My husband and I are in our permanent quest for a new apartment. We’re looking in downtown LA, and something I just find weird is some of the properties are advertised as “lofts” with multiple “bedrooms” but the bedrooms don’t actually have walls. In fact, the beds are simply on either side of the living room. Like, you sit up in bed and you will be facing someone in the other bed who sits up. For example, here.
So… would you want to share an apartment with anyone where your bed and their bed were both right out in the living room? It seems so strange to me, but maybe I’m just too midwestern!
Nope. I did some work on a two story home that had the same thing. Two bedrooms on the second flow both looked out onto a central atrium. You couldn’t really see in but the walls were only half height. So anything you said or did would be easily heard. No thanks.
Without a wall, it’s one room. Whether it fits one, two, or five beds is irrelevant. Perhaps it sounds like semantic hairsplitting, but that picture you linked sure as hell is not a two-bedroom. It’s a “two-bed” room.
I’d live there with my fiance, but with the understanding that it’s really a one-bedroom (or enormous studio) apartment. We’d have to get some massive dividers though, so it wouldn’t be my first choice.
But even in that situation you have no where to put stuff. At least if I have people over, I can shut the bedroom doors and not worry about picking up or making beds. Now, your entire apartment has to be cleaned (or look dirty).
Also, consider that you would never have a quiet area of the house to go off to. Sometimes I like to get away, say, if I’m not feeling good to lay in bed or take a nap or just go watch TV by myself. Can’t do it here. If you don’t feel good, that’s means your SO has to tip toe around the apartment all day too (or leave for a few hours).
The thing that made me think of this was someone, maybe a doper, saying that they redid their house to have an ‘open concept’. They said that as nice as it looked, they didn’t like that when they had a dinner party, after the party she felt she had to clean the kitchen before she could join her guests in the living room. If she didn’t, she didn’t like that from the living room she could see the pots and pans and dirty dishes all piled up in the kitchen.
The other thing I don’t like about the linked apartment is that, to me, it looks like a studio. I know it’s a ‘loft’, but if having more then 4 people over means some of them are sitting on my bed, it’s going to feel like a studio apartment. A big studio, but a studio none the less.
Having a place for stuff is important. (Where I live, I have bookshelves up which block all my windows. Books are more important than the view!)
But…how hard is it to make the beds and pick up a little? Keeping the place clean isn’t that much work. You have to do it eventually; why not every day, as it comes? The laundry hamper isn’t that much farther away than the floor.
No way. This sounds like a glorified studio to me, and I would not be able to share a studio with another person, since you can’t always be on the same sleep/wake schedule.
Ikea has some great solutions for this though. Basically they have large wardrobes with finished backs, so you can line them up to create both walls and storage space in one (relatively cheap) fell swoop. Of course, you still need a door, or maybe hang some portieres (Odd! That’s my second use of that word today.)
Here’s the best example I could find. Imagine if that shelf was much taller, within about 4" of the ceiling.
Of course, there is still no sound barrier, but you get a modicum of privacy and a great deal of storage.
Maybe, but they’re not the same thing. Lofts don’t have ceilings, they have roofs. Multi-level industrial buildings could accurately refer to lower-level floors as lofts, but having a finished ceiling definitively precludes the description of loft, in my opinion.
The picture linked in the OP is most definitely not a loft. Studio apartment generally refers to a much smaller living space, so I wouldn’t refer to that picture as a studio, either. I would refer to it as a large, open plan apartment.
To answer the OP, I could certainly be comfortable in a large, open plan or loft apartment by myself or living with a romantic partner only. Roommates or kids involved? No way, not even open for discussion.
This is Los Angeles you’re talking about. Any rentals will be described in exaggerated terms like that. What they typically call a “studio” there will typically more resemble a broom closet.
No way, unless it was a steal (e.g. in a great neighborhood or on the beach) and there was a common area (e.g. a rooftop deck) where I could entertain guests.
The only advantage to this layout is the flexibility. With enough privacy screens, you could carve out your own compartments to suit your preference and change the configuration around whenever if you get bored.
It wouldn’t be such a bad set-up for someone who lives alone and rarely hosts overnight guests. Or single parents of small children. Or college kids who are used to the dorm room thing. Or two people who don’t mind never having individual privacy.
If I couldn’t find a real two bedroom apartment, I might consider something like this. The only thing is that I like that my two cats have their own space for their kitty litter. Since I’ve become a grown-up, I’ve really come to appreciate the one room per cat rule.
