The queen-size bunk bed that Casey and Andy Tayler installed to replace the two side-by-side queen beds that took up their entire studio apartment.
Photo: Andy Tayler
Casey Tayler is 31, married, and sleeps in a bunk bed. And she loves it. “I literally love the bunk-bed life,” Tayler, a TikTok influencer, says to the camera as she sits on the bottom bunk of her queen-size bunk bed. “I kid you not, I would never go back to sharing a bed.” Tayler sees the double-queen arrangement, which she chose over a double Murphy bed and side-by-side platform beds, as a hack for couples sharing too-small New York City apartments. (As an on-and-off insomniac with bed-sharing sleep anxiety, I was intrigued.) They both get sleep, and the bed’s footprint in the apartment is minimal.
Tayler and her husband, Andy, who works in a hospital and keeps odd hours, live in a studio in the West Village and see the choice, at least in part, as research. Andy is developing a real-estate start-up involving small spaces, the couple says. One could venture that the supersize bunk bed is part of it. “We just want our own individual spaces in a room. It’s a healthy degree of separation,” she says. I spoke to the pair about what it’s like to sleep stacked on top of each other as adults.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s your apartment like?
Andy Tayler: The room itself is only 180 square feet and then you have a little kitchenette system that’s directly across from the bathroom, which is just a standard New York cubicle bathroom.
Casey Tayler: We also do have a backyard, which is a real advantage to the apartment. It’s part of the reason we don’t mind the size of it because it’s such an advantage to have fresh air and be able to get outside.
What was your sleeping setup like before?
AT: In our previous apartment we had a folding California king for a while. Here we had two queen-sized beds on two platforms that took up the entire apartment.
CT: You had the tiniest bit of walking space. But for us, sleep is so important and we also just sleep so differently that we don’t get a comfortable sleep when we’re together. So the space was worth it in that regard.
How did you come up with the idea for a queen-size bunk bed?
AT: It was a toss-up between two Murphy beds or the bunk beds and this was just cheaper at first. We could see how we liked it and there’s less drilling in the wall.
So places actually sell these.
AT: Amazon had just released one for $350. We were like, “Oh my God, we need these,” and we were on pre-order for them for two months and they kept getting pushed back until they finally arrived. The only other one we found somebody recommended through social media. Some company makes these custom bunk beds, but they’re like $4,000.
What sleep problems is this solving for you?
CT: There’s just not enough room. We also have two cats. So when you think of the idea of four mammals sharing a queen-size bed that are all adults, it doesn’t even sound good in my head. And then you add in New York summers where you’re hot. I just want to be able to relax when I need to.
AT: I work overnight sometimes and I’m kind of a night owl as it is. When I was taking classes last fall I had a shift that ended at 12 o’clock at night and I had to be at a class at seven in the morning, so I only have realistically three or four hours to sleep. It helps that there’s always a bed available and Casey doesn’t have to be disrupted with her life and I don’t have to be disrupted with mine. I think there was a level of anxiety of being like, “Hey, I have to schedule out how I sleep.” There is no more sleep anxiety.
What about cuddling?
CT: We’re more like daytime cuddlers. But we have different sleeping positions — he sleeps on his back and I’m a side sleeper, so just in terms of comfortability, sometimes we will be laying there just for the vibe but in practicality of us falling asleep, it just doesn’t really mesh.
Are there other ways this has changed your relationship?
AT: I find myself talking more because we’re so separated. You kind of just feel like you’re in your own little world. Then you realize you haven’t seen that person for a little bit and you check in with each other. Instead of knowing what she’s doing, I’ll be like, “Hey, what are you doing?”
Do you have assigned bunks?
CT: No. I mean there’s that level of just you gravitate towards one a little bit more naturally, but it’s not like, “Hey, you’re asleep. Move.”
AT: We both prefer the top bunk.
The top! Why?
CT: I feel like I’m almost in a cloud. When you’re on the base level of your apartment and you see everything — let’s say you have laundry and dishes that need to be done — you’re kind of directly looking at them and you’re like, Oh, there’s that thing that I don’t want to deal with now, but I feel guilty because I’m not accomplishing that task. The top bunk, you only see the walls and picture frames and it just kind of feels like a more relaxing area in your home.
Is the dream to move into a two-bedroom someday?
CT: That was also a common comment on the post, that the next thing you’ll want to do is separate rooms. And we had always assumed that when we have a large enough living space, when we settle into a house, eventually we would want to have separate rooms. But I think from this experience we realized that we probably don’t want that as much as we just want our own individual spaces in a room. It’s a healthy degree of separation.
AT: We may not do another bunk bed if we had the space. We’re probably just putting two king-sized beds down on the floor. You know what I mean?
Sure.
AT: We will eternally have at minimum two queen-sized beds.
