The BoConcept Ottoman Fold-Out Bed

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BoConcept is a real, long-running Danish furniture company — founded in 1952 by two cabinetmakers, Jens Ærthøj and Tage Mølholm, who started the business in the heat of that summer and moved into their own furniture factory just two years later. They built the company on the same principles that made Danish design famous worldwide: simplicity, real craftsmanship, and elegant function over decoration. In 1962 they opened a second factory in Herning, where BoConcept is still headquartered today. The company's first store outside Denmark opened in Paris in 1993, and since 2006 it has operated almost entirely through franchisees — growing from a small regional cabinet-making business into Denmark's biggest global furniture brand, with more than 300 stores across over 65 countries.

An ottoman that's actually a bed

The piece itself first appeared in BoConcept's range in the late 2000s: an upholstered ottoman with a folding metal frame hidden inside, taking up a footprint of roughly two square feet when closed and unfolding to a full-length sleeping surface when needed. By day it worked as a footstool or extra seat; at night, lifting off the fabric cover and unfolding the frame turned it into a proper bed for an overnight guest. At the time it sold for $499–699 depending on the fabric chosen, through BoConcept's own stores and authorised dealers.

Still in production — now as the Xtra

What makes this piece worth a proper look, rather than a footnote, is that it never actually left the range. BoConcept still sells the same concept today under the name Xtra, credited to Danish designer Anders Nørgaard. The current version measures 28 × 28 × 17 inches closed and opens out to 28 × 79 × 17 inches — dimensions squarely in line with the original's "two square feet" footprint — and comes with an integrated foam mattress built for occasional use rather than everyday sleeping, exactly as the original was pitched for overnight guests rather than as a primary bed. It's still sold in BoConcept's full fabric range, with replacement covers available separately if you want to update the look without replacing the whole piece.

The price tells its own story: a piece that launched at $499–699 in the late 2000s now retails around $1,790 new. That's a real, fairly dramatic increase even accounting for general inflation over the period — a reminder that a well-designed multi-function piece from an established maker tends to hold its place in a catalogue (and its price climbs with it) in a way that cheaper, trend-driven furniture rarely does.

Part of a real design approach, not a one-off gimmick

This isn't an isolated novelty in BoConcept's range — compact, dual-purpose furniture is a genuine strand of the company's design philosophy, not an afterthought. BoConcept designs specifically for urban, space-constrained living: modular sofas that reconfigure, extendable dining tables, and storage pieces built to conceal rather than just contain. The company works with a rotating roster of Scandinavian and European designers on this — names like Charlotte Høncke, the Danish studio ARDE, and Copenhagen-based duo Atelier Axo have all contributed pieces built around the same "structure without excess" principle the Ottoman/Xtra embodies. Anders Nørgaard's fold-out footstool fits squarely into that lineage: furniture that does one job well in daily use and a second job well when called on, rather than furniture that compromises on both.

Where it earns its place

The appeal hasn't changed since 2008: in a small apartment or a home office that occasionally doubles as a guest room, a piece that's genuinely useful as a footstool 360 days a year and a real bed on the other 5 is a better use of floor space than a dedicated guest bed that sits idle. It won't replace a proper mattress for regular use — for that, see our guide to storage platform beds — but for the actual job it's built for — an occasional, unplanned overnight guest — a well-made folding ottoman like this earns its footprint in a way most single-purpose furniture can't.

Because it's been in continuous production for close to two decades, there's also a genuine secondhand market for it — original and near-original versions turn up regularly on resale sites like AptDeco and Collecte, usually well under the current $1,790 retail price, which is worth checking before paying full price new if the exact fabric colour doesn't matter to you.