If you’ve ever lived in a particularly small space, especially a studio apartment, you may have noticed that your bed takes up a significant portion of your square footage. Some people choose to loft their bed to open up floor space, but this strategy is not without its own problems. For one thing, unless your space happens to be particularly tall, you’ll probably feel a bit cramped when you’re in bed, and then there is the other, not insignificant, problem of getting into bed to begin with, which often requires navigating a ladder that would be pretty precarious in the middle of the night. But there is another way—a solution that combines the space-saving advantages of a loft bed with the ease of a bed that’s not seven feet in the air. Enter the half loft.

The Brooklyn apartment above, from Cup of Jo , has a perfect example of a half loft. You can also place your mattress directly on top of the loft, but here the homeowners have created a platform and then placed their bed on top, so the resulting space feels like a real bedroom. Underneath there’s quite a bit of storage, neatly concealed by a curtain that draws over the opening.

In this space from Stadshem , via Apartment Therapy , the half loft is not so much a loft as just a bed elevated high above the floor. Besides the storage created underneath the frame, this arrangement (with added curtains) also has the advantage of creating a little privacy for the bed in a studio by making it its own, distinct space.

In their Brooklyn apartment , Dani and Joni created a half-height loft that creates a cozy bedroom in a large, open space, with a bookcase on one side and plenty of storage underneath.

Dani and Joni’s loft was cutom-built, but this one, from Oh Yes , was created with IKEA cabinets. One of the cabinets has an open back, to allow access to the space underneath.

This loft, from Refinery29 , is a bit taller than some of the other examples, but it still allows plenty of headroom above, which is the whole point of a half loft, and room enough for a rolling clothing rack underneath. A curtain slides across the front of the whole setup to provide privacy, and the steps have additional storage underneath (although I might add a handrail, too, just for good measure).