Most American bedrooms, as typified by “bedroom packages” offered by furniture retailers and hotel rooms, include a bed, night table(s) and a dresser. Within this general framework, Murphy beds, futons, canopy beds and twin beds each ascribe different identities to their users. Bedrooms also differ in size, importance and meaning: “master” bedrooms, usually larger spaces identified as the parents’ room in nuclear families, may include adjacent dressing rooms or bathrooms, a king- or queen-size bed, picture windows and amenities such as walk-in closets and large mirrors. This bedroom is often a center for planning, control and entertainment, as well as sleeping, dressing and sex: hence, televisions, telephones and even computers are often treated as normal features.

Yet, the bedroom is especially fraught with cultural associations as the main place for sexual activity This has given rise to such slang as “bedroom eyes” (seductive) and “good in the bedroom” (sexually adept).

Historically, the bedroom has been considered among the most private realms of the home, associated with private behavior as well as seclusion. Hence, the parental bedroom has been represented in mass media as the locus of important and clear-headed decisionmaking.

Some housing project rules require that it can be locked from the inside. In suburbs, especially middle-class suburbs, children expect their own bedrooms, equipment (phones) and rights to privacy. “Guest bedrooms” are also a feature of more affluent homes, although these may be multipurpose rooms equipped with a bed and minimal necessities. Servants’ bedrooms are rare: even in pre-war homes and apartments these were often used for extra children’s space, as offices or to accommodate additional family members (hence “mother-in-law apartment” for a bedroom located over a garage).

The number of bedrooms in a house or apartment is an expression of both wealth and status. In urban contexts, the studio apartment, in which the bedroom is undifferentiated from other domestic spaces, is considered appropriate for young adults and the lower classes, whereas, for example, Aaron Spelling’s 123-room mansion represents his excessive wealth and opulence. Realtors cite the number of bedrooms as the first classification and selling point for homes.

In architectural discourse, the bedroom has been the locus of a critique on traditionally held mores about the American nuclear family This critique is seen in the work of architects such as Peter Eisenman (House VI, Connecticut, 1972) and Philip Johnson (Johnson House, Connecticut, 1946).

An extension of this public/private split emerges in the idea of “bedroom communities”—suburbs around economic centers where domestic life is concentrated.

Nonetheless, the division is not inviolate—the bedroom as the locus of voyeurism has been a theme in such films as Sliver (1993), and is exemplified in the rise of “web-cams.” Bedrooms also figure prominently in displays of celebrity wealth in fashion and social magazines. Public bedrooms, however, may become sites of controversy: presidential bedrooms in the White House, particularly the Lincoln bedroom, have become a metaphorical site of political scandal and illicit sexual activity in the cases of Presidents Kennedy and Clinton.