Murphy beds are loved and appreciated by people all over the world. They help to make bedrooms more space-efficient and better organized and they offer a set of unique advantages that you can’t find anywhere else. One detail that should be mentioned however is the fact that when you’re building a Murphy bed you also have to take into consideration the area around the actual bed because you’ll actually have to build a Murphy wall. A lot of times that makes sense and works out great. Check out some of these DIY Murphy wall projects to find ideas that you can reuse in your own designs.

First of all we should say that if all you want if the Murphy bed and nothing more, no built-in cabinets attached to the sides and no extra shelves, that’s entirely doable and the perfect project which describes the whole process of putting together the bed frame and everything else can be found on thediyvillage. A simple DIY Murphy bed like this one is just perfect for the guest room because it takes up very little space when upright and can be disguised as a cabinet.

With all those fake drawer pulls nobody would even suspect there’s actually a bed behind them. That’s perhaps one of the coolest and most fun parts of designing and building a Murphy bed. You can integrate it into a custom wall unit with storage on either side and even with additional compartments above. The ladder is a funky detail in the case of this project featured on imgur. Check out the full description for more details.

Murphy walls are perfect for that spare bedroom can guests rarely use because this way the room can actually become multifunctional. You could turn it into a home office with the option to easily pull down the bed whenever you need to use it as a bedroom. If you want to make the bed blend in, even more, you can hide in a closet, behind sliding doors. Check out instructables to find out how it can be done.

You can also find useful information and tips on how to build a Murphy wall on addictedtodiy. This project show you how you can turn any room into a guest bedroom without sacrificing much either in terms of space or style. In fact, the bed is neatly disguised as a storage unit with shelves and drawers and that’s something you can customize in a lot of different and cool ways.

Another very cool idea is to build a frame around the Murphy bed so when you store it vertically you can close the doors and make it look like you have a storage cabinet. The doors would actually be usable so the whole thing would look real and authentic. You can leave some space on either side of the bed so you can add light sconces a=or perhaps even tiny nightstands. You can find more details about this on renosandoldhouses.

This project from instructables shows more or less the same process but with a few style differences. The design is traditional with just a hint of rustic charm. The wood stain preserves and highlights the natural beauty of the material and the uniqueness of the grain. At the same time, the mechanism and overall design are simple which makes this a fairly easy DIY project.

Murphy beds are not just super practical and space-efficient but also very versatile. That’s because when you fold them up you can make them look like any regular piece of storage furniture and you can match the design to your existing home decor. A minimalist approach such as the one suggested on makesomething makes the building process easier, eliminating all sorts of unnecessary features and details. Of course, it’s possible to improve on the design and to customize it.

Check out this cool Murphy bed and desk combo from ikeahackers. It combines two basic pieces of furniture into one which is extremely useful in spaces such as a guest bedroom/ home office or in a child’s bedroom. The cool thing here is the underside section of the bed which doubles as a chalkboard. There’s room underneath for storage and the shelf can be used as a desk.

Usually, all Murphy beds have the top and bottom aligned vertically so we didn’t even consider the alternative until we found this project on ana-white. This queen-sized bed is oriented horizontally which makes it wide rather than tall. In a way, this provides more stability and can work better in rooms with low ceilings or in loft or attic bedrooms.

Although Murphy beds can double as desks or shelving units, sometimes it’s more satisfying to just focus on concealing the bed and making it look like an actual storage unit, dresser or cabinet. That’s fairly easy to do with some basic hardware and a few decorative panels. You can check out creativedecorbybrooke if you want an idea of how the final product should look like.

How about a modern Murphy bed with storage shelves on one side and a coat rack on the other? That definitely sounds like a recipe for success with lots of customization opportunities. A cool idea which comes from brittanygoldwyn and which we really love is adding a painting or some other sort of wall decor above the bed which you can only see when you fold the bed down. It’s like a secret artwork stash.

This is a really cool way of disguising your Murphy bed as a dresser when it’s folded up. Even though this only gives the illusion of actually having a dresser in the room, it’s a design that fits naturally into the room and makes the bed blend in more seamlessly. Making it look like this is fairly easy and involves adding a few decorative details to the frame and underside of the bed. Check out remodelaholic for more details.

Perhaps having a Murphy bed in your master bedroom doesn’t really seem like a practical idea. You’d have to constantly fold it up and down every day or you’d end up leaving it down all the time which means you wouldn’t really make the most of it. However, a Murphy bed is an excellent idea for a guest room, especially if you don’t want it to serve as a bedroom all the time. Something like this would be just right. Check out thediyvillage to see how this bed was built.

You don’t really have to build the entire thing from scratch unless you really want to and you know what you’re doing. You can find plenty of bed frames in stores that you can use as a starting point. You can then make modifications to it if necessary in case you think the proportions are not right for the room or if you want to add extra features to it. There’s an informative tutorial on renosandoldhouses that focuses on this sort of project so check it out for more details.

Similarly, this project how you can make the most of a budget Murphy bed and customize it to suit your style and specific needs. What’s cool about this particular design is that the bed fits inside a cabinet so you can basically pack it up and hide it in the closet when you or your guests are not using it. Check out huskverna to find out what you need in order to make something similar for your own home.

Sometimes the dilemma of whether you should put a bed in the room or if you should go for a sofa or a sectional instead. You could actually have both. A regular bed wouldn’t really do it because it would take up too much space all the time but you could have a Murphy bed that sits flat against the wall when not in use and can be folded down on top of the sofa whenever needed. It’s a really cool idea for a guest room. Check out imgur for more details and inspiration.

Murphy beds are great not just for guest rooms but for a kid’s bedroom as well. You could always do with more floor space here, especially if the room is small. A Murphy bed could allow you to fit a spacious desk, more storage and even something cool like a chalkboard in here. We were really inspired by this project from ikeahackers which explains how something like that is possible.

The best way to integrate a Murphy bed into a room is usually by framing it with cabinets or shelves so you can disguise it as a part of the wall furniture when it’s folded up and not in use. Also, this also gives you the perfect excuse to add more storage to the room for things like books, decorations and so on. There’s a really nice design on yourmodernfamily which we think describes this strategy perfectly.

You can pretty much find anything on youtube, including all sorts of useful tutorials that show you how you can do various projects and be successful at them even if you have no experience with anything similar. For example, you could learn how to build a Murphy bed. DIY Huntress recently shared a very useful tutorial aimed specifically at that. Hopefully, it will inspire you to build something just as great.

On the same topic, this video tutorial from DIY Pete shows all the different steps involved when building and putting together a Murphy bed, from start to finish. This tutorial features a queen-sized bed but can easily be adapted for other types and sizes as well. You can also find useful tips and additional information in the video description.

Like many other DIY projects, this one which was shared by April Wilkerson uses a complete Murphy bed kit. It explains how the bed is put together and what you need to know in order to properly install it. The kit includes everything except for the plywood so there are a few extra things that you need to get for this project, along with all the necessary tools.

Naturally, Murphy beds can also be of various different styles. A modern bed is probably the easiest one to build because there are very few details involved in the design. If you want to build a farmhouse-style bed things can be a bit more complicated but we think it’s worth the extra effort because it ends up looking amazing. This design featured on addicted2diy is magnificent and makes the room look really cozy and inviting, even when the bed is hidden.