Sharing a Room

It’s important that you have your own space, even if you’re sharing a room with someone. Before you start dividing your room in half with a line on the floor, here are some tips for making and keeping your space your own.

Top room sharing tips

• To start with, it’s probably a good idea to have some ground rules about which stuff is just yours and which is shared. You might have to share a desk, but you can each have your own drawer in it. Maybe you share a bookcase – could you divide it in half? What about the wardrobe? 
• It might help to divide your room into three parts: yours, theirs, and a shared part as well. 
• Then, once you’re marked your boundaries, make sure you respect them. Don’t go rummaging in their things, and hopefully they’ll leave yours alone too. 
• Respect privacy as well. Do you want someone listening to your conversations or reading your diary? The best way to ensure they don’t is by not doing it yourself. 
• Not enough? Ask your parents or carers about getting locked cupboards, drawers or chests for keeping your special things private. But remember too – the more fuss you make, the more curious your roomie is going to be!
• Understand that you’ll probably both get frustrated with each other, and with the situation. Try to work things out before they get really bad, and remember that yelling is probably not going to create an extra bedroom!
• Need something more physical to separate you? While building a wall might be a bit extreme, what about a folding screen? They can look great, and give you just that bit more privacy. Bead curtains might work, or maybe a standing bookcase? 
• It’s a good idea to make arrangements ahead of time about what will happen when one of you has a friend over. Maybe they can stay out of the bedroom if you promise to do the same when their friends come over? You could offer to rent a DVD for them, or lend them a cd or a magazine if they promise to stay out of your way for a few hours.
• If the person you’re sharing with is a lot younger than you, it might be useful to have a high shelf to keep things on that might get broken or ruined, or that you just want to keep private. 

Decorating 

When it comes to sharing, chances are that both of you won’t like exactly the same things. If you do, great! But if not, here are some things to think of so that your room looks good to both of you:

• Choose styles or colours that are complimentary even if they’re different. Your side of the room could be yellow; theirs could be blue. You could have a solid colour while they have a pattern that matches. The same can go for duvets and sheets. 
• The key to making this work is compromising: orange and purple will probably never look great together, but orangey-pink and fuschia might! 
• Instead of painting walls separate colours, you could paint them two colours horizontally, so that the bottom half of the walls is blue, for example, and the top half is green. 
• Work together to come up with something that you both like. 
• Or, try to come up with designs for each other! Put some real thought in to what they might like, and add a bit of your own taste as well. They don’t have to use your design, and you don’t have to use theirs, but maybe you’ll each get some ideas. 
• Have your own white boards or notice boards for putting photos and important things up. 
• Try to agree on how clean you’re going to keep your room, or at least make sure your mess is only going to get in your way. Separate clothes bins/boxes can help here!