Murphy Bed vs Sofa Bed: Which Is Better for a Small Space?

If you have one spare room and it already has a job, the question is always the same. Do you put in a wall bed, or do you put in a sofa that folds out? Both answers are honest, and which one is right comes down to how often somebody actually sleeps there.

We sell both, so this is not a case for one of them. It is the comparison we end up giving people on the showroom floor.

The Short Answer

Buy a murphy bed if the room needs to be something else during the day and guests stay more than a night or two. Buy a sofa bed if the room is already a living space with a sofa in it and guests are rare. If you are renting, or you want the bed to vanish completely rather than sit in the room all year, look at a cabinet bed, which is the third option most comparisons leave out.

Comfort: The Support Bar Is the Whole Story

A murphy bed takes a normal mattress. Whatever you would put on a regular bed goes on it, so comfort is a mattress decision and not a furniture decision.

A sofa bed folds a thinner mattress over a metal support frame, and that frame is what people mean when they say they could feel the bar. Modern sleepers are much better than the ones people remember, and for a night or two most guests are genuinely fine. Over a week, the difference shows up.

This is the single biggest reason people trade up. If somebody is staying long enough to unpack, a real mattress wins.

Floor Space: Permanent Versus Temporary

A sofa bed does not add floor space usage, because the sofa was already going to be there. What it does is spend that space permanently on something used a few nights a year, and it needs clear floor in front of it to open.

A wall bed uses nothing during the day. It folds flat and the room goes back to being an office, a den or a nursery. It needs clear floor only while it is open, which for most rooms means moving a chair.

So the honest framing is not which is smaller. It is whether you want the space back on Tuesday morning.

Installation and Renting

Sofa beds arrive and get put down. Nothing is attached to anything.

Wall beds are different by size. On our range the twin is the only one that does not need wall anchoring. Double and queen wall beds are bolted to the wall, which is a real constraint in a rental and worth checking against your lease before you buy.

Cabinet beds sit in between. They are fully freestanding, so nothing is drilled and nothing is attached, and they can move room to room or house to house.

What They Actually Cost

The prices below are ours, in Canadian dollars, at the time of writing.

The point of that table is the overlap. People assume a wall bed is the premium choice and a sofa bed is the budget one, and at our prices that is simply not true. A queen Heidi is cheaper than a queen Bolsena. Choose on how the room is used, not on the assumption that one category costs more.

Mattresses are a separate decision on a wall bed, and you can see the range on our mattresses page. A sofa bed comes with its mattress built in, which is convenient and also the reason you cannot upgrade it later.

Where a Sleeper Sectional Fits

If the room is genuinely a living room first, a sleeper sectional is often the better version of the sofa bed answer. You get more everyday seating, most of ours have a storage chaise so the bedding has somewhere to live, and the bed is a bonus rather than the point. That is a different problem from a spare room that has to double as a bedroom.

The Third Option Most Comparisons Skip

A cabinet bed is a real bed with a proper mattress folded inside a freestanding cabinet roughly the footprint of a dresser. Closed, it reads as furniture. Open, it is a bed with a real mattress rather than a folding frame.

It answers the two complaints people have with the other options at once. Unlike a sofa bed, it is not sitting in the room the other 360 days of the year, and there is no support bar. Unlike a wall bed, nothing is attached to the wall, so a renter can have one and take it with them.

The trade off is honest: it is a piece of furniture in the room, so it is not invisible, and it does not give you anywhere to sit. If you need daily seating, a sleeper is the right call. We wrote a fuller comparison in cabinet bed vs murphy bed, and there is a separate piece on whether cabinet murphy beds are comfortable.

How to Decide in One Minute

Count the nights. If somebody sleeps in that room more than about twenty nights a year, or ever for more than three nights at a stretch, buy a bed of some kind rather than a sofa. If the room has a second daytime job, buy something that folds away. If you rent, rule out anything that bolts to the wall. Those three questions settle it for most people without ever getting into styles or finishes.

Murphy Bed vs Sofa Bed FAQ

Is a murphy bed more comfortable than a sofa bed?

Usually yes, and the reason is mechanical rather than a matter of taste. A murphy bed holds a normal mattress, so you can put whatever mattress you would put on a regular bed. Most sofa beds fold a thin mattress over a metal support frame, and that frame is what people feel through the mattress. A good sofa bed can be perfectly fine for a few nights. For someone staying a week, the murphy bed is the more comfortable answer almost every time.

Which one takes up less space?

It depends on what you are measuring. A sofa bed uses zero extra floor space because the sofa was going to be there anyway, but it occupies that space permanently. A murphy bed uses nothing at all during the day and needs clear floor only for the hours it is open. If the room has to work as an office or a den on weekdays, the murphy bed gives you the room back and the sofa bed does not.

Do murphy beds have to be bolted to the wall?

The larger ones do. On our range the twin size is the only one that does not need wall anchoring. Double and queen wall beds are attached to the wall, which matters if you are renting. A cabinet bed is the exception, it is fully freestanding and never touches the wall.

What does a murphy bed cost in Canada compared with a sofa bed?

Our wall beds run from $1,424.99 for a twin Heidi up to $2,099.99 for a queen Wallie. Our sofa sleepers start around $1,099.99 for a twin Rannis and run to $1,769.99 for a queen Bolsena, and sleeper sectionals sit between about $1,199.00 and $2,229.99. So the two categories overlap much more than people expect. A murphy bed is not the expensive option, it is the same money.

Can you sleep on a sofa bed every night?

You can, but most people do not enjoy it past a couple of weeks, because of the support bar and because the mattress has to be thin enough to fold into the frame. If somebody is sleeping in the room every night, buy a bed. If it is a handful of nights a year, a sofa bed is fine and cheaper than dedicating a room to it.

What is the third option?

A cabinet bed. It is a real bed with a proper mattress folded inside a freestanding cabinet about the size of a dresser, so it gives you the mattress quality of a murphy bed with none of the wall mounting, and unlike a sofa bed it disappears completely instead of sitting in the room all year. It is the answer for renters and for anyone who does not want a permanent fixture.

Have a look at our murphy beds, our sleeper sofas and the Olivia cabinet bed to compare them properly. We are a Canadian company with showrooms in Kelowna, Calgary and Edmonton, so if you would rather see something before you buy it, find your nearest store.