Dreaming about an apartment: new, empty, high and what it shows

What dreaming about an apartment usually points to

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about an apartment does not announce buying property, moving or getting a raise. In dreams, the apartment is the space a person occupies at the moment: small or large, owned or borrowed, high up or on the ground floor. It appears often in phases of decisions about independence, moving in together, leaving the parents' home or moving to another city.

Unlike the house in dreams, which tends to speak of the whole person, the apartment comes with neighbors, an elevator, a floor number and a doorman. That is why the scenes revolve around living with others, limits and height: how far my space goes, who is on the other side of the wall, which floor I am on.

Read also: Dreaming about a building and Dreaming about moving house.

Why the apartment shows up in the dream

The continuity hypothesis, by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann (2003), observes that dreams follow the day's concerns. Someone who is looking for a place to live, arguing about rent, waiting for a mortgage approval or fighting with the upstairs neighbor has the apartment on their mind before going to bed. The dream simply carries on the conversation.

Places where a person once lived also come back often, sometimes mixed together: the kitchen of the current apartment with the bedroom from childhood. And the building itself helps: a neighbor's noise, the elevator in the middle of the night or construction next door can be woven into the plot, as Dement and Wolpert showed in 1958 with stimuli applied during sleep.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Dement and Wolpert, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1958.

Freud, Jung and faith on the apartment

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud treated houses, rooms and stairs as frequent images of the body and of intimacy. An apartment with many doors, in a Freudian reading, can speak of desires and of passages the person has not yet decided to open.

In Jung's psychology. Jung told of a dream of his own in which he went down the floors of a house, from the attic to the cellar, and saw in it a map of his own mind, with older layers the deeper he went. An apartment with floors, an elevator and unknown rooms invites the same question: which part of you lives on each floor? Man and His Symbols reminds us that the answer is individual.

In symbols and faith. Chevalier and Gheerbrant record the house as a symbol of a person's inner being, with its floors representing different levels of inner life. In the Bible, the dwelling appears in Matthew 7:24, with the house built on the rock, and in John 14:2, when Jesus says that "in my Father's house are many mansions". For people of faith, the apartment in a dream can be read as a question about the foundation on which life is resting.

Bringing both readings together. Science explains how rent, neighbors and elevators get into the dream; tradition explains why dwelling and person have been blended together for so long. Noticing whether the apartment was empty, full, high up or dark helps you choose the reading.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

The most common scenes in this dream

If the elevator was the center of the scene, it is worth reading dreaming about an elevator.

See also: Dreaming about a forest and Dreaming about a bathroom.

When to seek help

An apartment rarely turns into a nightmare. If the scene keeps coming back with distress, like falling from the balcony, being locked in or watching the building collapse, and you wake up badly several times a week, talk to a health professional: frequent nightmares have treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

The apartment in dream books

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book by L. P. Baçan, the format is always the same, with one line for life and another for love. For a new home, the entry runs along these lines: in life, favorable changes; in love, a new beginning. An empty apartment tends to appear as loneliness or waiting.

Jung would point out that symbols do not fit into lists, and Freud called this method "decoding", a mechanical swap of image for meaning. The apartment of someone fleeing a crowded house and the apartment of someone who has just lost their job do not say the same thing, even if the dream book has only one entry for both.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

What folk tradition associates with the apartment

In Brazilian folk reading, a new apartment would mean a good change on the way; a dirty or messy apartment, a problem to solve at home. A high floor is read as ambition and recognition; the ground floor, as a simple and safe life. A rented apartment would mean a temporary situation; an owned one, stability. Visiting many apartments is read as indecision. A noisy neighbor in the dream, according to tradition, would be people meddling in your life.

These are readings from tradition, not predictions. No dream knows more about your mortgage than the bank does, or more about your life than you do. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.