New Yorkers Split Their 1-Bedroom into 2 by Lofting the Bed

There are some apartment details that you can easily decorate around (think: an unusable fireplace that becomes hidden by a cleverly placed furniture piece). And then there are those problems that seem impossible to fix. The keyword being seem. 

When interior decorator Amanda Heald and her husband, Josh Hull, began leasing a 300-square-foot Brooklyn apartment that needed to work for them and their child, they quickly realized one major challenge — and it wasn’t just the rental’s small footprint. There was a lack of natural light in the sleeping area; the bedroom’s only window actually looked out onto the living room. The bedroom felt dark and dreary until the couple came up with a clever idea (that would also maximize space): lofting their bed. 

Amanda and Josh didn’t just buy a bunk bed and a ladder. Instead, because of the apartment’s high ceilings, there was room for them to DIY build a two-tiered arrangement with stairs leading to a bed platform.

Rather than being in a dark room with a bed taking up most of the room’s square footage, the bed is now elevated to be parallel to a window overlooking the living room. (The stair/platform arrangement reminds me of something another Brooklyn renter created in a similarly small studio apartment.)

“I don’t know how the tenants before us were able to manage in this 80-square-foot bedroom — the minimum square footage a bedroom can legally be in NYC — without building upwards because that was the only way we could make the space work for us,” Amanda said at the time of the House Tour. 

Another unexpected benefit came out of lofting the bed: It created space for another bedroom. Underneath the lofted bed was their child’s nursery, which was big enough for a crib and featured an unused fireplace that was converted into storage.

Don’t worry — this was never meant to be a long-term solution for the couple and their baby (some commenters on the original House Tour were worried about what would happen once the baby started crawling and walking). The couple later let us tour their next home, which was larger (but still just as creative) and located in Kansas City.

All in all, I loved this home so much — and still think about it all the time — because they were able to customize a rental so thoroughly for their own needs without permanently damaging the space. I find their creativity incredibly inspiring. Though this kind of project should only be undertaken by people with the skills and knowledge to construct something safely, it’s a reminder that our homes can, with creativity, be customized more than we may realize.

“Everything that has been done can and will be undone,” Amanda commented at the time of the original House Tour. “It’s not wasted money or effort because it has brought us a great amount of joy and has now granted us the opportunity to be featured on an enormous lifestyle blog. However, the amount of money we spent doing everything ourselves with mostly second-hand supplies is not even close to the amount we’d need for a down payment on a house.”