Dark New York Apartments That Aren't for Vampires Only Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times Jeff Marder, a musician, recently married Sarah Spool. She doesn't mind the dark West Side apartment he chose mainly for its quiet. IN this dense and congested city, nirvana usually translates into bright, light-flooded spaces and eye-catching vistas. The real estate ads promise it all: "Brilliant light!" Dazzling river view! Light and bright! But a few people didn't get the memo. Some New Yorkers seek dim, dark spaces that admit little sense of the throbbing city just outside their doors. Maybe they work nights and need darkness and quiet so they can sleep during the day. Maybe they're writers or composers or computer programmers and need to be able to concentrate. All these people seek some version of the cork-lined room in which Proust wrote so many of his greatest works. Real estate brokers tactfully describe these cavelike places as "light-challenged," and to be sure, some people occupy them because they can't afford anything better. But especially in an economy in which ever more work gets done at home in an ever more raucous city, a tranquil space, even if hemmed in by brick walls, is some people's idea of heaven. Here are a few people who have enthusiastically embraced the dark. Katherine Leiner, an author, has spent much of her life in California and Colorado, but she didn't always love the sounds of nature. "In California," she admitted, "I was sometimes even bothered by the crashing of the waves." When Ms. Leiner, 60, moved to New York and rented an apartment in Carnegie Hill, she didn't love the noise, either. "Even though I was on the ninth floor," she said, "it was extremely noisy. The bus would rumble by every 20 minutes. I could hear the lights change. So when she decided to buy and made a list of her priorities, "on the top of the list was quiet and space," she said, "because I worked at home." Being dog-friendly was important too, "but light was at the bottom." Ms. Leiner finds this interesting because she suffers from seasonal affective disorder, and the seventh-floor Classic 6 on Park Avenue that she bought in 1999 for $625,000 was a rear apartment that offers little in the way of light or views. Fern Hammond, the Halstead broker who found the apartment for Ms. Leiner, describes it as her nest. You'd think light would have been No. 1 on my list," Ms. Leiner said. But I have lots of ambient light, and I'm not bothered by the darkness because I'm so happy working on my books. Ms. Leiner, who shares the apartment with her partner, Andrew Lipton, an environmental lawyer, describes the view from her living room as Hitchcockian - think "Rear Window" - and although her office faces a garden, no city views can be seen anywhere. "But the apartment is extremely quiet, and I need peace and quiet in order to write," said Ms. Leiner, the author, most recently, of "Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks and Food Activists." I can't have any distractions. In fact, it's so quiet you don't know you're in New York. And it's magic what you can do in a dark apartment by means of lighting and fabric. Anthony Innarelli, who describes himself as a night owl, works the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift as an editor at NBC television and sleeps well into the morning. In his old apartment, which faced West 85th Street, he was regularly awakened at the crack of dawn by traffic and other street noises. And so he is delighted with the rear second-floor apartment at West End Avenue and 96th Street that he bought eight years ago for $280,000. "When I get home," Mr. Innarelli said, "it's already been dark for hours, so it doesn't matter if the apartment is dark. But I do need quiet so I can sleep during the day, and this apartment is extremely quiet. Quiet was at the top of my list. I'd take quiet over light anytime.