Daybed vs Murphy Bed

The trade, in four numbers

Read the first two rows together, because that is the whole decision. The wall bed takes less permanent floor than the daybed — seventeen and a half inches less — and it takes far more when it is down.

So: do you need the floor during the day, or at night? In a room that is a study or a workshop by day, the wall bed is obviously right. In a room where the bed is against a wall and nothing else wants that floor at any hour, the daybed’s 41 inches costs you nothing you were using.

The mattress: a genuine difference at the top end

Both formats take a real mattress, and the wall bed takes a better one.

A daybed is capped by its side rails — the Novogratz Bushwick publishes an 8 in. maximum, the only stated figure we found in the category — and it takes a twin, 38 by 75 inches. A Bestar queen wall bed takes a conventional 60-by-80-inch mattress between 8 and 12 inches thick and 60 and 90 lb.

That is a queen against a twin, and up to twelve inches against eight. If two people need to sleep, the daybed is out of the conversation entirely unless you go to a full or queen daybed — and a queen daybed is 63 inches deep permanently, which defeats the purpose.

A cabinet bed sits between: a real queen-scale surface on a six-inch tri-fold mattress, in a credenza 26.4 inches deep. Cabinet beds.

The lease, which decides it for a lot of people

This is where the daybed wins outright and it is not close.

A daybed is furniture. You carry it in, assemble it, and nothing touches the building. A Bestar wall bed is dual-mount — anchored to the wall and the floor — which is precisely what most leases prohibit, and it is also why Bestar can rate it to 1,000 lb including the mattress.

There is a middle tier: a stud-anchored panel bed needs a handful of screws into studs, which many landlords treat like a mounted shelf. And a cabinet bed anchors to nothing at all — the Arason Creden-ZzZ listing states explicitly that it needs no bolting to floor or wall.

What a lease actually says, and how to ask about it, is in can you put a Murphy bed in an apartment.

Effort, cost and what fails

Daybed: the cheapest real bed on this site. Self-assembly, no mechanism, and the only thing that fails is that tube-steel frames creak. Frames run 225 to 500 lb.

Wall bed: the most expensive format here and the longest-lived. Bestar warrants its queen wall beds ten years and rates them 1,000 lb including the mattress. Installation is a genuine two-person job with a stud finder.

Cabinet bed: in between on price, and the practical catch is weight — 170 to 250 lb assembled, and it does not come apart once built. For a third-floor walk-up that is the single reason not to buy one.

Also worth knowing: nothing has to be unfolded in the dark on a daybed. A wall bed needs its landing zone cleared every night, and Bestar recommends 30 to 36 inches of clear movement space around the open bed. If that space is where the coffee table lives, the bed stops getting used.

The verdict

Buy a daybed if you rent, if the ceiling is under about 7 ft 5 in, or if nothing else wants that floor. It is cheaper, it needs no permission, there is no mechanism to fail, and it is already made up. For a spare room, a nursery or a box room it is simply the right answer.

Buy a wall bed if the room has a daytime job and you can drill. A study, a workshop, a studio living area — anywhere you need the floor between nine and eleven. You get a conventional queen mattress and 23.5 inches of permanent depth, which is less than the daybed asks for.

Buy a cabinet bed if you want the wall bed’s mattress and cannot drill. 26.4 inches closed, a queen-scale surface, freestanding. Its costs are 170 lb of furniture and a six-inch tri-fold rather than a conventional mattress.

Start at the best daybeds for small spaces, the best Murphy beds for small apartments or renter-friendly wall beds.