No Guest Room Is No Problem With Hilary Farr's Clever Living Room Design Solution

Even the best sofa beds for your living room are still sofa beds. It's hard to imagine a supportive or comfortable mattress that's pliable enough to fold inside a couch. Keep your couch cushions intact, and instead of pulling a bed out of your sofa, unfold it ingeniously from your wall. Guests get a comfy sleeping space that tucks away seamlessly once the alarm goes off. Hilary Farr shows homeowners that they needn't send out-of-town guests to a hotel if they don't have a guest room. The Murphy bed featured in Farr's updated room has the look of a cabinet with two large doors on it when the bed is folded away. Rather than using the two handles to open the cabinets, the homeowners use them to pull the bed out and down from the wall.

Keep your inflatable mattresses for camping, and let friends and family stretch out in style on a fold-up bed that masquerades as a cabinet, bookshelf, desk, or table. Plus, it can be squeezed into your interior design in a way that doesn't disrupt the flow of the room. There are plenty of options when it comes to installation, layout, and configuration. So, find the best set up for your space and create your new comfy sleeping quarters.

As Farr explains in the YouTube clip, "The most important thing about this storage is that it does double duty." Canadian company Expand Furniture has come up with a collection of beds that does just that. The company creates standard Murphy beds like Farr implemented. However, they also have options that are designed to function as two pieces. There's no need to scoot the sofa out of the way if the wall above it folds out over the attached sectional like the MurphySofa Clean.

Scooby Doo cartoons may have given you a desire for a bookshelf that conceals a secret staircase or clandestine lab. And, Expand comes close to delivering on that dream with a Wall Bed with a Revolving Shelf. Simply rotate the bed to tuck the shelving side into the wall, revealing the bed side of the unit. This lets you lower the sleeping surface without taking everything off the shelves.

Designers love using convertible furniture to maximize square footage. Instead of faux cabinet doors that do little more than look nice, invest in something that provides you with another piece of furniture. Resource Furniture's Adam Tavolo folds out into a queen bed. But when closed, it features a hinged table that can used for dining or working. Plus, when it's in either position, the top area of the unit features two unobstructed top shelves for more storage, similar to the ones Farr included next to the couple's bed.

Murphy beds usually only work if you have a chunk of wall to dedicate to the folded-up version. What if you're lucky enough to have walls upon walls of windows? Or more likely, your walls are occupied with unmovable furnishings. Name-brand Murphy beds once had a competitor who hid the bed in an odd spot: the ceiling. The uppermost part of a room is typically used for little more than to hang lighting. Why not hoist a sleeper up to the ceiling when it's not in use? This option leaves the wall space available for whatever you need.

There are a handful of European companies who've filled a niche for ceiling beds that are ideal for tiny apartments in costly cities. The French company Decadrages markets beds that retract from the ceiling, meant to settle seamlessly over furniture that's beneath it. Their bedUp line moves in and out of place with cables operated either by hand using counterbalance or by motor.

The descending-ascending Bedaway Integrated is space-age enough to fit in on the Starship Enterprise. This bed hides the mattress along the ceiling, and with the help of a counterbalance system, sinks to a choice of common bed heights. It's also attached to the mechanics at only the head of the mattress rather than needing additional cables for the feet.