Bedroom

• 1. Introduction

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  The bedroom holds a particular place in every home it occupies. It is where people sleep, recover, and withdraw from the world. Yet the room that feels so personal and private has a history stretching back centuries, shaped by class, culture, and the slow invention of things we now take for granted. What exactly belongs in a bedroom? Who decided? And why does the answer look so different depending on whether you are in Tokyo, Stockholm, or a Victorian townhouse? Those questions have answers, and they are stranger and more specific than you might expect.

• 2. A History of the Mattress

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  In 14th-century medieval Europe, lower-class sleepers rested on mattresses stuffed with hay and broom straws. The upgrade to feather-stuffed mattresses came in the 16th century, but only for those who could afford them. A common person was doing well if he could buy a mattress after seven years of marriage. Cotton and wool began appearing in mattresses during the 18th century. The first coil spring mattress was not invented until 1871. Today the innerspring mattress is the most commonly purchased type, though foam, latex, wool, and even silk are available as alternatives.

• 3. Servants, Boudoirs, and Attics

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  In larger Victorian houses, the bedroom anchored an elaborate spatial system. The lady of the house had access to a boudoir; the gentleman had a separate dressing room. Servants who lived in the household were typically assigned attic bedrooms. Those rooms sat directly beneath the roof, separated from the outside air by only the roof itself, making them cold in winter and often too hot in summer. The slope of the rafters under a pitched roof made them physically awkward as well. Before modern domestic plumbing arrived in homes, a chamber pot kept under the bed or in a nightstand was a standard feature of any bedroom, regardless of wealth.

• 4. What the Room Contains

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  Night stands appeared in bedrooms to hold practical items: an alarm clock, a small lamp. Before indoor bathrooms existed, a washstand for personal hygiene tasks was also common. In the 2010s, having a television in a bedroom became fairly routine in many households. Among American children aged 3 to 4, 43 percent had a television in their bedrooms. Computers and video game consoles followed. Built-in closets are less common in Europe than in North America, which is why freestanding wardrobes and armoires remain widespread there. Walk-in closets are more popular today, though historically the wardrobe was the dominant storage solution.

• 5. The Japanese Bedroom

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  In Japan, the concept of a private bedroom carries a very different weight than it does in Western countries. Having a unified house is tied to the concept of having a unified family, so spaces are seldom personalized. Each evening, members of the household unroll their futon directly onto tatami mats, typically close to one another, then put them away in the morning in the oshiire. Sliding partitions called shoji, lined with rice paper, divide the space and provide insulation. The traditional Japanese tatami room has no door, no bed, and no fixed wall, making it barely detectable as a dedicated room at all. It is typically situated toward the back of the home, near the space set aside for family ancestors, and opposite the gardens and southern facade. The second half of the twentieth century brought change: the Western-style bedroom was almost nonexistent before World War Two, but it gained traction in new constructions, creating a clear relationship between the age of a building and the presence of a Western bedroom inside it. Cultural habits, however, have not shifted as rapidly as architecture.

• 6. Capsule Hotels and Studio Units

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  In the most densely populated Japanese cities, a distinct type of accommodation emerged: capsule hotels, essentially stacks of individual rooms so cramped that a guest can do little more than lie down and sleep. The format has spread beyond Japan to cities such as Singapore and Taiwan. At the other end of the residential spectrum, apartments without any dedicated bedroom are known by various names in different places, including studio, efficiency, and bedsit. Many multi-unit residential buildings have at least one bedroom per unit, and frequently two, but the studio format shows that the bedroom, however universal it feels, is not architecturally inevitable.