Murphy Beds In NJ — Wall Beds Built Into Real Cabinetry, Anchored Into Real Framing

What we do

• Vertical Murphy beds — twin, full, queen and king
• Horizontal wall beds for rooms with low ceilings or knee walls
• Wall beds with a fold-down desk that stays loaded
• Flanking cabinet towers, bookcases and open shelving
• Integrated lighting, outlets and USB charging (our licensed electricians)
• Bunk-style and side-tilt beds for kids' rooms
• Sofa-front wall beds for home offices
• Painted, stained and laminate finishes to match existing trim
• Crown, base and scribe work so it reads as built-in
• Baseboard and trim removal and reinstallation around the unit
• Floor reinforcement and stud blocking where framing is thin
• Removal and disposal of an old wall bed

Piston or spring — which mechanism you want

Gas piston mechanisms lift the bed on sealed cylinders. They're smooth, quiet, need no adjustment for years, and one person can open a queen with two fingers. They cost more, and when a piston eventually weakens it gets swapped in about twenty minutes.

Spring mechanisms use coiled steel. They're cheaper, they're proven, and they can be re-tensioned as the bed and mattress age. They're also louder and they want a heavier hand on the way down.

We install piston systems on most jobs, especially where the person using the bed is older or the bed gets opened daily. We'll quote either one. What we won't do is put a queen mattress on a mechanism rated for a full, which is the shortcut that makes a bed slam.

Vertical or horizontal, and what your ceiling decides

• Vertical beds fold up along the head of the bed. A queen vertical needs roughly 86 to 90 inches of ceiling height. That's fine in most rooms and tight in a finished basement.
• Horizontal beds fold up along the side. A queen horizontal needs about 62 to 68 inches of height and much more wall width. This is the answer for basements, attic rooms under a slope, and knee walls in a cape.
• Closed depth is 15 to 18 inches on most units — that's what you give up to the room permanently, so we mark it on the floor with tape at the design visit and you stand in it.
• Open depth for a queen is about 86 inches off the wall. We tape that out too, with the door swing, so nobody discovers on install day that the bed lands on the radiator.
• Older North Jersey homes with 8-foot ceilings and crown molding often need the crown returned around the unit. That's carpentry, and it's why these look built-in when we're done.

Anchoring — the part that matters and nobody photographs

A wall bed cabinet is anchored to the wall studs and, on most models, also to the floor. The wall anchors stop the unit from tipping when the bed swings out; the floor anchors take the leverage. Skip either one and you have a heavy cabinet that walks.

In New Jersey's pre-war housing stock this is real work. Plaster over wood lath doesn't hold a screw. Studs in a 1925 colonial can be true 2x4 rough lumber on irregular centers. Some Hudson County and Fort Lee walls are masonry or concrete block with furring strips, where we anchor with sleeve anchors into the block instead. We find out what the wall is before we quote, not on install day.

Floors get the same treatment. Old plank subfloors and sloping rooms are normal here, so the cabinet gets shimmed to level and scribed to the baseboard line. Level isn't cosmetic on a Murphy bed — it's what keeps the bed sitting square in its frame and latching every time.

How the job goes

Murphy bed installers near you

Paramus-based, building wall beds across all 21 New Jersey counties — home offices in Bergen, condo second bedrooms in Hudson County, and shore houses that sleep twelve on a July weekend.

Text a photo of the wall to (201) 676-3099 or email your ceiling height and room dimensions to info@firstcallcontractingnj.com and we'll tell you vertical or horizontal before we come out.

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