I gave up the home studio and rented a second small place, here is the actual maths
Freelance illustrator, two years in Pattaya. For the first eighteen months I did the obvious thing and rented one larger flat so the second bedroom could be the studio. Then I split it into a small flat plus a separate small studio, and I want to write the numbers down because everyone told me it was a strange decision.
The one big flat: I was paying for a second bedroom around the clock in order to use it about seven hours a day. Air conditioning ran in the studio through the afternoon and in the bedroom at night, so effectively two rooms cooled most of the day. And the work never ended, because the desk was eleven steps from the bed.
The split version: a one bedroom for living, and a small unit in an older low rise nearby for working. Total rent went up by roughly a fifth. Electricity went down, because I cool one room at a time. And the thing I did not price at all beforehand turned out to matter most, which is that I stopped working at ten at night, because going back out felt absurd.
What I would check if doing it again:
Older buildings often have better working proportions, higher ceilings and thicker walls, than the new studio blocks aimed at short stays.
North facing is the quiet win here. Constant light, much less heat load, and colour work does not shift through the day.
Check the building at 14:00, not in the morning. That is when you find out what the afternoon sun does.
I used https://thailand-real.estate/ to compare small units across the districts I could reach without a car, which is what made the split affordable at all. The right unit was not in the area I assumed.
Has anyone else here separated living and studio? Curious whether the discipline effect held for you after the first year, because for me it did.
