How Much Do Murphy Beds Weigh?

It’s nice to know the weight of a Murphy bed before you decide on a project or buy one. Whether you are planning on transporting it home yourself or have it shipped.

We have done some research so let’s dive into the numbers.

How much does a Murphy bed weigh? A regular Murphy bed without mattress typically weigh between 250 lbs and 560 lbs. It depends on the type of bed, and the features that come with it. Murphy beds with desks, sofas and other features built-in tend to weigh more. Let’s take a look at the real-life numbers.

But that’s not the whole story.

You can find the weight mentioned at the shops and online, but the numbers are sometimes inaccurate, as we will see in the next paragraph.

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The weight of an empty Murphy bed

The numbers the store will give you does not include everything. They typically don’t include things like the Mattress, pillows and side cabinets.

Let’s start by looking at the weight of a 3 brand new empty Murphy bed from three different manufacturers:

#1 – This model weighs 250 lbs (113 kg) (a regular Murphy bed for 2 people)
#2 – This model weighs 253 lbs (115 kg) (sideways-mont Murphy bed for 1 person)
#3 – This model weighs 500 lbs (227 kg) (Murphy bed with desk for 2 people)

These 3 beds are found here online (from $1,100 with free shipping)

So as you can see the weight differs greatly, depending on what materials are used and which features are built-in to the construction. It’s not easy to tell that #3 is two times heavier than option 1 and 2. The queen-size version of model 3 is actually 560 lb, and that’s the heaviest model we have come across.

This is of course not the final weight of the installed Murphy bed. Once it gets installed we must add additional weight from the mattress, pillows and maybe a side cabinet.

Let’s take look at what these items weigh.

Additional weight after the bed is installed

The mattress is a real joker here. Mattresses can weigh from around 40 lb to 100 lbs. So there’s a huge load added, and the final weight is important to know, in order to make the up/down mechanism work properly, as we will look at in a bit.

Then there are the pillows, duvets, and comforters.

Duvets: 3- 6 lbs
Comforters: 1-3 lbs
Pillows: 1-2 lbs
Total: 5-11 lbs

Finally, there are the side cabinets you might want to install, to utilize the space around the bed frame. This space can often not be used for anything else that storage, so it’s great to install one or two side cabinets beside the bed. These are pretty heavy as well, and the weight depends on the material, size and whether you have one or two.

A side cabinet typically will weigh between 50- 150 lbs each.

So now we can do the math and add up all the numbers, to see what the total weight of an installed Murphy bed is.

The total weight of an installed Murphy bed

Let’s add up all the numbers, and see where we land:

The Murphy bed itself: 350 lbs (on average)
One side cabinet: 100 lbs (on average)
Duvet, comforter, and pillows: 7 lbs
TOTAL WEIGHT: 457 lbs (207 kg).

How does that compare to a normal bed?

An ordinary wooden bed frame weights around 100 lbs, and when we add the same mattress and side cabinet etc. that will get us to 207 lbs. If you have a metal frame it will typically be lighter but on average the numbers should be alright.

So we can conclude that a Murphy bed is a little more than twice as heavy as an ordinary bed frame including the side cabinet and what you need on the bed.

Let the shop deliver your bed (free shipping)

Most shops offer free shipping, so you don’t have to lift the bed at all.

When you install the system, you will do so one part at the time, starting with the bed frame. So that’s not a big deal, believe me – I did it alone together with my wife. We built our own (very heavy!) wall bed system with side cabinet on both sides, and the lifting part of the install process was actually quite easy.

But I wouldn’t do that again. It’s a huge thing to build your own murphy bed. I’d rather just buy one online, because it’s not a lot cheaper to do it yourself. The reason we did it ourselves was to utilize the space 100%. If that’s your reason you should just go ahead, but don’t do it to save some money (in my opinion).

I think our material list ended pretty close to the $900, so I’d rather spend around $1,000 and have one shipped to my door.

Here is a list of online shos with free shipping:

Price($) $-$$$ Wall beds 19 Shipping Free >> visit store

Price ($) $ (!) Wall beds 4 Shipping $99 >> visit store

Price($) $$-$$$ Wall beds 25 Shipping Free >> visit store

Price($) $-$$$ Wall beds +200 Shipping Free >> visit store

These shops are good solid places to buy your bed, and they have a wide selection of beds in all thinkable colors, variants (and prices!).

You can also let a physical shop deliver it for you and avoid a solid back pain from lifting a thing as heavy as a murphy bed onto your truck. The shops are aware of this and will compete to offer the best delivery service – especially the online stores we have listed above, as they are in a fierce direct competition!

Know the weight of your DIY project before you get pistons

You need to know the final weight of your Murphy bed if you are building your own. If you are doing so, I would recommend buying the pistons after you finished the construction of the frame. This way you will be able to weigh each part and know exactly how heavy the finished product will be.

When you have all the parts done you just add up the total weight of all the parts, and now you know which pistons to look for.

When we built our bed we just took a guess and bought a set of pistons. We ended up with a bed that’s a little heavier than we thought, so the bed will not lift up super easily. We have to push it more than I think we should.

If you absolutely will buy the pistons before you finish the project, you should go for pistons that are on the heavy side. You can always add weight to the Murphy bed but you cannot take away weight.

You can add weight by putting in a metal plate below the mattress or inside the frame. This way you can also take away some weight when the pistons get old and lose some tension. Some pistons will let you adjust the lifting capacity, but these are not the best ones. You might get a more robust solution with standard pistons without this feature.

Will I benefit from a light-weight mattress?

No. Not really.

Not unless you have an old Murphy bed with old pistons.

The pistons are in charge of lifting the bed, and they need to work properly in order to support you when lifting the bed. This way the full weight of the bed will not hurt your back. You need to make sure the bed is not too heavy to lift, otherwise, you will get back pain eventually.

If the pistons are old and won’t offer the same assistance as they once did, you can consider getting a light-weight mattress. Changing your spring mattress for a lighter foam mattress can be a good idea. That way you will probably make the bed 30-60 lbs lighter, and that might just be what you need for the pistons to work properly and do a better job of pulling the bed up.

Pistons typically work for 4-7 years, and then it’s important to either change them or let the bed stay down most days, so you don’t end up hurting your back. If you lift your bed up everyday (maybe your bed is installed in your main living room), you will need the system to work flawlessly.