DIY Murphy Beds: 9 Cheap Options (+ GREAT alternatives!)

We LOVE Murphy beds. We have built our own many years ago and it still works flawlessly. It gives us an entire extra room in our small apartment.

Let’s take a look at some of the best and easiest DIY Murphy beds out there.

We start with our own model and then we look at a couple of other great designs.

1) DIY Murphy Bed With Built-In Storage

This is our Murphy Bed. Maria has designed it and built it.

The bed is built with extra storage behind the bed, to add some extra depth and get space for our winter clothes, travel gear etc.

Built With Extra Height

We have built it with longer legs than normal murphy beds because we were used to sleeping 25” above ground in our tall storage bed.

We don’t like laying close to the floor so we chose to make it higher than normal.

Video & Pictures

Here’s a video tour off out of the bed is constructed. We put it up on YouTube several years ago and noticed (all of a sudden) that it had a lot of views 🙂

As you can see we have built the cabinet on each side for storage. That cabinet to The left contains all of our clothes and the cabinet to the right contains on Maria’s sewing machine items.

We also building storage below the bed.

You can see the two little doors below the bed and when you open them you can access guitars and two extra collapsible chairs.

Here’s another picture, where the bed is folded down, and closet behind the bed is revealed.

As you can see most of our clothes are in drawers. The rest of the closest hanging on the hangers above the drawers. We constructed the area around the bed this way because we needed to get out your clothes and stuff out of the way.

Before we build the bed we had two large wardrobes along the wall and in front of them, we had a normal bed.

Finally, you can see inside the closet behind the bed.

Here we store our trolleys (carry-ons’ only of course – we are light travelers), winter clothes etc. So we are actually able to keep me most of our belongings inside the bed. It’s well-hidden away during the day. This is really important when you’re staying the small space.

Hidden storage behind the bed

We wanted to get our stuff out of the way so we don’t have to look at it all the time. Because this room is also our office space so we actually use it day and night.

Storage can sometimes be a challenge in a tiny space because you don’t have extra rooms to stack boxes and stuff.

We didn’t want to keep stuff in the attic, we wanted to only half the number of things which we could fit into our apartment.

So we have sold a lot of things as you can imagine.

We haven’t gotten to the part about paint yet. So the bed and the cabinets are still not painted white. But This is something we have on how to do list and at some point, we will do it eventually.

We hope you like the bad and that it could inspire you to build something yourself. It has been a really great project for us and we liked the outcome.

2019 update:
Now we have been using the bed for several years and everything still works properly.

We have built a low daybed that can fit under the bed when it is folded down. We also chopped a bit of the leg on a second-hand table we found for free. So now we have a cozy lounge area when the bed is folded up.

This only took us 7 years to do even though it was the plan all along. I guess we are NOT finishers 🙂

We are still very happy with the design Even though we never got to the painting part 😉

Building plans

We have put on building plans for the bed and more info over at this website. It’s a separate website we did about Murphy beds and here you will find a lot of information about local stores across the US.

This website we also wrote a lot about the history of the Murphy bed as well as a lot of different designs. So if you’re interested in seeing all the different creative designs people have made with wall beds, go visit the website.

1) The Lori Bed System

Before we continue to the next DIY solution, we have to show you this model. It’s affordable and it’s definitely worth considering this model before you think about building your own.

We love the Lori Bed company!

They are really great guys whom we have become friends with over the years. They have a strong and great-looking product:

Check the prices on their online store! (read below to get this price)

PS: We asked Lori Beds about a discount for our readers. They were kind enough to offer a $100 discount to you guys! When you use the link above with the discount code “GODOWNSIZE100” you automatically get the discount!

A must-see if you’re looking to build your own Murphy bed.

They also have a horizontal option that’s really great for rooms with a low ceiling or for people looking for a bed for only one person:

This model is a bit cheaper on their store.

You get all the pieces completely ready to assemble and you’ll be done in no time.

3) DIY Twin Murphy Beds With Desk (horizontal)

This next bed we found in a very nice tiny house we were filming for the blog a couple of years ago. It was designed specifically by Cornerstone Tiny Homes (click for video).

The designers did a very good job fitting this unique Murphy twin bed into this tiny space and they have mounted a desk on the front.

Here you can see Brett fold it down.

When the bed is down you can fold up the little desk that is mounted on the back.

They have mounted it with a simple table leg structure that folds down with the table.

4) DIY Queen size Murphy Beds

This is a queen size Murphy bed we saw in Den Haag in the Netherlands. We rented an apartment space with AirBnB for a week and this cool homemade bed was installed in the bedroom which was also the living room.

The bed is lifted up here and the locking mechanism is unlocked.

Maria is pulling down the bed. It is very well balanced and easy to pull down.

The bed had cool writing on the inside saying “I need space”.

There’s a strap to hold the duvet and the pillow so they don’t fall off when the bed is lifted up.

Notice how the headboard prevents everything from falling in behind the bed.

Our own Murphy bed (the one at the top of the article) also has a headboard but things can fall down behind the bed. It’s pretty annoying because you have to crawl under the bed in order to get to it.

Not too easy.

This is the bed from the front. It’s a rather low Murphy bed and the legs, pistons, and hinges are from a wall bed kit. We don’t know which kit but it could be the one from Rockler (which we also used).

This kit has worked perfectly for our bed for more than six years now!

The Cheapest Murphy beds Online

We have been writing about Murphy bed systems for the last 5-6 years and we have listed some of the best stores to do a good deal here.

You can see the price ranges below. They all have free shipping!

Building your own Murphy bed is not for everyone so you might consider getting a ready-to-install bed delivered to your door if you can afford it.

Cheap Alternatives To A Murphy Bed

There are also other great alternatives to a homemade Murphy bed. These are some ideas that are very creative in order to save space around the sleeping area.

The first one below is a shelving system where you can sleep on top of it.

It looks 100% homemade and it’s as simple construction most people can build.

You can also place a bed on top of two closets like the room below.

It could probably be done even simpler if you just had to wardrobes that are not too tall. If you have a high ceiling in your room this is definitely a good idea in order to utilize the vertical space.

I love how simple this idea is. You could probably use a standard ladder you can hide around the corner during the day.

This next example has the bed sliding out from under the stairs. This is a sort of trundle bed system with they have probably built themselves.

Two other examples below are also very smart. Again, you must have a pretty high ceiling in order to pull this off.

If you do have the high ceiling this is a very good way to save space and hide the bed during the day.

It’s also simple construction and you don’t have the danger of the bed falling down. This can often be a problem if you have a homemade Murphy bed around kids.

The last example is also a bed that is hidden below the ceiling.

It’s a more complicated construction and it’s probably harder than building your own Murphy bed with a hardware kit. But it’s a cool design and we just wanted to include it.

Why Build Your Own Murphy Bed?

Because it’s often the only way to get the best solution that really fits your room and your needs.

It’s a good way to get a bed that fits perfectly in your room in order to utilize the space as good as possible.

We chose to have the bed fit the exact measures of our wall. We have placed a cabinet with clothes to the right and a cabinet with storage to the right as you can see in the video at top of the article.

We hope these ideas and designs have inspired you to go ahead and build your own DIY Murphy bed.

We love sleeping in our homemade design and we can only recommend you build your own.

Good luck and happy dreams to you!

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