Don’t Call Me Murphy
The problem with most beds is that they do one thing: support your unconscious body for 6-13 hours a night depending on your employment situation. For the other 18-11 hours, mono-purpose beds just laze around the house, occupying a ton of space that could otherwise be used to good effect. And though we are unabashed fans of murphy beds, which can quickly transform a bed area into a something else area, they are not the only type of multipurpose bed. We ran across a couple different European bed manufacturers that pack a ton of utility in the same footprint that would otherwise be used for a bed alone.
The Space Up bed (above) by France’s Parisot is a bed system with a closet’s worth of storage under its double-sized mattress. To access the storage, the mattress and its frame cantilever up, made possible by hydraulic pistons. The sides of the bed also features bookshelves, adding to its utility. With a low price point and no frills materials the Space Up seems mostly geared toward younger audiences.
If you want something more high end, check out Italy’s Dielle Modus who takes the Space Up idea to 11. While they make a variety of bed and storage systems, the ones that caught our eye are their room systems featuring storage either under or above the bed. The storage volumes for both are considerably larger than Space Up. The below-bed systems work much like Space Up with a hydraulic lift for the mattress. The under-bed volume is big enough for a hanging rack storage; it’s also big enough to warrant stairs to access the bed. Those stairs double as drawers of course.
The models featuring overhead storage are more practical than they might initially seem. The overhead cabinets have hanging racks that easily pivot down. There is captain bed type drawers underneath and tall cabinets at the head. The sleeping nook can also be closed off with curtains to fend off light and, we suppose, insects.