I use the bedroom for three things:
1. sleeping
2. "adult" activities (wink, wink)
3. folding laundry (our washer/dryer is in our bedroom closet)

Our bedroom is a nice space, but I try to keep it separate psychologically from the rest of our house. I used to suffer from insomnia and using the bed for reading, working, etc. makes it more difficult for me to sleep in it when it is time for sleeping. So now, for me, bed/bedroom = sleep. We have no television in the bedroom and it is painted and decorated in soft, soothing colors. We save reading, eating, watching tv/movies, socializing, and working for our living room and office/activities space.

I answered Less than 1 hour a week. I guess nobody's watching my trends.

I can remember doing that sort of thing when I lived with roommates, and I can imagine that people with kids would do it as well--bedroom as private retreat rather than as place to sleep/etc. But as a child-free adult? My entire apartment is my private retreat.

I only spend extra time in bed when I'm not feeling well.

I think NYers are particularly likely to use their beds for working, watching TV, etc. because they may not have a lot of other rooms to do these things in. However, since moving to a 2-BR I no longer have that excuse!

Overall, I find lying in bed on a weekend morning and watching TV for two hours to be one of the greatest pleasures in life. However, I really dislike eating in bed, both due to the health ramifications of eating while reclined and the mess factor.

Other than that, my bed usage is very much driven by the weather. Since I have an open living/dining room combo it's rather hard to keep warm, so at this time of year I spend a lot more time snuggled under the covers, getting freelance work done or at least pretending to. But once it warms up I'll be back out on the couch.

In the last month or so, I've been spending too much time in the bedroom. That's because I don't like my roommate anymore and want to avoid him as much as possible until I move out. (Next month. To live alone again. YES!) So I've been doing things I usually do not do in bed: eating, paying bills.

Fabulous! I love my studio apartment and spacious one-room style of living. Sure, I could have two closet-sized rooms for the same square footage, but why? So my question is - why aren't more places designing for a bed doubling as a couch/lounging area, except in dorm room chic? I'm tired of this large footprint mentality of the bedroom as separate and unifunctional space in the home.

I agree that I used to spend a lot more time in my bedroom when I lived with roommates. However, I recently decided that I wanted to spend more time in the bedroom, and make it into more of a "retreat" (even though I hate that word.)

Since my boyfriend and I both often work from home, even if we're both in the house all day we may not really spend quality time together. So the bedroom is becoming a space for us to do that (and not just *adult activities*.) This means no electronics, but more time reading and lounging and just hanging out, free from distractions of the outside world. Of course, this means "curing" the bedroom first so that it's actually a nice place to be, and not just a space to hold clothes and go to sleep in.

When I lived in a small studio, the main thing that bothered me was the necessity of using my bed as a sofa. Now that I have room for two separate spaces, I'm so much happier.

I'm another of those who use the bed mainly for sleep and intimacy. Since I'm prone to insomnia and other sleeping problems, I find that having distractions in my bedroom (like computers, tvs, etc) make it more likely that I don't sleep well.

I generally don't invite friends to hang out in my bedroom since it's much more comfortable in my living room and, as a single female with a lot of male friends, it prevents sending the wrong signal.

Working in bed is definitely out of the question since it's not in the least relaxing--the last think I want to dream about is crunching algorithms.

Eating in bed is completely impractical. No matter how careful you are, you'll wind up with with a few crumbs and/or spills, which make it more likely to entice a colony of six-legged pests into sharing your sleep space.

On the whole, trend or no trend, I'm sticking with my "bedroom as sanctuary" setup instead of turning it into a high-traffic room.

yeah, living with roommates sort of necessitates spending more time in your bedroom than is "typical." and i also used to have a huge room (it was actually larger than our living room), so it made sense to hang out in my bedroom with my friends. but i also just like my bed a lot, and enjoy spending time with my cat and watching movies on my laptop in bed.

I wonder how much the picture changes with kids? I know of three different families where for reasons beyond me the children sleep in the bed with one or both parents. I'm not talking about babies here either. One family (cousins of a friend, I've never met them) had a giant-sized bed built to hold both parents and three kids!

Meanwhile, my sister and her husband were adamant about keeping their living room TV-free and leaving it as a place for gracious entertaining. Consequently, the main TV in their apartment is in their bedroom, so their whole family of four typically hangs out on the bed to watch it for at least part of most evenings.

Before the kids came, I remember watching TV and eating dinner with them in the bedroom on many occasions; the two of them would have lap trays and eat on the bed, while I would usually eat on a newspaper on the floor.

Considering that they have a large living room which really only gets used once every two months, (they do eat dinners in the dining room now at least!) this seems rather insane - if you ask me, they should have just put a TV in the living room all along.

My living room has a nice large window that overlooks an obnoxiously noisy street. The bedroom is at the back of my apartment. I spend almost all of my time in there because it's quiet and relaxing.