When shopping for apartments, the most common sizes are by far the studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom apartments. Whether you are hoping to live by yourself or share your apartment with your 5 best friends, the chances are that you need a place that meets some basic needs. It’s important to consider what makes an apartment the right size given the people who want to live there.
Not too Small, Not too Big
Extremes seem to prevail in living situations: while one person is trying to make a shoebox-sized condo work, another seems to be swimming through the spacious halls of an echoey, empty mansion. Finding the perfect apartment living situation has to do with balancing the need to have enough space for one’s belongings and lifestyle, but not so much space that it becomes tedious to clean, excessive to pay for, and ultimately wasteful.
Studio apartments can be designed to feel airy and open, but after a while they can start to feel stifling, since you are always in the same space, no matter what you do to partition it. Larger apartments can start to seem unnecessary unless you have roommates, and after a few roommates, you can be back at the too-small problem. A one-bedroom gives you a harmonious in-between: a bedroom for private time (and maybe private clutter!) and a living room/dining room area that can be kept ready for visitors or simply in a style that makes it cozy and comfortable when you don’t want to be accidentally falling asleep during your free time.
Compartmentalizing for Mental Space and Focus
When choosing the designs for a studio apartment, people often spend quite a bit of money just purchasing items that will help to segment the room into its smaller areas, a bedroom sectioned off by a bookshelf, or an island to delineate where the kitchen ends. The nice part of upgrading to a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment is that it provides those boundaries for you, and you can choose your decor and furniture items more for what they are used for rather than how they double as walls or partitions.
Research also shows that being able to isolate your activities to an area is good for your brain as well; for instance, people who study in bed actually have less effective studying and also less effective sleep. By devoting areas of your apartment to specific tasks, be they sleeping, leisure, work, or eating, helps to cement your routines and maintain your typical levels of productivity. Once you make these choices, decorating is even easier, since your design can contribute to how you plan to use the space.
So, given your circumstances, what is the perfect sized apartment?
“I Love to Live Alone” – 1 Bedroom apartment
While many single renters choose to live in a studio apartment, there is a case to be made for a 1-bedroom. Living alone can reduce opportunities to socialize, especially if you find yourself in a demanding job, so devoting specific space in your apartment to a living room (that doesn’t have your bed in it!) is a great way to convey your personal priority to host dinner parties and movie nights. At the same time, a living room couch to let a friend crash on can be a nice way to show hospitality without paying to have a spare bedroom all the time. Regardless, just being able to move between the spaces can enrich your home life.
Making the Space to Share Together – 1-Bedroom Apartment
Couples who live together often really enjoy a 1-bedroom apartment; while they generally want to share the single bedroom, no one wants to be in the same room as another person every moment of every day. With a door to close off the bedroom, one member of a couple can get some work done while the other watches a film or cooks a meal, creating more domestic happiness simply by making each person more free to go about their activities. At the same time, no one loses the coziness of living together just by gaining the extra space that a 1-bedroom affords, and two people can often afford a slightly swankier apartment together than they’d have chosen each by themselves.
Families with Kids – 2 bedroom apartment
1-bedroom apartments work on a lot of levels, but a great time to move into a 2-bedroom apartment is when you have your first child. The benefits of being able to have someone awake in the living room, a child asleep on their own, and another adult relaxing in the bedroom are high, and having fewer doors to close off space can mean that you spend a lot of time tip-toeing around each other. An extra bedroom also gives children an area to express their decorating sense that isn’t the main living area, and a place for you to send all the toys after they inevitably spill out into the rest of the apartment.
Roommates – 2 bedroom apartment (or more!)
Even the best of roommate friends recognize the need for personal space, so once you choose to live with a roommate, you can maximize domestic happiness by choosing a 2-bedroom apartment. You’ll still experience savings compared to living alone, since sharing the same kitchen, living space, and bathroom will save money, but you also get the benefit of someone to speak with when you come home from work or school, and someone to help you with choosing some basic furniture for the common spaces. Whether you are making a fresh start in a new city or simply trying to afford a fairly expensive area so you can be closer to work, a 2-bedroom apartment shared with a friend works great, and the savings continue if you add a third bedroom and a third person!
Finding Apartments is Easy on Zumper
Zumper, the one-stop app for renters who want to find a new apartment and apply for it with an easy in-app process, is a great source of perfect-size apartments for you. With filters by location and amount of bedrooms, finding the perfect apartment for you is easier than ever. Check out floor plans to make sure that you, your roommate, your partner, or your children will all have the right space for them.
Read next: Roommate Tips: How to Avoid Conflict When Decorating Your Apartment
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