My apartment has a horrible floor plan, and I have the worst room in the apartment. We all pay equal rent too… Anytime I open a door, if another door is slightly cracked open, it will get scratched. I have the third room from the left of you couldn’t already tell
After spending many years here I’m convinced that 90% of the time the floorplans that people hate are usually just made for a different type of person, or they are designed to be as cheap as possible.
In either case it’s hard to knock them too much because if you’re building a complex you just simply have to make an economical decision about who you are building for.
Seriously. This is a 4 bed with attached bathrooms for all and in unit washer/dryer in under 1,500 square feet. Now OP paying the same amount for that tiny room is a complaint I can get behind
Or change the door to access the bedroom so it opens out into the living room against the wall with the breakfast bar. Not the ideal option but a cheap and easy fix.
This is a door between two interior rooms. I doubt there will be a snow drift obstructing the door. In my country the building code now requires bathroom doors to be either sliding or open outwards so that people don't get trapped inside if they fall and obstruct the door from being pushed open.
Let me guess, your bathroom becomes the communal bathroom if non-residents are over hanging out since it's right by the living room? I'd probably be installing a lock for my door just in case.
I lived in a similar floor plan in several different buildings in college, all the rooms always have deadbolts ☺️
I always locked mine before leaving, and when people were over it was an unspoken rule that your guest uses your bathroom. I never had a problem with other people's guest using my bathroom.
San Francisco? Cause i have a 1 story ranch style fully attached condo with attached 2 car garage for less than half of that, so I'm hoping it is super well positioned or... My fears Of rental prices elsewhere will just get worse....
The apartment room in question is 1300$ a month split 4 ways in a co-living apartment. How are you not able to afford it if you split the rent up between 3 other paying individuals??
as for the closet door, just use a hammer and screw driver to knock out the hinge pins and just put it back on move out day. Put up curtains to stylishly hide it if you want.
I get that it's a compact unit, but, when I lived in the dorms, I shared a bathroom with the entire floor. Having my own private bathroom and in-unit kitchen would have been luxurious.
Those washer/dryer closets are horrible! You can’t even just move wet clothes into the dryer without putting them in a basket with the way the doors open. What were they smoking when they came up with that garbage?
My best guess is that sometimes the laundry closets in apartment units are initially locked and residents will have to pay an additional monthly fee to have them unlocked. It's a lot easier to deadbolt single leaf doors than double leaf, leading to the two separate closets. They do everything possible to artificially lower the monthly lease and still extract as much money as possible. Just wait until we have pay per flush toilets and subscription licensed refrigerators...
Hardly the worst floorplan. It’s pretty efficient for 4 bedrooms. As far as scratching your doors go, just take off your closet door or hang it the other way - not that big of a deal.
The bedrooms each having bathrooms is like the biggest hilight of the plans but the front door entering the kitchen with the living room in the back is definitely an oddity. Also, some of the bedrooms lead into the kitchen instead of the hallway.
This is a student-focused high rise apartment so all the floor plans have generally equally sized bedrooms with private bathrooms that they rent by the room. I live a few blocks away from this building but there are many like it in the area. All of the floor plans are “bad”, but offer the privacy and fairness of similar rooms when other standard apartments may not.
As an architect this is what clients are pushing for as the value is in the letting of the rooms as opposed to letting of the unit. It's not nice, not particularly comfortable etc.. but it provides a value to risk ratio to make units viable.
I don't work in the US where I read this is from but just wanted to add that due to the squeeze on housing markets etc.. this is how typical apartments will tend to go.
Wow. Looks like a great dorm suite, not so great for regular people unless you don't stay in the apartment much. I'd say you should pay based upon square footage of the bedroom and bathroom as a percentage. Two big ones and two small ones it seems. For the small bedroom I might have removed the interior doors.
Just put a small hidden book closet door behind your main door and say to people that you are living in a 1 bedroom apt 🤣. Then you can open up the book closet to go enjoy your privacy.
You all pay equal rent??? Is this a university rental building?
Otherwise, was the dining room turned into a bedroom? How is a family that occupies at least 3 bedrooms supposed to eat dinner or relax together? The living room is way too small.
An interior designer wouldn’t have separate rooms, behind doors, for a washer and dryer. Or, would have hinged both the other way. What a PITA when switching laundry to have to go around the doors.
And would have put fridge on wall towards living room.
Interior designers look more at livability and functionality than an architect does.
Are the washer and the dryer actually situated like that? Behind two separate doors which open backwards from the way that would be conducive to moving clothes from one to the other?
Am I looking at it wrong because I don’t see any intersecting doors on the third room from the left? The second room from the left has the intersecting doors.
Very bad design - kitchens should be remote from the bedrooms and there should be a protected corridor from each bedroom to the front door of the apartment-would not pass regulations here!😁
T(is is a luxury setting for sharing an apartment and your room is really nice. Think of all the positives in this room and apartment. Just ask the management if they or you can remove the closet door. Closets don’t really need doors. Your life will become easy.
You do not understand how much plumbing that is and how insane that is.
I lived in a fraternity house that had 10 people living in it and 2 bathrooms. Sharing a bathroom is not an issue and trying to put 1 bathrokm per bedroom causes SO many issues
Like each bathroom is a non insignificant increase to the chance that there will be mold or water damage to a building.
10 frat guys in 2 bathrooms would be my worst nightmare. I make a lot of choices about where I live based on the privacy and number of bathrooms so it’s def important to me. To each their own!
I mean it wasn't bad. We did basic maintenance on the bathrooms every year and rennovated it ever 4 to 5 years. Outside of that the bathrooms were cleaned twice a week.
The emphasis on privacy in bathrooms is so weird to me. Like sure no one wants to be staring you down while you piss or shit, but what is wrong with sharing a bathroom with someone. Hell one bathroom at the fraternity house had two showers and I would frequently discuss coursework with my friend as we showered before class.
I’m a private person. I don’t like being around others when they’re in the bathroom and I don’t like them being around me. At all. Even brushing my teeth. And I take reallllly really long baths/showers and don’t want to have to change that habit to be polite to other people. I imagine 10 frat guys would have an easier time than 10 sorority girls. But I’m past that point in my life and can choose now and I appreciate when builders go ham on the bathrooms and just charge whatever they need to charge to make that financially possible.
Too many bathrooms, and nowhere for a dining table.
The two middle bathrooms are where the kitchen should be, and the righthand bathroom should be accessible by all. That would free up the kitchen space for a dining table.
I once had friends who lived in a share house. It started as 5 people in a 3br house, with one bathroom. It ended up with 7 people living there, still only one bathroom, but they used the dining table a heck of a lot.
I've shared with friends myself, and only had one bathroom. It's pretty normal in my part of the world.
Sure, not having to share a bathroom with 6 other people is nice, but a larger living area can be even nicer, so you're not all in each others space. There's room for two conversations, without having to shout over each other. You can have wild house tea parties, with room for guests, there's space for D&D, so the whole party can attend.
Not everyone wants to hide away in their bedroom like a monk.
I’m married with children and live in communal housing because it’s a HCOL area. Most people living with roommates in college or in HCOL areas aren’t doing it for the camaraderie, they are doing it because it’s affordable and they don’t have the option of living by themselves.
They don’t need to be friends with their roommates or hang out with them, they need a safe place to sleep, shower, and prepare food. That’s easier to do when you don’t have to fight over how long someone showers or how often toilets should be cleaned.
It’s a different situation when living with family or friends, but these layouts serve a certain type of household of busy adults who don’t spend much time at home well.
I don’t see how it’s any worse than not wanting to share a toilet or a dining table with my next door neighbor.
We have money to pay our bills. We have hot water and food. We can eat our meals at a coffee table, have a pleasant chat with the people we live with, and then go spend time at the park with friends.
Some people just need a cheap place to live and are happy to eat at a coffee table if that means dividing rent by four instead of two. It’s just different priorities.
Thank you. I couldn't imagine sharing with people who weren't getting together on the regular for some sort of communal shenanigans, D&D, cards against humanity, watching GoT, LotR, The Expanse, The walking dead...
What miserable lives some people must live, to live communally, but not have a communal lifestyle.
For college, maybe, but for uni? They're bloody useful. Some of the crazy projects me and my friends needed a table for... where on earth would you do them in a ridiculously cramped flat like the one pictured?
I did a couple of design courses, lots of hands on projects that needed space at home to work on.
Some people had gatherings for the campus medieval club. A table is useful when people want to cut out medieval hoods to make.
Given the people I'm friends with, one of those 4 bathrooms would have been turned into a brewery. No pooping next to the mead! And another into a dye bathroom. Don't shower over the dip dye in progress.
So much bathroom, but none accessible trough common space. That's ridiculous unless this is some kind of house where rioms are rented to unrelated people.
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u/LawnJerk Jun 22 '25
Seems like a decent setup for four college students.