There’s a reason most sitcoms set in New York City feature roommates prominently. When you live in the Big Apple or any big city, you often have to share space to bear the cost of rent.
If you have your own bedroom, you’re at least entitled to four walls of privacy. But if you’re splitting a small apartment two (or three, or four) ways, personal space is harder to come by. Harder, but not impossible.
Living with other people doesn’t have to mean surrendering every square inch of your independence. With just a little communication and the following tips, you can Clutter for yourself and your roommates in an apartment of any size.
Learn more: How to Make Space for Self-Care
5 Benefits of Personal Space for Well-being and Productivity
1. Increased mental clarity through personal space
There is increased mental clarity in case one gets one’s private room or personal space. This establishes improved emotional balance that avoids daily distractions that create instability in emotions and bring about a lack of focus.
2. Increased creativity in personal space
This simply creates space that reflects the character and personality. It fuels ideas, inspires creativity, and is simply marvelous in work as well as in learning settings, not to mention time spent on hobbies.
An efficiently organized personal space interior design can be stress-reducing. You end up having a clear space that creates relaxation and peace hence improving on your emotional well-being.
3. Promotes Independence and Self-Reflection
Personal space encourages independence and fosters self-awareness. When individuals have their own space, they are more likely to engage in introspective activities such as journaling, meditation, or personal goal setting. This alone time fosters self-growth, helping people better understand themselves and their needs. It also promotes the development of personal responsibility, as managing one’s own space often leads to better time management and self-discipline, which can significantly enhance both personal and professional life.
4. Your productivity increases by setting up your customized environment.
Your productivity becomes maximized with the presence of particular spaces for individual needs such as work or school. Any type of personal space helps to give people a distraction-free personal space that aids in focusing and productivity.
Learn more: How to Create a Cozy Reading Nook: 3 Tips for the Perfect Space
5. Personal Space for Improved Personal Hygiene
Being able to have a private space in someone’s home can enable someone to do self-care sessions. Yes, indeed, there can be privacy at one’s own abode for a quiet place where rest, reflection, or mindfulness is done. Thus, this gives work-life balance and contributes to one’s overall well-being.
10 Best Ways To Create Personal Space In Your Apartment
1. Divide the room.
A lot of privacy goes out the prewar window when you’re sharing a small apartment with roommates, but even if you sleep in the same room you can still create boundaries. There are many ways to physically separate living areas that don’t require a construction permit.
Curtains, screens, and bookshelves each provide personal space without taking up much of their own. Tall plants and standing mirrors can also create the illusion of separation. Room dividers don’t have to be solid. Although your own private area may extend only a foot beyond your bed, the effect will feel expansive.
Learn more: Tips to Create a Home Office in a Small Space
2. Decorate and furnish different areas.
One of the simple pleasures of living alone is expressing yourself in your décor. With roommates, furnishing and decorating require more compromise, but you can still lay claim to certain areas of the apartment to make it more you.
Whether it’s the door of your refrigerator or the walls of your decluttered bathroom, decorating an area provides a sense of personal space. Talk with your roommates to coordinate colors and style choices, and divvy up the apartment, if you all choose to.
Just make sure everyone’s on board. Personal space should never come at the cost of communal peace.
3. Cozy up your bed.
Regardless of how many roommates and square feet you have in your apartment, you’re always guaranteed some personal space: Your bed.
Even if you lack your own bedroom or a room divider, the realm of your mattress is all yours. So make it comfortable.
Invest in nice sheets and duvet covers. Buy a headboard to extend your personal space upward. Fill your bedside table with books (here’s how to decide what books to keep or get rid of) and mementos that reflect you. Your bed should be a cozy place where you love to be, whether you’re eating, sleeping, reading, or watching TV.
4. Swap your couch for chairs.
While there are many space-saving sofas and couches for small apartments, individual chairs create more personal space in your living area. In fact, a chair is all yours as long as you’re sitting in it, creating another microcosm of independence.
5. Invest in a loft bed.
If you and your roommate(s) share a small apartment with high ceilings, it might be time for you to invest in a loft bed. Whether you buy your future loft bed from a store or have one custom built, these beds save space by creating space. Space in which you can put a desk or closet beneath your bed while enjoying an elevated view that’s all your own.
Lofting beds is a common hack for dorm rooms, but many designers and architects have made it a respectable small-space solution for adults, too. Consider the stunning Domino Loft System by ICOSA Design that’s pictured above for example.
6. Put your non-essentials in storage.
If only half (or a third, or a quarter) of an apartment is your space, and a lot of that is shared, try to limit your possessions to the essentials. Send out-of-season clothes, shoes, accessories and furniture to storage, and pack old photographs or books along with them.
By paring down your belongings, you’ll have more room for your personal use. You’ll also create a more spacious and decluttered home, which is essential to living happily with other people in a small space.
7. Create a reading nook.
Regardless of how big or small your apartment is, chances are there’s at least one empty corner or alcove. If your roommates are cool with it, put a chair there (ideally in front of a window like the nook in one of Lake Street Studios’ micro-apartments) and use that nook for reading and relaxing.
Your nook doesn’t have to be completely private. Even if you’re situated in the middle of a common area, as long as you have that nook all to yourself, it’s still your personal space.
8. Find a local escape.
Exchanging two roommates for 40 noisy coffee drinkers may sound like an oxymoronic solution, but only if you haven’t tried it. Any regular of a café knows you don’t have to lease a place to feel some ownership of it.
Going to a coffee shop regularly, having a favorite table, and befriending baristas can give you a sense of belonging. Sure, you may be in a crowd, but the space still feels personal by being away from the roommates you see every day and night.
Learn more: 5 Tips To Make A New Space Feel Like Home
9. Cook for yourself.
While cooking together is a great idea for couples sharing an apartment, when your roommates aren’t romantic, you need more time to yourself. Cooking meals is a practical opportunity.
Since you have to eat anyway, find a time when no one else cooks. If your apartment has a separate kitchen, that’s a full room of personal space while you’re in it. Even if it’s attached to the living room, the counters, stove top, and floor in between are your domain, so use them as often as you can.
10. Enjoy the shared space.
If there’s anything we learned as kids to practice throughout our lives, it’s that (except for toothbrushes) sharing is caring. By sharing a lease, you’re able to afford a more spacious and nicer apartment than you could if you lived alone.
Always remember that, and enjoy your space with, not despite, your roommate(s). Which should be easy if you add a Polycade or any of these other ridiculously fun space-saving games to the mix.
5 Problems of Too Little Personal Space in a Small Apartment
1. Control of the Lack of Personal Space in the Residence
In the case of a small apartment, private spaces cannot be defined well due to not having enough rooms. For instance, the mentioned person faced the dwelling with a lack of personal space and often felt crowded, which implied relaxation could hardly be obtained easily and he lost his concentration.
2. Spare Storage Area for Minor Homes
Minor homes do not offer much storage. The mess that gathers can deter one from having a definite area for personal use or even a private space in the room.
3. You may design your apartment yourself
Your personal space then becomes very hard to design when you face a very limited square foot measurement for your apartment. It demands some very effective solutions to carve out a corner or a room for individual needs.
4. Failure to create personal space for privacy
Large numbers of people living in an apartment of small size do not allow some private space to be gained in a joint living setup. Overpopulation of small house might make life vacate the body and leave the person with no or little privacy, which certainly feels frustrating, thereby reducing personal time.
5. Common v/s Private Space in Small House
That is rather difficult to accommodate communal spaces and private spaces when space lacks. In this case, then everyone in the house may feel the pressure about some aspects of limited freedom without a specific private room or space.
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Conclusion
To make good and accomplish work, making space-even in a one-bedroom apartment-is crucial. Since such storage, brilliant design in the interior, and creativity in making a space can turn even the smallest area into a haven.
Of course, there can be difficulties in finding one’s own space at home. Nevertheless, these have the right strategies to really aid in improving mental clarity, relaxation, and efficiency in carrying out tasks for the day.
FAQs for Best Ways To Create Personal Space In Your Apartment
Q: How can I use color and lighting to improve my space?
Light colors make rooms feel spacious, while soft lighting adds warmth. Bold accents can create focus points.
Q: What are simple soundproofing options for small apartments?
Thick curtains, rugs, and foam panels can help block noise. These are easy to add without taking up space.
Q: How can I divide a room without building walls?
Use bookshelves, curtains, or folding screens for temporary partitions. They offer flexibility and easy adjustments.
Q: How can I use vertical space efficiently?
Install shelves or hooks to utilize wall space. Lofted furniture helps free up floor space.
Q: How can I personalize a shared space without disrupting my roommate?
Add personal decor in your area and discuss any shared changes with your roommate to ensure mutual comfort.
This article was written by David Michael McFarlane, a writer from Texas and Oregon who lives in New York and loves smart design and organization.
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