A Woman's Bedroom Layout Has Caused Chaos Online — 'Absolutely Fascinating'
Don't mess with the feng shui.
brizmaker, Mix and Match Studio | Canva Our bedrooms exist as safe havens. They’re our temples, and they’ve largely been associated as a reflection of our very being. What does your room say about you? Is it clean, is it messy, is every inch of space decorated or do you like to keep things simple?
Well, one woman on X (formerly known as Twitter) recently had a couple of new roommates move in, and she had something to say about how one of their rooms was set up.
She called her roommate’s bedroom layout 'absolutely fascinating'.
Hazel’s post on X reads, “[a] couple of new roommates moved in on the 1st - just caught a glimpse of one of their rooms and this is how she set up her bed??? absolutely fascinating.”
Attached to her post was a crudely drawn design layout of how her roommate’s room had been set up. It’s a pretty simply laid out room — you open the door and on the wall opposite of the door is a window. The two walls on the side are empty and she’s placed her bedroom in the left corner (facing the window).
It's normal to have your bed in the corner or up against the wall, right? However, that’s not the issue that Hazel has with her roommate’s layout. Her roommate’s bed is indeed in the corner, but it’s the way she has her pillows set up that she finds “absolutely fascinating.”
Instead of having her pillows on the side closest to the wall, she has the pillows on the opposite end.
This has caused a conniption across the web.
“Evict them,” one person put simply. “Trauma,” someone else reasoned. With a little more succinctness, someone else explained “I have my pillows by my headrest against a wall. It feels natural that way,” while another person said that it’s okay as long as they have a headrest so the pillows don’t fall on the floor.
There’s no explanation for why it feels natural to place pillows by the headrest and a headrest against the wall — some people are saying it offers a sense of security. Others say that placing the headrest (a flat wall of sorts) against the wall just makes sense.
Historical cultural techniques play a large part in the way people set up their beds today.
An Indian architectural system called Vastu Shastra, via Sleep Foundation, claims that because of the electromagnetic pull of the earth, your head should point southward while you sleep. This would keep in line with this woman’s bedroom layout on X, as Haley revealed that the window in the room is facing north. Some research has shown that people who sleep in the north-south position, however, take a longer time to reach REM sleep than those who sleep east-west. But those who sleep east-west were also shown to get less sleep than those who sleep north-south, so the pros and cons of both cancel each other out.
Another cultural practice that dictates the way in which rooms are designed is the ancient Chinese tradition of Feng Shui. Feng Shui aims to create a balance with the natural world, but there are conflicting reports all across this X thread about whether or not this woman’s room is in keeping with Feng Shui principles. One person wrote, “perfect feng shui tbh.” The reason behind this could be because of the one layout most people who follow feng shui try to avoid: the “coffin position.” The “coffin position” means that your feet are directly pointed toward the door — feng shui tries to avoid this because that is how the dead are carried out in a coffin, with their feet facing the door.
However, feng shui also deems that you should place your headrest firmly against a wall and that the other three sides should not be placed against a wall — two things that Hazel’s roommate has failed at.
According to The Spruce, it’s actually okay if your feet face the wall with the door, so long as the bed and your feet aren’t directly in line with it. Now we’re back to square one of not understanding why Haley’s roommate has her bed set up in this way.
Maybe it’s just as simple as “that’s how she likes it,” but to most people in the replies of this thread, the vibes are all off.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.