Wall beds, murphy beds, fold-away beds: one piece of furniture, three names

If you have been searching for a wall bed and also for a murphy bed and wondering whether they are different products, they are not. This page sorts out the names, then walks through the actual choices you will make: which way it folds, what is built around it, which room it goes in, and what the ladder says it will cost.

Three names, one bed

A wall bed is a mattress on a platform that folds up into a cabinet. When it is closed, the cabinet looks like a wardrobe or a run of built-ins. When it is open, you have a real bed with a real mattress, not a folding cot. William Murphy patented a version of the hinge in the early 1900s, so the trade still calls it a murphy bed. Fold-away bed, hidden bed and hideaway bed are what people say when they do not know the trade word. Google treats wall bed and murphy bed as separate searches, which is why you see both on store listings, but the product is identical.

What is not the same thing: a sofa bed, which is a couch with a thin mattress folded inside the seat, and a daybed, which never leaves the floor. Both sleep worse and neither gives the room back.

The five choices

Vertical wall bed. Folds down from the head end. The cabinet is tall and narrow, about 65 inches wide and 87 to 90 inches tall for a queen, and the open bed reaches about 87 inches into the room. This is the standard and it is what most people picture.

Horizontal wall bed. Folds down from the side. The queen cabinet is about 87 inches wide and only 67 inches tall. It needs wall width instead of ceiling height, which makes it the pick for low basements and sloped ceilings. Full page: horizontal murphy bed.

Wall bed with desk. A desk surface on the cabinet face that stays level as the bed comes down, so the laptop and the monitor do not move. It adds roughly 20 to 24 inches of closed depth. See murphy bed with desk.

Wall bed with sofa. A sofa sits in front of the cabinet and the bed folds down over it. About 30 inches of extra depth closed. See murphy bed with sofa.

Cabinet chest bed. Not a wall bed in the strict sense. A 40 inch tall chest that the mattress pulls out of, no anchoring, movable. See cabinet bed.

Which Utah rooms they go in

The home office. The most common request along the Wasatch Front. A desk bed or a vertical queen with side cabinets lets the office stay an office five days a week and sleep the in-laws on the weekend. Layouts on the home office page.

The basement. Half of Utah homes have one. In a newer Utah County build with a 9 foot basement, any vertical bed fits. In an older rambler with a 7 foot 6 inch ceiling, measure at the wall before you decide, because soffits and ducts steal inches. Horizontal beds solve most of those rooms. More on the basement and ADU page.

The guest room that is also something else. A craft room, a gym, a nursery-in-waiting. A wall bed gives you the floor six days a week. See guest room.

The condo. Park City and downtown Salt Lake units where a second bedroom does not exist. A queen wall bed with a sofa turns the living room into the second bedroom at night.

What each one costs

The 2026 Utah ladder, installed, runs like this. A flat-pack cabinet from Costco, Wayfair or Home Depot is $400 to $1,500 plus a few hundred to install. A real-wood cabinet chest bed is $1,400 to $2,800. A shipped real-wood murphy bed from a national builder is $3,700 to $5,100 plus install. A custom cabinet bed built and installed locally is $4,400 to $6,500. Add side cabinets, a desk or a sofa and the range is $6,500 to $10,000. Closet-franchise wall beds quote at $5,000 to $10,000 and up. The full breakdown, and what moves the number, is on the cost page.

Sizes at a glance

Twin, full, queen and king all come in vertical. Twin, full and queen come in horizontal. Queen is the default for a guest room, twin for a kid's room, full for a narrow room, king for a primary bedroom that doubles as something else. Twin and queen have their own pages: twin murphy bed and queen murphy bed. Full and king dimensions, and clearances for every size, are on the sizes page.

How buying one works here

We are a design and sales company. We come to the house for a free design visit, measure the wall and the ceiling, look at what is in the wall, and draw the cabinet. Utah craftsmen build it to that drawing and a partner crew installs it. If you want to check fit before anyone drives over, the fit tool takes your wall width and ceiling height and tells you what works.

Send the room through the estimate form, with a phone photo and the two measurements, and we reply the same business day.