I used to think Murphy beds were relics from 1920s boardinghouses, the kind of thing you’d see in a Buster Keaton film before it folded up and swallowed someone whole.
Turns out, they’re having this weird renaissance—not because we’re suddenly nostalgic for slapstick comedy, but because urban apartments and suburban homes alike are shrinking, or at least feeling that way. The average American home size peaked around 2015 at roughly 2,600 square feet, give or take, and since then there’s been this slow creep downward as people realize that maybe, just maybe, we don’t need a formal dining room we use twice a year. So when your sister-in-law emails asking if she can visit for a long weekend and you’re staring at that spare room that’s currently a graveyard for Amazon boxes and a Peloton you haven’t touched since March, the Murphy bed starts looking less like a punchline and more like a legitimate solution. The mechanics are straightforward: a bed frame hinges vertically into a cabinet or against a wall, freeing up floor space when you’re not hosting overnight guests. What’s less straightforward is actually building one yourself without either bankrupting your weekend or creating a safety hazard that would make your homeowner’s insurance agent weep.
Here’s the thing—DIY Murphy bed kits exist now in ways they didn’t even a decade ago. Companies like Rockler and Murphy Bed Depot sell hardware kits with piston lift mechanisms, and honestly, the engineering is kind of elegant. You’re essentially buying the guts—the spring assemblies or gas pistons that counterbalance the mattress weight—so you don’t have to reinvent physics in your garage. Most kits are rated for standard mattress sizes (twin, full, queen) and they’ll specify weight limits, usually in the 200-300 pound range depending on the mechanism quality.
Why the Piston Mechanism Matters More Than You’d Think (Even Though It Sounds Boring)
The piston is doing all the actual work here, and if you cheap out on this part, you’ll know it immedietly—either the bed won’t stay up, or worse, it’ll come down on someone’s head. I’ve seen forum posts from people who tried to DIY the entire mechanism using garage door springs, and while I admire the ingenuity, the failure rate is high enough that it’s probably not worth the risk. A decent piston kit runs about $200-$400, which feels like a lot until you price out what a professional Murphy bed installer would charge (anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 for a basic setup). The math starts making sense pretty quickly. You want a kit that includes both the lift mechanism and the mounting brackets—usually steel plates that attach to wall studs, because drywall alone will absolutely not hold this. You’re bolting into the structural bones of your house, which means you need to locate studs accurately, and yes, this is where a stud finder earns its keep, despite being one of the more irritating tools in existence.
Wait—maybe I should mention that the cabinet part is optional?
Some people just mount the bed frame to a wall with a decorative face panel, no full enclosure needed. That saves on materials and complexity, though you lose the seamless look of a built-in unit. The cabinet route means you’re building what’s essentially a large plywood box—typically 3/4-inch Baltic birch or furniture-grade plywood, because particleboard will sag and embarrass you. You’ll need a table saw or access to one, and if you’re hand-cutting full sheets of plywood, I guess it’s technically possible, but your forearms will hate you and the cuts won’t be clean. Home improvement stores like Home Depot often offer cutting services for a few dollars per cut, which is the kind of shortcut that separates people who finish projects from people who have half-assembled furniture decomposing in their basements for years.
The Weird Spatial Math of Fitting a Bed Into a Cabinet Without Making It Look Like a Coffin
Clearance is everything. Your cabinet depth needs to accommodate the mattress thickness (usually 10-12 inches for a standard mattress, though memory foam can be thicker) plus the frame depth, plus a few inches of breathing room so the whole thing doesn’t bind when you’re folding it up. Figure on an overall cabinet depth of 18-20 inches, which sounds manageable until you realize that’s nearly two feet jutting into your room when the bed’s stowed. This is why Murphy beds work best in rooms with at least 10 feet of width—any narrower and you’re creating a hallway, not a multipurpose space. The height calculation is simpler: mattress length (75 inches for a twin, 80 for a full or queen) plus frame and hardware, so you’re looking at a cabinet that’s around 85-90 inches tall. Most residential ceilings are 96 inches (8 feet), leaving you just enough clearance, though if you have dropped ceilings or unusual architecture, you’ll need to measure obsessively.
I used to think you could just eyeball these things.
The assembly itself is a two-person job minimum, not because the instructions are complicated, but because wrangling a queen-size bed frame attached to pistons while trying to align bolt holes in a vertical cabinet is the kind of task that tests friendships. You’ll want to pre-drill all your mounting holes, use a level religiously (the bed needs to fold up and down in a perfectly vertical plane or it’ll rack sideways and jam), and for the love of all that’s holy, follow the manufacturer’s torque specs on the bolts. Over-tighten and you’ll strip threads in the wood; under-tighten and the whole thing will gradually work itself loose, which is a failure mode you discover at 2 a.m. when your guest wakes you up because the bed is making ominous creaking sounds. Adding a latch mechanism—usually a simple hook-and-eye or a magnetic catch—keeps the bed secured in the upright position, because even well-balanced pistons can drift if someone bumps the cabinet.
The Part Where You Realize This Is Actually Furniture-Making and You Might Need to Accept That You’re Not as Handy as You Thought (Or Maybe You Are—Hard to Say)
Finishing the cabinet is where the project either looks custom and intentional or like you built it in a panic. Veneer edge banding hides the plywood edges and takes about 20 minutes with a clothes iron and a utility knife, though I’ll admit the first time I tried it, I scorched the veneer and had to sand it down and start over. Paint or stain depends on your room’s aesthetic, but pre-finishing the interior panels before assembly saves you from trying to brush into tight corners later. Some people add shelving to the cabinet face when the bed’s folded up—floating shelves or a fold-down desk—which is clever in theory but adds another layer of complexity because now you’re coordinating hinges and supports for multiple moving parts. Honestly, if this is your first Murphy bed, keep it simple: just get the bed functional, and you can always retrofit accessories later once you’ve proven to yourself that you can, in fact, build furniture that doesn’t collapse.
The guest room transformation is kind of remarkable once it’s done. During the day, you have an office or a yoga space or wherever you pile laundry. At night, you fold the bed down—it takes maybe 10 seconds if the mechanism’s well-tuned—and suddenly you have a legitimate sleeping area that doesn’t involve an air mattress that deflates by 3 a.m. Your guests might even be impressed, though they’ll probably also ask nervously if the bed’s ever fallen on anyone, and you’ll laugh and assure them it hasn’t, while privately remembering that forum post about the guy with the garage door springs.
