Student Accommodation: Creating harmony in a home from home: Get some ground rules and the right attitude to communal living or face a house-share from hell, says Caroline Wyatt

WHEN THE sounds of your best friend's extra-curricular nocturnal activities have kept you awake for the fourth night in a row, and the quiche you had been saving for supper has disappeared without so much as a farewell note, you may wonder about your new house-mates. Are these your friends, or are they the house-share from hell?

Whom you decide to live with may well be the most important decision you make all year - and it is important to get it right. You may think you know the friends you made in a hall of residence inside out, but seeing them for meals and coffee is a very different proposition to sharing your life and living room with them. Congealing pots and pans in the kitchen sink and those multi-coloured moulds in the coffee mugs may not bother you in someone else's house, but if it drives you mad in your own, don't share.

Establishing rules about cleaning and paying bills before you agree to move in together may sound dreary and seem superfluous, but will save on acrimony and frustration in the long run. Dot Williams, a senior welfare officer at the University of Birmingham, advises drawing up fairly formal guidelines to begin with. They may become more flexible as you settle in, but are useful in gauging future house-mates' attitudes.

'It's important to have rules about things like the washing up, cooking, use of the phone, and about whose name goes on the bills. Often what people don't realise is that you are living much closer together than in halls and it's much harder to get away,' she says. Ms Williams also believes that is is not always advisable to live with your best friends; often the most compatible people are those on a similar course but not on the same one. 'If you are all on the same course, and your exams are at exactly the same time, there may be too much pressure, as well as competition within the house,' she warns. 'But completely opposite courses don't necessarily mix either - for example, drama students and engineers would drive each other mad because of their different hours and needs.'

Looking carefully at a house before you move in is also vital. Is one of you prepared to accept the cupboard at the top of the stairs as a bedroom? If it is going to become a source of friction, either find a house-mate with a passion for small spaces, or look for another place. Likewise, Ms Williams says, it is essential to have a communal room of some sort so that there is somewhere to socialise without invading other people's space.

Larry Gurney, the education and welfare officer at Durham University, agrees that a knowledge of prospective house-mates' foibles and bill-paying phobias is essential. 'Work out a budget in advance, and allocate one named person to each bill so that no one gets lumped with all the responsibility. It's also important that you sort out cooking arrangements: if one of you is vegetarian, or has dietary restrictions, then whether or not you cook together or separately could become a problem if not dealt with beforehand.'

Moving in with a phone fiend, once the bane of communal existence, has become less of a problem in recent years with the advent of the itemised phone bill. Those early-morning sneaky phone calls to a boyfriend in Saudi Arabia will now show up if you request an itemised bill in advance from British Telecom or Mercury. However, Ms Williams warns, this may not be an end to the problem. 'Often it's not just people not paying their fair share that leads to murder - it's living with someone who monopolises the phone. Sometimes we advise just having a phone that takes incoming calls, or one that uses a meter, so you know how much of a bill you're running up.'

If all this has not managed to deter you from moving in with friends, another aspect to consider is the sex of your companions. Ms Williams points out that mixed groups often work better in house-shares. 'It does seem to modify men's behaviour a bit. However, it probably isn't a good idea to move in with a boy- or girlfirend. If you have a row there's nowhere to escape, and it puts too much pressure on the relationship. Often it's much healthier to have them living round the corner rather than in the same house.'

Other people's partners can also become a bone of contention. Here, consideration is essential according to Ms Williams. 'When does an overnight guest become a sitting tenant? Your house-mate's boy- or girlfriend can cause great resentment if they are always seen to be eating at your house and drinking your coffee but never chipping in.' She says discussing the situation and coming to an agreement in advance is better than waiting for the resentment to fester and boil over.

Mr Gurney emphasises that living communally is all about compromise and negotiation. 'Usually, houseshares work out very well and most people have the time of their lives. However, it is vital to sort out before you move in whether you are after the same things. Are you the type of person who wants to stay out late and come back drunk, or someone who likes staying in? If you all have something in common, it should work out. Once you've established the ground rules, and accepted other people's idiosyncrasies, a good house-share comes down to simply attempting to consider other people's feelings.'

Unlike my house-mate who once painted the pristine blue bathroom a bright banana-yellow, without so much as a by-your-leave. I forgave her and we still share a house, continuing the argument about the relative merits of a bathroom the colour of jaundice. Communal living does have its highlights.