What Size Mattress Fits a Murphy Bed?

The sizes our registry actually publishes

Three of the ten wall beds and cabinet beds we cover publish exact mattress dimensions. The rest state a size name and leave it there, which is usually reliable but is not the same as a published figure, so we mark it as what it is.

Two things follow. Queen is the default here to a degree it is not anywhere else on this site - eight of the ten are queens - because a wall bed is usually bought to replace a bedroom rather than to supplement one. And the beds that include a mattress are the cabinet beds, which is the single biggest practical advantage of that format: the fit problem is solved in the box.

Twin, twin XL, and the sizes people search for and cannot find

Twin and twin XL wall beds are searched for far more often than they are sold at this price point, and we would rather say that than pad the page. Nothing in our registry is a twin or twin XL wall bed: we cover eight queens, one full and one queen hardware kit.

There is a reason and it is economic rather than technical. A wall bed’s cost sits in the cabinet, the mechanism and the installation, and none of those gets much cheaper when the mattress gets narrower. A twin wall bed costs close to what a full one does and sleeps one person, so at twin width the formats that win are a daybed with a trundle or a folding mattress in a closet.

If a single is genuinely what the room needs, those two honest routes - and the exact sizes that fit them - are in twin XL guest beds: what actually fits.

The sizes that decide the room, not the bed

Mattress size is the easy measurement. The ones that determine whether the bed works at all are the wall and the floor, and they are the ones buyers skip.

Height. A vertical queen is tall. The AMERLIFE is 91.3 inches closed and Bestar’s Key West is listed at 88.05 inches - over seven feet, which has to clear a ceiling, a light fitting and often a sloping soffit. The alternative is to turn the bed sideways: the Claremont 80W horizontal is 64.23 inches tall and takes the same 60 by 80 mattress, at the cost of 84.41 inches of uninterrupted wall.

Depth closed. 16.1 inches on the AMERLIFE, 19.53 inches on both Claremonts, 24 to 26.4 inches on the cabinet beds. That is the floor the room gives up permanently, whether anyone is sleeping or not.

Depth open. Roughly the mattress length from the wall plus a walkway - so for a queen, 80 inches plus the space to get past it. Only the Claremont horizontal publishes a real extension figure, 69.43 inches, which is a useful check on how much less a sideways bed projects. The full method, including the measurement most people get wrong, is in how to measure for a Murphy bed.

Bedding, and the one thing that is genuinely different

Because a wall bed uses a standard mattress it uses standard bedding: a queen fitted sheet fits, a queen duvet fits, and nothing has to be bought from the bed’s manufacturer. That is not true of sofa beds, and it is not quite true of cabinet beds either - a 6-inch included tri-fold takes a shallow fitted sheet far better than a deep-pocket one.

What is different is what happens to the bedding when the bed goes up. Wall beds are designed to be stored made, with a strap across the mattress holding everything in place, which is why the DIY kit lists a quick-release mattress strap as a component rather than an accessory. Use a thin duvet rather than a thick one, leave the decorative pillows off, and the bed closes with the bedding inside it. The cabinet beds solve the same problem differently: the Arason Creden-ZzZ has a drawer for the bedding built into the credenza.

If the bed is going into a guest room rather than a main room, the shortlist built around that use is the best Murphy beds for guest rooms.