Whoa! According to a piece in the latest issue of New York Magazine Maxwell isn't a fan of Murphy beds! This special fall design issue also includes, New York apartments (past and present) and how the current owners have intrepreted their historic spaces.
Also potentially interesting to ATers...
I was wondering how this slipped under the AT radar!
Maxwell can certainly have his opinion about beds needed to stay down to be sacred. I prefer the Murphy bed for myself in part because it keeps my sleeping area very private from friends and visitors in a way that a bed tucked in a corner or behind a wall would never be. People get that it is too personal to show - unlike a bedroom. I love the privacy of that - which makes it sacred in its own way.
I didn't really understand how putting a bed up makes it any less sacred? I guess I'm just too practical for my own good.
Well, for two people having a murphy bed may be a problem. My boyfriend goes to bed 1-2 hours before I do, for instance. If having the bed down meant that I couldn't stay up and say, watch television, that would be a pain.
I agree with Alex. As a studio-dweller, I'm delighted that guests aren't walking right into my sleeping area. And when I pull down the Murphy, I love the sense of an unfolding secret room. There are so many clever, cost-effective options for personalizing a Murphy bed -- lighting, built-in niches, a few extra inches of depth for over-the-bed artwork. Maxwell, please rethink!
Kah,
Your arguement is more for having a separate bedroom than murphy versus standard bed (and perhaps, so it Maxwell's. I fail to see how in a studio apartment a regular bed (or a fabulous over the top bed) would allow one person to go to bed earlier or get up earlier than the other in any way different than a murphy.
Alex -
I love my Murphy bed, because my studio apartment has the kind of square footage that the 1-br's that were in my price range had, without the claustrophobic feeling.
However, since the doors that hide my bed are, themselves, bookshelves that cover the parts of the unit on each side which constitute my dresser, if I didn't live alone, the person who woke up first would have to lay out their clothes the night before, since there wouldn't be any access to the dresser parts.