When New Yorkers seek to imbibe, whether it is at a high-end cocktail bar or a seedy dive, they often don’t have to look far to find their preferred poison. But for those who live right above a watering hole, such proximity can be a blessing or a curse.

While some city dwellers love having a place downstairs where everybody knows their name, others find themselves in a battle with the bar over noise levels and smoke that have become a constant presence in their home life and that test the limits of their sanity.

For the newlyweds Emma Mae and Connor J. Smith, the location of their converted one-bedroom apartment above the Irish Exit, a raucous Midtown East pub, was a selling point.

“The fact that the apartment was above a bar made us want it more,” said Mr. Smith, 28, an intermediate architect with Daniel Romualdez. “We called it the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ factor,” he said, referring to the long-running CBS sitcom set in New York City where friends live above a bar that they also frequent.