Sharing housing with non-family members has increasingly become a way to reduce costs while pursuing an auton-omous yet communal living throughout the life course. During the past decade, a new form of shared housing hasentered the Swedish real estate market: coliving. Like shared housing generally, some of the aims of coliving are to helpaddress the housing shortage, decrease loneliness, increase the sustainability of housing and provide flexible hous-ing for an increasingly mobile population. Based on the design of sixteen coliving hubs and interviews with thirteencoliving developers and operators as well as fourteen colivers, we show how the visions and experiences of developersand residents are mutually constitutive, but also at odds with each other. We argue first that even though coliving isset in a discourse of commoning as an alternative form of exchange, production and living, developers decrease thesize of shared spaces and reduce options for residents to manage their homes and participate in choosing whom tolive with. As a consequence, colivers feel the need to develop strategies to manage privacy and practice self-care, sincehaving emotional balance becomes a prerequisite for an intensely shared life. Furthermore, the emotional labour ofcolivers revolves primarily around socializing with others similar to themselves while services, such as cleaning andmaintenance, are provided by staff. In conclusion, we define commoning practices in coliving as a form of covertcommoning built on contradictions between discourse and lived experience.