What Every Bedroom Should Have
A "Georges Perec-style" design statement on living in a small room
If you live in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or any other minor city orbiting the major ones, chances are you will be living in a closet space, and you will have to make the best of it.
After reading Henri Lefebvre, Gaston Bachelard, Kevin Lynch, and Georges Perec for an entire year and reflecting on the philosophical concept of a “space,” it is my urge as a professional “design research” intellectual to interrogate and make meaning of what it means to live in an American bachelor pad, as a hipster or artist, in 2025.
I assume you, as a starving artist, are planning to live in those cities I have mentioned, and thought about the feng shui, or practical design of the space you will inhabit. You thought about buying everything from Ikea because you liked walking through that fun showroom amusement park they display in every store. You thought about buying products from Teenage Engineering or putting plants near the windowsill. There is this type of Dieter Rams obsession with elegance in the cosmopolitan class. You want to make your room as minimal as possible. No distractions, just everything works with ease.
You want to impress your next Hinge date and show her everything in your room before, you know, you fuck her brains out. You want to have a room like Safe Sleazy and live the Wes Anderson life as a hipster everyone relies on. You want to be the main star in this romantic comedy art film.
I get you, and I hear you.
If all of us are in debt, can’t afford a house, or refuse to live in the prairie two to three hours from any civilization, then we have to think in terms of our means and design a room that is uniquely us, but also projects creative energy for us to create art and advocate philosophy, and intimacy.
They called it “Netflix and chill” for a reason, that the room was a special place to unwind and get closer to one another. To be against the state and its political ideology of liberalism, the room should reflect the values of freedom and expression. Expression often is playful, and when we play, we create. When we play, we pull down censorship and become sincere.
The ironic often give each other alcohol or drugs in their room because they are too afraid to get intimate. They need a social lubricant to open up because they are too anxious in this self-hating society. I am against drugs, and you don’t need a bong or any substance to actually think in your life.
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga once said that philosophy was about “thinking hard about something." As long as you can think, you can be intimate and close with another person. The room and its objects around it make you think. Ask him or her, Why is this here. Is this object you? And it is!
And what do you do as an artist? Are you a musician? Are you a writer? Are you a painter? What objects help you make the produced artwork possible? What art prints on the wall show him or her that?
Do you remember what every college dormitory had?
A mattress on the floor or in the corner
A comic book section
A woke philosophy book section
Several vintage board games you never heard of
Modular synths and related musical gear
Plants near the window
A shelf dedicated to CDs, cassettes, or vinyl records.
Art prints on the wall
Could you imagine living again with these things? Forget about the toilet or the fridge. Go to Planet Fitness if you want to take a shower. What things make you happy?
You need that mattress. You don’t have to get a frame for it. But you do if you want to put things under it, like a memory box with all your twenty-year-old memorabilia in it. It’s a good way to start a conversation and unlock the depths of personal trauma.
The mattress will be important for… You know what. In addition, most of your time will be spent cuddling and watching something on a screen. Make sure it’s a good mattress because you will be lying naked in it and experiencing the best moments of your life on it.
If you don’t read books, you like pretty pictures. Be it comics by Frank Woodring, Adrian Tomine, Seth, or Sam Henderson, it’s the latest “graphic novel” that you bought from the yesteryear comic store because you believe comics still have a legacy to them. Avoid anything by DC or Marvel and stick with the Basil Wolverton or Robert Crumb if you want to present yourself as refined. Comics about romance, women, or cute anime-influenced pictures will win you affection.
If you are a writer, of course, you collect your favorite books. Be it on political issues or general philosophy. But remember this, “women are interested in the books on your shelf.” Regardless of whether you read everything, no one is going to blink an eye if David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Walter Benjamin, and Harold Bloom are all on the same shelf in a line. She will be only interested if the colors match, if it gets you into parties, and if her friends think you're “smart” on intuition.
Ideally, you want Dennis Cooper, Bret Easton Ellis, Sam Pink, Noah Cicero, Gary J. Shipley, and the Y2K Vice magazine “alt lit” generation there to give the impression you are “well read” with the current times.
You want to have some zines (not magazines) lying around, like you get from the local community hub. Make sure they are artsy and political. It’s okay to start with CrimethInc pamphlets or what the Party for Socialism and Liberation is putting out. Bagging and boarding a zine like a first edition of a rare comic book assumes you are an art collector. Girls don’t like Jim Goad or Peter Sotos unless they are goth. Keep it conservative by using names like Shane Bugbee or Aaron Cometbus. They won’t ask questions because they will just assume “it must be underground.”
And this same logic goes with CDs, cassette tapes, or vinyl records! You will only want to play something on vinyl when it precedes cuddle time. Cassettes should only be played in the afternoon, and CDs should never be played because there is no aura to them other than collecting them (unless you play the CD in a Sega CD system or Sega Saturn). If you do play the vinyl record, make sure the cover is visible to touch and to look at. Boards of Canada is still acceptable on vinyl, just like Dire Straits or Nick Drake.
Art prints on the wall are very important because they immediately describe your taste in art. It could very well be album art you like or prints (or posters) you hung up with tacks or tape. Try your very best to frame everything rather than using tape. If you do plan on using just tape, be sure that you are only hanging up club or punk flyers on the wall. This gives the illusion that you've been to every event displayed. For framed art pieces, focus on special concerts you've been to, signed set lists, or art by Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Brian Blomerth, or Mike Perry.
If you are a musician, whatever you do, do not flaunt your guitar. Rather, show all your effect pedals and plug nothing into them. It gives the assumption that you like “sound design” than composition. Someone who is a sound designer cares more about interesting concepts and original discoveries. This is why it’s ok to show synths, drum machines, and Eurorack systems instead, because they are what every late twenty-to-thirty-something should have. It’s a machine that makes art without presets. You make a patch and leave it there for months. You are trying to discover something with no success. This metaphor is what it means to be an avant-garde artist.
If you are a budget with electronic gear, buy every single Korg Volca or Roland Aira Compact model. Here, you care about cute novel sounds on the go.
You should also keep at least ten different, unique underground board games in your room. It shows that you are into real game “designers” and care about the craft of play; the very motivation of art. It’s why you have a copy of What Art Does by Brian Eno in the corner. Games like Cosmic Encounter, Heimlich & Co., Homeworlds, or I’m The Boss may be obscure, but once you play a game as an icebreaker, she or he will get to know you as a sensitive and expressive person. How can someone like you have a particular taste in an unknown subculture? It must be that virtue is underground, and society misunderstood you. This is all just routine of being an artist and getting your future “interactive” art installation in the Whitney.
To round out your organic nature, only use a MacBook M1 and stay away from PCs or Linux computers. But if you do stick with the PC and Linux, just remember it gives off the impression you are into Y2K art and like tracker music or esoteric programming languages. This could definitely benefit you as a trans person. However, a majority of people use Mac computers because they are easy and “elegant.” Keep it that way; otherwise, being overloaded with too many options may mark you as pretentious, which no artist wants to be (that is, you want to only be pretentious as a weapon to fit in art gallery events or DIY shows).
Being organic also means getting plants in your room. Because you can’t afford a dog or a cat (not yet anyway), plants are living organisms that need water to survive. If you give your plants water every day, it signals you are caring, altruistic, and wish to create a society returning to paganism and nature. You will be a nudist when no one is looking, so why not embrace it with plants? If plants grow, do you grow too? You want your artistic career to propel as well! So, water your plants, and show you would rather want to live life as a skateboarding crust punk influenced by Larry Clark than pay $1300 a month to live in Bushwick.
Do not overdo it with the plants either. Have four plants at max and make sure they are all together.
I don’t care how you eat. I assume you only eat peanuts and fruits. You binge out on fast food or burritos once in a while, but it has to be in a cool way.
Some have gone the whole Epicurean Fort Thunder route and turned the room into an artsy hoarder house. Try not to overdo this as well, because you don’t want to be a dirty crust punk who smells or someone poor. The “hoarder” aspect should have purpose, in that every object in the room was done by an artist, kind of like what Henry Darger did to his place.
Whatever “poetic” or “image” you find in your room, please consider these tips to help create a space that not only will help you create better art in, but also show off to new friends and lovers why you matter as an artist in this special romantic comedy nobody is watching.
Perhaps Georges Perec thought about his room way too much and made poetry about it. But the point of it all is to increase a greater love for wisdom and intimacy.
-pe
8-26-2025