The alluring idea of an “away room”

And a few ideas for how to get one–without moving

The studio next door to my apartment sold. While it had sat empty, I dreamt fervently about adding it onto my own apartment. An architect friend and I even studied the floorplans for the best way to combine the two apartments to carve out a dining room and three bedrooms, one of which could double as a sunny little corner office—a dream!

I crunched the numbers 100,000 times to try to imagine a way we could afford it. We could have–almost?–but not really. It would have been a financial stretch to buy it, to pay the additional maintenance and mortgage each month, and then, of course, I’d need hundreds of thousands of dollars I don’t have to actually combine them. 

I’ve packed that dream away for another day, but I can’t help fantasizing about extra rooms, especially after I recently spent some time with Sarah Susanka’s 1998 book The Not So Big House. Twenty five years after publication, the interior photography in The Not So Big House feel dated, but this book is still a must-read for anyone building or renovating a small home. It is full of wisdom about how to create a deeply personal home that is right-sized to your life. 

Even in the tiniest studio, Alisa Regas’s architect Kenny Payero was able to create a sense of “away” by adding this partial wall to create a bed nook. Image from my book The Little Book of Living Small.

Rereading the book I was struck by Susanka’s emphasis on a home’s need for something that my own small space lacks: An “away room.”

Susanka describes an away room as a place that provides acoustical privacy and escape. It can be a room of its own or an alcove that can be closed off, as needed. An adult might retreat into the away room to work, removed from the usual noise of family life, or you might set the away room up as the place with the TV, so the whole house doesn’t have to listen to whatever one person is watching. Reading about this idea of a designated quiet area made me long for one: If I want to listen to music while I cook dinner and my kid watches TV, I have to put on headphones. Likewise, my spouse and I have to negotiate desk space and tiptoe around whenever either of us has an important video call. 

Susanka believes that everyone should have their own private place in a home–one they don’t have to share with anyone else. I agree, that would be ideal. But what’s a family to do, if there really isn’t space for everyone to have their own room, if there is no “away” space because your space is simply too small? I have a few thoughts...