Picture this: you and your partner have the house to yourselves. The bedroom door is shut. You can finally stop worrying about anyone overhearing you having sex. That is, until you hear the front door slam. Your housemate just got home. Or – worse – your mum. And like that, the mood is gone.
Plotting intimacy around when you have a “free house” is something many of us probably thought we’d leave behind in our teenage years. But the housing crisis means that young people are living with their parents for longer and solo renting in a big city is a privilege few can afford. As a result, those opportune “free house” moments can still feel like an erotic lifeline well into our 20s and 30s.
If you open any newspaper website, you won’t have to scroll for long to find a story about the so-called gen Z sex recession. People over the age of 40 seems obsessed with how little sex we are having, constructing caricatures of a joyless, puritanical generation which doesn’t drink or dance or fuck. But everyone I know still wants to have sex; it’s just that sometimes there is a barrier to enjoying the kind of sex we want to have: a paper thin wall between you and a housemate or a parent.
my housemates are having rlly loud sex should I have louder sex to make them uncomfortable back or
— haner (@etramen) July 30, 2019
From living in a six-bed warehouse in London to moving back in with my parents, the housing situations that defined my own 20s have hardly been conducive to a thrilling sex life. And I’m not alone. A recent study by sex toy brand LELO found that nearly three quarters of young adults agree that their living situation makes pursuing romantic relationships more challenging. In 2026, 29 per cent of young people aged 20-34 live with their parents, up from 25 per cent in 2015. Meanwhile, living with housemates is no longer just an early 20s right of passage: the average age of people living in houseshares is 35. Depressingly, a third of adults aged 18-40 admitted they don’t enjoy their experience of living with housemates. The most common cause of frustration? The lack of privacy.
This has been an issue for 29-year-old Ella*, who is in a long-distance relationship and only gets to see her partner in person once every few months. Most of their sex happens over the phone, but she’s conscious of the thin walls that separate her bedroom from the living room. “One second we’ll be sending each other risqué messages, and the next my housemates will turn on Game of Thrones and the mood is dead,” she recalls. “When my boyfriend is visiting, I've found myself pausing one of the rare moments we actually get to be with each other to listen to the footsteps in the house, to hear if someone else is listening in.”
While the fear of being heard can kill the mood, it can also be a problem for people on the other side of the wall. A 2026 flatshare census from SpareRoom found that noise is a leading cause of tension in houseshares – second only to cleaning. Four in five renters have their sleep disrupted by housemates at least once a week, with 24 per cent citing their flatmates having sex as a source of sleep disruption. 28-year-old Amelia*, for example, lives with three girls who are “super early risers and sleep really early.” While she doesn’t really care if she hears her housemates having sex, she knows they don’t feel the same way when the roles are reversed. “If they hear any noises after a certain time they throw their toys out the pram, so I’m super conscious of even having friends over, let alone having sex,” she says.
You may as well moan, babe! I’d prefer that to imagining your boyfriend silently humping you!
Alice Wilkinson, author of How to Stay Sane in a House Share, can see both sides. “Houses just aren’t designed for four or five adults to live side by side and live full, sexually active lives in,” says. “People get annoyed at being kept up by their housemate having sex, or don’t feel relaxed enough to have the type of sex they’d like to because they’re embarrassed about their housemates hearing. No one’s winning.”
Wilkinson herself used to be too embarrassed to have upfront conversations with housemates about noise, sex and routines, but looking back, she believes open communication could have saved her a lot of trouble. “I wanted to seem laidback and cool about everything,” she says. “I think if I’d been brave enough to have conversations about it with potential housemates, I would have found a more suitable house share faster.”
Conversations about hearing your housemates having sex can feel awkward in a way that complaining about loud music or slamming doors doesn’t. There can be shame and stigma attached to loud sex that goes beyond an annoyance about sleep disruption. Loud sex isn’t necessarily better sex, but being able to make noise can help you communicate with your partner and be in the moment.
“Being able to breathe and make noises freely just lets you feel more in the moment,” says Amelia. “It’s already hard enough to feel relaxed for sex in our society.” When her housemate has sex, she can tell that she is trying to be quiet, but that only adds to the shame Amelia feels about bringing partners home herself. “When one of the girls has sex, I still hear the bed creaking and that they’re trying to be quiet and I just think, ‘you may as well moan, babe! I’d prefer that to imagining your boyfriend silently humping you!’ I just want her to be happy. Her not making much noise makes me feel awkward about my own sex, to be honest.”
my theory for why so much of gen z is afraid of sex and have never dated a person in real life is because their generation has had to live with their parents way longer and dating while living with your parents sucks post-high school
— roxy demento (@falseroxy) December 15, 2024
Living with housemates might sometimes necessitate awkward conversations about sex, but living with parents is a whole other story. When 29-year-old Annie* lived at home while in a long-term relationship, she “couldn’t kiss or cuddle on the couch because it made my mum uncomfortable and sex had to be on the floor to avoid the bed creaking,” she shares. “It can make sex feel quite sterile and transactional because you can’t take your time or express yourself as you naturally would otherwise.”
When Annie moved out of her parents’ house and into a houseshare, her sex life improved, but it helped that she only lived with one housemate. “If she was having loud sex, I would just take my dog out for an extra walk or turn the TV up a bit louder,” she shrugs. Indeed, it seems that lack of privacy alone is not the only thing impacting our sex lives when we live with other people. Some of these issues stem from feelings of shame. “When I’m in the moment and I hear someone in the house, it’s that feeling of shame that kicks in and takes me out of it, more than any actual judgements that my housemates have ever expressed,” says Ella.
Amelia, for her part, thinks that people should be more relaxed about hearing their housemates having sex, partnered or alone. “I had a housemate who used to always masturbate at night and was never ashamed of moaning and enjoying herself and I miss her,” she says. “Sure, it was disruptive but it was so much more assuring that she was enjoying her body than the thought of my housemate and her weird boyfriend just silently humping each other on a creaky bed.”