What is a studio apartment? A one-room apartment where the living, sleeping and kitchen areas share one space, with only the bathroom behind a door.
A studio is the smallest complete apartment: one main room that is the bedroom, living room and kitchen at once, plus a separate bathroom. Sizes run from about 300 to 600 square feet. An efficiency is the same idea with a smaller kitchen, sometimes a kitchenette along one wall; an alcove or junior one-bedroom adds a partial wall or nook for the bed without a door, which is the line between a studio and a one-bedroom.
What a renter is buying is location for the money. A studio rents for roughly 15 to 25 percent less than a one-bedroom in the same building, and in expensive neighborhoods it is the way to live there alone. What they are giving up is the door: no separate room for a guest, for working from home while somebody sleeps, or for closing off the kitchen.
Listings sometimes call a very small one-bedroom a studio or the reverse, so check the floor plan. On Kouzr's rental pages the bedroom count is zero for a studio and the square footage is printed beside it.
A worked example
A 450-square-foot studio in a Las Vegas building lists at $1,150 a month; the one-bedrooms upstairs, at 700 square feet, are $1,450. The $300 difference is a door and a wall, and for a single renter who works elsewhere it is $3,600 a year.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a studio and a one-bedroom?
A one-bedroom has a separate bedroom behind a door. A studio's bed is in the main room. An alcove or junior one-bedroom has a sleeping nook without a door and is usually priced between the two.
Can two people live in a studio?
Legally, in most places, yes: occupancy limits are usually two people per bedroom plus one, and a studio counts as one room. Practically, it depends on the two people.