The Second Room: Office, Cinema, Siesta, Somewhere Else to Be

We have written a great deal about the decision to turn the second bedroom into an office, and in doing so we have slightly undersold the room. Calling it the office is accurate and incomplete — rather like calling a kitchen the place you boil water. Here is what that room actually is.

In short: the second room in each 70 sqm apartment holds a full workstation and a 55-inch smart TV facing a generous day bed. It is an office if you need one, a second living room if you don’t, a cinema in the evening, a nap in the afternoon, and — most usefully for two people sharing an apartment for weeks — somewhere else to be. You will never be asked to work in it.

Yes, it’s a serious office

Start with the part we have sold properly. The workstation is a USB-C monitor on a riser at eye height, a fully adjustable leather office chair, a footstool, wired Ethernet for the calls that matter, and a desk lamp that charges a phone wirelessly or by cable. The drapes are the acoustic kind, which is why guests report their meetings sounding better here than at home.

There is also open shelving, deliberately not filled. Bring your books, stand up a photograph, put your own things at eye level. On a stay of weeks or months the difference between a room you use and a room that is yours is about four objects.

And it is a second living room

Facing the desk from across the room is a 55-inch smart TV, and facing the TV is the part most people don’t expect: a day bed measuring 1.40 by 2.10 metres, with a proper mattress, armrests and back support. Not a token bench. A piece of furniture you can genuinely spend an evening on.

Which changes what the room is for. It is where you watch a film while someone else has the living room. It is where the long documentary, the lecture series, the course you’re halfway through gets consumed — the taking-in half of a working life, which deserves a better posture than an office chair. And it is, frankly, the best siesta in the apartment. You will still sleep in the bedroom, which exists for exactly that; but a Maltese afternoon in July has its own opinions, and this is where they get honoured.

A room that takes the shape of the day

What the room really is, is flexible — it becomes whatever you need it to be that afternoon, and the furniture cooperates rather than resisting.

Planning the week ahead, maps and tabs everywhere. A video call with family at an hour that suits them rather than you. Three hours of genuine, door-closed concentration. Reading. And — a use we didn’t design for but are delighted by — journaling, which works here because the monitor sits on a riser: slide the keyboard underneath, and the desk mat becomes a clear, properly lit writing surface at the right height. Handwriting gets a zone of its own instead of being balanced on a knee.

The day bed does the same trick horizontally. It’s where you flip through a book without committing to bed, or lie down with headphones and something from the record shelf — fully extended, which a sofa rarely allows. Most living-room sofas are designed for sitting up politely; this is designed for lying flat.

And it is quietly the better room for a screen. The living room is open — kitchen behind the television, dining table to one side, the whole apartment in your peripheral vision. Lovely for having something on; less good for being absorbed. In here the room is smaller, the sightline is single, the blackout drapes can take it down to darkness, and the screen is the only thing happening. It is the difference between a television in a room and something closer to a private screening room — which, on the eleventh evening of a long stay, is exactly the variety you want.

Cosier, darker, more contained. Sometimes that’s simply the room you’re in the mood for, and most apartments don’t offer the choice.

The real luxury: two people, two rooms

This is the part that matters most on a long stay, and the one guests raise unprompted.

Two people in one apartment for a month will, at some point, want to be in different rooms doing different things at different volumes. One wants a film; the other wants quiet. One has a call; the other has nothing to do for an hour. In a standard one-bedroom, the options are the sofa or the bed, and somebody loses.

Here, there are simply two rooms with somewhere comfortable to sit in each, and a door between them. Nobody has to negotiate, nobody has to whisper, and nobody ends up scrolling in a dark bedroom at nine in the evening because the living room is occupied. That is what the second room is really buying.

Light, and the colour of the room

It is one of the brightest rooms in the apartment — floor-to-ceiling glazing, which is unusual for a space that also has to work as an office. It sits on the rear elevation, sharing the back façade with the bedroom and the ensuite; the living room, facing south at the front of the building, takes the strongest light of all. What the back gives you instead is silence. There is no street down there, only the yard below, so the room is quiet in a way a front room never quite manages — which is exactly what you want from the place you take calls and sleep.

It is dressed twice regardless: heavy blackout curtains for total darkness when you want the screen to be the only light source, and sheers for the day, which keep the room private while letting almost all the light through. You can sit at that desk at two in the afternoon without closing yourself in.

The palette is a royal green two-tone set against a soft London fog white — warmer and more deliberate than the beige that usually signals “workspace”, and of a piece with the materials elsewhere in the house. It looks like a room someone designed, because it is.

The wardrobe, and one small obsession

There is a wardrobe in here too, which does two jobs. It gives a second person somewhere to keep their clothes — genuinely useful over a month, when sharing one wardrobe becomes an archaeology exercise. And it houses the iron and the ironing board.

Which brings us to a detail we are unreasonably pleased about: the socket for the iron is mounted higher up the wall than every other socket in the apartment. Not for symmetry. Because ironing from a floor-level socket means a live flex trailing across the board and round your ankles, and ironing from a waist-height one simply doesn’t. It is a two-euro decision that nobody notices and everybody benefits from, which is more or less the house philosophy in miniature.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to work remotely to make use of the second room?

Not at all. The second room holds a full workstation, but it's equally a second living room — a 55-inch smart TV facing a generous day bed, bright glazing with sheers for daytime privacy, and a wardrobe for extra storage. Guests who never open a laptop use it for films, reading, afternoon naps and simply having somewhere else to be.

Can two people have separate space in a one-bedroom apartment?

That's precisely what the second room provides. One person can work, watch something or nap in there while the other has the living room — separate spaces, separate volumes, no negotiation. It's the feature couples on longer stays mention most.

What is in the second room at Morrison Court?

A USB-C monitor on a riser, an adjustable leather office chair, footstool, wired Ethernet and a desk lamp with phone charging; a 55-inch smart TV facing a 1.40m × 2.10m day bed with armrests and back support; open shelving you can fill with your own things; a wardrobe housing the iron and ironing board; and floor-to-ceiling glazing with both blackout curtains and sheers.

Four apartments in Gzira with a second room that works however you need it to — desk, sofa, cinema, or somewhere to close a door and be alone for an hour. See them at morrisoncourt.com.