, as you might expect.
Though the concept of space-saving beds wasn’t new, Murphy’s design brought something unique. Earlier, Thomas Jefferson had beds suspended by ropes in Monticello's alcoves, and Leonard Bailey had patented a folding bed in 1899. What set Murphy’s version apart was his folding mechanism. He adapted a closet doorjamb with hinges to create a pivot that allowed the bed to be easily folded up against the wall for convenient storage.
Murphy, the son of a gold-seeking 49er, tried his hand at a variety of jobs in California before coming up with his famous invention. He worked as a horse trainer, drove a stagecoach, and even served as sheriff in a small pioneer town. When the 20th century began, he moved to San Francisco, where he rented a cramped one-room apartment on Bush Street—this space became the inspiration for his bed design.
Know When to Fold 'Em
According to The Murphy Bed Company, Murphy’s standard bed filled nearly the entire floor space of his small apartment, making it hard to have guests over. Wanting to entertain his friends at home, Murphy began experimenting with the idea of a foldable bed.
Gene Kolakowski, a company executive, shared an alternate origin story with CBS News. In this version, Murphy’s motivation for inventing the folding bed was more personal. His descendants like to recount that Murphy designed the bed to accommodate a young lady he wanted to invite over, as it was considered improper for a woman to enter his bedroom at the time. To solve this, Murphy sought a way to turn his bedroom into a more socially acceptable living room, just in time for some romantic moments.
Murphy eventually married that same woman and used a loan from her father to patent the “Murphy In-A-Dor Bed” and launch his own company to manufacture them. Almost a century later, that same company still makes these beds today. Although their popularity has waned, especially after demand peaked in the early 1900s when urban manufacturing boomed, a spike in sales occurred following a disaster in the bed’s home city.
Following the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, Murphy beds were installed in many newly rebuilt buildings to maximize available space. However, as Gladys Hansen, a curator at the Museum of the City of San Francisco, noted, some of the beds that had already been installed folded up with great force during the quake, injuring their users and even causing at least one fatality.
The folding bed industry faced several challenges, including the Great Depression, steel rationing during WWII, and the post-war suburban housing boom. Despite these setbacks, the market remained large enough to sustain Murphy’s original company and a few competitors. In 1989, however, the courts ruled that the term “Murphy bed” no longer qualified for trademark protection, as the public had come to recognize it as a generic term for any bed that folds into a wall, regardless of whether it was Murphy’s design.
