This one assertive act can liberate your sense of pleasure and wonder at home.

Every one needs a private retreat from the world in which to read and write, to contemplate and appreciate. Just as the family pet goes to curl up where it feels secure and comfortable, so must we all have that special place where we can squeeze the essence of meaning from what we observe and experience; where we can shelter the letters, files, documents, and other assorted paperwork of our lives; a room where we can close the door to work or find solace and relief. It is a room we respond to individually, a home within a home.

If you are a writer, if you are attending school, if you are a minister, lawyer, banker, editor or owner of a small business, a study becomes essential. A friend wrote her Master’s thesis in her upstairs study. A minister prepares his sermons in a solarium-turned-study off the living room and I know a woman, a full-time mother of an active pre-schooler, who has converted her third floor attic into a studio where she writes and illustrates the children’s books she someday hopes to publish. For all these people, studies are safe havens.

I am strong-minded about the need to claim a private place of your own even if it is only the corner of an apartment. This one assertive act can liberate your sense of pleasure and wonder at home. Whether it is an unused room over the garage, a grown child’s room, the front hall closet or a finished attic, you can conquer space and make it yours. Here you can plan, involve yourself in projects. There is no excuse for not creating a personal retreat, because it is within any one’s reach, it is a place of luminosity, enlightenment and entitlement. It is your very own.

My husband Harpreet and I have adjoining studies, a windfall, I confess, of finding ourselves empty nesters with rooms to spare. In our studies, we work independently, but side by side. There is no door between us, only a wooden saddle across the wide pine floorboards, and each space is very different from the other. But we share light from our five collective windows, the telephones, fax, and copying machine, pictures of family, friends, small favourite paintings, and occasionally, afternoon tea.

How joyful it is to go there to have a moment’s peace. Solitude is as important to me as company, but this is where I go to make notes, do research, write letters, write my books and to think. There are no interruptions, no random noises. When I’m there the door is (figuratively) closed and I am not at home. Even though it is a tiny room, there is lots of space to spread out; and it’s mine. I’m free to use the floor to make piles and to sort papers into proper categories without any confusion from others. I can return to this space knowing that everything will be exactly as I left it: I can leave it assured that it will welcome my return. Even if you don’t have a room you can use in precisely this way, you can accomplish the same thing by setting up a folding screen or a partition.

The most important feature in a study is the desk. You may position it where you get the best view and light, though some people prefer to place it against the wall, for a different kind of concentration. My desk is another provincial French farm table, a gift from Harpreet for our 17th wedding anniversary. It’s made from four smooth boards that probably came from the attic of a barn in Provence. The wood is pegged, and there are many worn holes and gaps between the boards. I sit there listening to the wind rustling in the trees, and I can hear the tick of a clock as my fountain pen scratches across the page. Because studies are most often created out of a need for a place to work, they are by nature usually utilitarian and neutral in decor. But this doesn’t have to be the rule, particularly since studies are so singular and private. There is no question that the more we utilise a certain area of the home, the more personal it becomes.

Harpreet and I recently went to visit a friend. In his attractive, hunter-green study, the furniture consisted of a large, comfortable desk, a chintz upholstered reading chair and ottoman, a side table, bookcases and a good reading light. Good reading light is actually a key factor in studies. In this room it was provided by a decorative desk lamp, and a standing halogen lamp, which throws its beams up towards the ceiling, flooding the room with light.

Some studies are quite formal. Clients created distinctly different his and hers studies—hers was light and airy, with a fireplace, water lily chintz curtains, a loveseat, and a large, round ottoman, upholstered in the curtain fabric. The ottoman functioned as a table; books were stacked on it, and it could accommodate a marvellous silver tray from which she enjoyed serving guests. His study was very masculine. A sensuous burgundy print covered the wall across his highly polished mahogany desk, and on the floor was a fine antique Aubusson rug with an egg-plant background. While this is a room for serious banker’s thoughts, handsome framed wall prints and assorted memorabilia gave a warm and personal feeling.

The study is one room where furniture must be kept to a minimum. Here may be an excellent spot to install a wall system for books or files; but whatever you do, don’t overdo it. The materials that seem most appropriate for studies are those that are comfortable to curl up and relax on. Many clients I have worked with also favour suede and leather. If you wish to bring splashes of bold colours into the room, be sure to scale your fabric choice to the room’s physical dimensions.

Harpreet and I put our respective studies to similar purposes, but they could not be more different. I call mine ‘Zen room’ and it’s as light and spare as it can be, while his has lots of dark contrasting woods. My furnishings are quite Spartan; a desk chair, which is actually a low, even rigid, school chair, and there’s a bench on which I stack books, magazines and manuscript boxes. Simple white-tab curtains hang at the windows and a small geranium-red hooked rug is the room’s only colourful focal point.