Back in 2021, I was freshly out of college and excited to start my new job. I found an excellent opportunity to work remotely and envisioned the benefits immediately. I soon realized that I would need to be on the phone for about half of my workday, and most of these calls were on video.
I was sharing a room and living with many others. Privacy became an issue as my roommates wanted to avoid being on camera when they passed through the room or house.
We found a cheap room divider to set up right behind my chair so that I could stay professional and my roommates could have their privacy.
I know many people who have needed to do something similar for school, privacy from roommates, or make a purposeful area within an expansive space.
The larger a space becomes, the more purposes it can effectively serve. The rule of thumb is that more people in a house means a greater need for privacy.
Many homes have rooms with interesting or odd shapes, making a space hard to plan around. In the case of bedrooms, there may be no way to place a bed with sufficient privacy from the door.
According to the principles of feng shui (if you care about it), poor room organization or placement can block the flow of energy through a room. Room organization can also place too much or too little energy in particular spots.
So, do you need to divide up your spaces? Let’s look into some cost-effective options and where they would be appropriate.
Bedroom
So many of us live in houses with oddly shaped bedrooms or bedrooms that are very large. Knowing a couple of principles may be helpful if you find yourself in this situation.
Two options can be very simple if you are looking to split the entire room or large portions of it. A hung curtain or a vertically mounted set of blinds can easily split one room into two whenever you need.
Blinds and curtains have the benefit of being flexible. Therefore, you can push them back whenever you would like. This could be great for shared bedrooms or in times when you need to section off a large portion of the room for
Products like this can run quite a bill. However, you can find good examples of inexpensive curtains here. Most blinds can be vertically mounted to your ceiling with a bit of creativity. So some cheap options can be found here.
Work
If you need a work desk in your room, it is best to ensure that it is facing the rest of the room. But, in cases where you cannot do this, you can make a subspace like I did by placing a privacy screen, like this one, behind you to create its own space.
Such a partition will give you a professional-looking background if necessary. And help your mind focus on your work instead of being distracted by what is in the room. Separating your space this way will also help with sleep, as the energy from your work will stay in that corner of the room and not interfere with your regular bedroom use.
Bed Placement
The energy flow of a bedroom is vital according to feng shui. The general principle is that you should be sufficiently separated from the entrances and not place your feet facing the door.
Some rooms have the weirdest shapes. I slept in a very long room with a door in the middle and a slanted roof. Making a proper place for a bed, like we were used to, was challenging.
To help this, you can place your feet and head away from the door, but if you can’t block any of that energy from the entrance, you can put a low bookshelf between the bed and the door.
Low bookshelves are perfect if you place your bed beside the door. Solving the problem this way does incur higher costs as bookshelves are typically more expensive than dividers.
Another partition is excellent when you need more privacy, like when the bed is in the line of sight from a hallway.
With this partition, you will want it to be more translucent so light can pass through, like this affordable option. Sheer partitions take advantage of light fixtures in a room and won’t shade you too much so that you are in the dark.
Some rooms will have multiple people sleeping there that may have different needs. For a couple with children needing to sleep in one room for a while, privacy will be challenging.
However, placing the parents’ bed on one wall and the children’s beds on the opposite wall, with a large, tall bookcase between them, could be the perfect solution. A cost-effective way to do this is with a bookcase like this one. If closet space is low, you can also use a wardrobe like this one.
Workspaces
My professional experience of needing to separate workspaces from within living areas is not unique. Many people may need to do this as you may not have an office to work in.
For living rooms. I recommend partitions because they worked best for me. The other way you can do this is to arrange the chairs into a small subgroup with a rug in the middle. This will create the illusion that one area is specifically for one thing.
Separating workspaces from living or play spaces is also important for kids. School-age children will almost certainly have homework or be homeschooled doing classes online. Similar tactics as those for work do best in large spaces.
One way that you can help with kids is through block shelving. This will provide some space to have it separated and also provide your child with an excellent place for their school, art, and craft supplies. A great option is this one that I found on Amazon.
Working in Multi-Use Areas
In a small space, one area may need to have several uses. Try to limit the number of uses if possible and don’t do things that are too inappropriate for the energy of that space.
An example may be eating or working on your bed will bring more energy into that space, eventually making it harder to sleep.
If you must work at the table, in the kitchen, or on your bed, a laptop table can help. A laptop table can help separate the space by adding the elements of a desk to where you are.
Placing the laptop desk on your bed or the counter can help your mind separate the energies of work and rest.
When working on your bed, only working if you have your laptop table, like this one, can help adjust your posture and can switch your brain to associate work energies with the laptop table instead of the bed itself.
Garages
My garage was turned into a renovation site for a travel trailer we bought last year. The project took around five months before we could take back the garage from the tools and equipment.
While it was satisfying and fun to have a project like that. Our two-car garage was stacked with tools, old trailer parts, and new parts ready to go in. At times we needed to paint, cut tile and glass and store everything each night.
Looking back, I would have loved to have a few larger solid partitions to make sure that debris, chemicals, and paint did not harm the items that we were storing. Having these partitions also would have made the garage look more presentable after cleanup.
These larger solid walls also work great if you are trying to create hard separations, like cubicles at work, on a budget.
My Thoughts
The flow of energy in your spaces is often overlooked, but it is essential for giving yourself the best odds to achieve your purposes. There are many different reasons you would want to separate a room.
In the end, I recommend making physical separators as they help promote good feng shui.
Good feng shui, especially for your sleeping areas, is vital for rest. Separating a living room or bedroom can provide privacy. Splitting up a garage may help protect your belongings from your projects.
Whatever the cause for splitting things up, multiple low-cost options help you keep the energy flowing, maintain your privacy, and utilize your space to the fullest.
