This is something I’m curious about that is tied to housing shortages… As in, say a hypothetical government want to encourage real-estate develpers to build more housing to solve housing shortages. But said government still wants to make most of its citizens happy, instead of just cramming everyone in the smallest accommodations possible
As extreme examples:
- A shoebox studio (<= 10 m^2) is probably too small for almost any family
- On the contrary… a massive estate (>= 10,000 m^2) is probably too big for almost any family. At that point, upkeep of the house may need several full-time housekeepers, so you literally won’t have time to do it yourself
I’d imagine there might be some cultural differences regarding this as well…?
My wife and I bought our first house before we had kids. It was ~1000sqft, 3 beds 1 bath and perfect for just us. Granted we had 2 dogs and 5 cats so it felt hectic at times, but with a nice little back yard the dogs we’re much more calm.
After having 2 kids it started feeling cramped, 100% doable, but as someone who works from home I was dying for more space. The layout was also awful, it seemed like one of the previous owners tried to make it “open concept” and didn’t think it through, so there was nowhere you could go to get an ounce of privacy aside from the bedrooms which were 8x8 all around.
We recently moved to a 1900sqft house and its absolutely great. I can take work calls while everyone’s yelling in the living room and its not a bother. My toddler can play whole the baby’s napping without waking him up. The bedrooms are big with honestly huge closets. Before I was sharing a closet with my toddler and mostly living out of hampers, now he has a closet that his bed could fit in.
My only desire is am extra to for guest if anyone needed to stay with us for a while. I’m hoping to fix up the basement soon and make it a nice 900sqft guest house type thing.
I think we have more space than we necessarily need now, but that makes me happy.
I need 2800 ish for 2 people. I do a lot of shit.
When we had 6 kids living with us, 2500 sq feet felt luxurious. Two kids in each bedroom upstairs, and we had a bedroom downstairs, there were 6 bathrooms in that house (5 full one just a toilet and sink) and it did feel big.
When we had 4 kids in a 1300 sq foot house, it was plenty enough room but there was only one bathroom and that made it more difficult.
We had 2 in a 1300 with 2 bathrooms AND a garage for storage and workout room, that worked fine, but the bedrooms were big and living room tiny, that is not ideal, it needed to be arranged differently.
Now we have 2 kids in an 1800 sq feet house and I would say this is ideal, it’s arranged so the kids have their own living room/gaming room outside of their small bedrooms, and we have a bedroom on the other side of the house where the kitchen and main living room are. Also a great big back deck that can be accessed from our bedroom and that main living room, which adds enough capacity we can have big parties. 2.5 bathrooms, 3.5 would be better. When these last 2 kids move out it will STILL be ideal, an office, a guest room or workout room, a den, we could even move the TV out of the living room then if we wanted.
So I think how it’s arranged makes a difference but family of 4 in 1800sq ft feels like we have a big house to me.
I dunno about 2500sft for a family of 4. Give everyone some space so they’re not on top of one another; its not space efficent but ive always found having multiple “loops” though the house so you dont alwsys have to go through a single choke makes the space feel nicer.
As a kid with four people including myself ive lived in:
600 sqft 5800 sqft 1300 sqft 2200 sqft
600 was too small unless the kids are small sister snd I shared a bunkbed in the living room, only one bathroom.
5800 was fun, could escape parents, but it was ny job to clean the bathrooms and it was an undertaking.
1300 was ok was walkable so didnt soend nuch time in the house.
2200 was great just would have been nice to have a second living room so we weren’t on top of each other as much. P
As a single person, my 480ft2/45m2 studio apartments is basically the exact space I need.
Most apartments I’ve lived in (2 people and a dog) fall into the 500-1000 sqft range. I’d say 1500-2000 is plenty big for all but the largest families. If you’re optimizing for space, I’d say start with a baseline of around 500 then add 250 per person?
Conversion: 1000sqft = 93sqm
I think as a single person a LK studio setup is good. Married might bump it up to 1LK. Every kid after can add a bedroom and and the dining area, so one kid 2LDK, two kids 3LDK. Bathrooms is a different story depending on where you live.
1st rule of acronyms - use the full term once first.
You’ll probably want about 1/2-3/4 acres in which to build your family’s home and have some ground to work.
You can put the hosue at the rear of your property.
Where do you live where land is so cheap you can afford to have grounds?
I didn’t see any budgetary constraints in the scenario.
I actually calculated this a while ago. I’m not going by just “essentials” but also taking in account that furniture will take up space. So you need just enough to not feel ‘cramped’, and to be comfortable.
In this one, I have a somewhat rectangular-shaped home in mind. Assume you need at least the following:
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Bedroom: (bed + cabinet for clothes): 8 m₂
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Dinner area (table and chairs) 10 m₂
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Toilet and washing basin 2 m₂
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Shower (including rack) 4 m₂
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Kitchen (storage, sink, oven, hot plate, fridge, dishwasher, washing machine/washdryer/dryer, rubbish bin) 8 m₂
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Living (couch, TV or whatever) 8 m₂
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Extra space[1] (your niche) 8 m₂
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Hallway (clothing rack, room access) 6 m₂
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Optional [2] (outdoor) 10 m₂
[1] You could also distribute the extra space to the other rooms. Just consider it a sort of ‘backup’. You could even distribute all the above around freely if you wanted so. Maybe you want a smaller dinner area but more of that garden, or bath.
[2] For this I count a garage, garden, or bicycle storage. But I consider it optional since not everyone has or strictly needs those for good comfort.
If you were especially efficient with the space, eg. having small tables and beds, merging living+dinner room, toilet and bathroom together, I suppose you could cram it down to 40 m₂. But that’s gonna feel cramped a bit easily, unless if you’re a student or live at a retirement home.
Altogether, you then get about 54-64 m₂ for an household of 1-2 adults (may include a small child or pet).
So a good fist rule might be 60 m₂, then add 20 m₂ for each extra person. Mostly due to additional bedrooms, storage usage, maybe an extra bathroom, larger garden, etc. So then you have:
1-2 people: 60 m₂
3 people: 80 m₂
4 people: 100 m₂
5 people: 120 m₂
and so on.This seems decent reasoning, and it’d fit with a lot of the Victorian up to interwar, and frankly reconsruction era up until maybe the 60s 70s. Utilitarian housing built where i live for the working class. Of course people want more, but i think people can make do reasonably with this. Of course the victorians did slot in a couple of streets of mansions here or there for the upper middle sleazebags.
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Hugely subjective and you’re right on cultural differences coming into play, as well as access to/existence of common areas. Are bathrooms communal? Are patios/balconies/outdoor spaces? Are there areas to congregate/socialize/eat nearby? This affects how much internal space is needed.
It becomes more of an urban planning, zoning, and building code exercise than one to be solved by developers, who will try to maximize revenue on any given plot when given the chance. The problem for developers (and accessible housing) is margin: unless gov heavily subsidizes low end residential, they will prefer to build more lucrative luxury apartments.
For contentedness, area per occupant would be the best bet. I’d expect an attempt to target median family sizes and working from there. Global household average is around 3.5 people.
Somewhere in the 20-55 square meter range per occupant is likely the sweet spot, depending on the above factors. You can get away with less space with more amenities nearby.
Mexico has “mini-casas” of ~325 square feet to provide housing for their working poor which residents had challenges with. Paris and Hong Kong have tiny apartments around 10 square meters, where residents spend a significant amount of time outside the home. But these were developer limitations, mostly, to cram as many units into a footprint as possible - not taking occupant satisfaction into account…
It’s been my experience that the areas most often referred to as “bad parts of town” are the areas with the most people squeezed in without consideration for anything else. Small homes can be fine of there are other outlets in the area such as community centers, parks, libraries, stores, etc. Without those you just concentrate too much human suffering in one area.
It is my obwervatoin that as houses approach 325m2 people start looking for more luxury in the space vs more. Beyond that more space isn’t needed unless you are rich enough to win the cities largest mansion competition and so people who are rich but not rich enough to compete don’t go bigger even though they could.
Live in a pup tent and you want a bigger one, but in a bigger tent you start thinking lights or a cot before bigger.
there is of course a lot of variation. you can be happy in anything - but you will want more anyway until you get to about 325
My house is 0.4 dam², and I find it cramped for one person. It would be more acceptable as an apartment, but as a house there’s no space to store tools for maintenance, let alone have a workshop for hobbies. I’d be able to use all of 1 dam², at least.
0.4 dam2 for a house sounds pretty small… does that only account for area-under-the-roof? Also, do you have a terrace?
It is quite small, much smaller than what would be legal to build under current regulations. It was originally built as a weekend retreat, not a full-time residence.
I have a terrace, and a reasonable parcel of land. My intention is to build a freestanding garage/workshop next to it, which would alleviate most of my space concerns. The house is built on a steep slope, with a sort of crawl space beneath it, and what is, quite frankly, a woefully inadequate foundation. Eventually, I’d like to jack the building up and build a proper basement.
I feared you would live in one of those highly populated cities in which extremely small and weirdly shaped lots are pretty common. Like, how do you build a house in a 4x10 m lot?
Anyway, thats the good thing with houses, you can always go up or sides… I mean it isn’t cheap, but you are the owner of your lot.
On a sidenote, i always wanted to have a big garage that i could also use as a workshop. They aren’t common in my country. If it helps in anyway, i like your plan and attitude.
I think there’s reasonable high and low bounds as you say, but i think there’s a lot of factors as others have said. Income, culture, and cost of living are big factors. If you live in the USA and basically need to do a weekly shop at Costco for a family of 4 you need a lot more space than a single person who is able to eat out for nearly every meal in a dense urban area with affordable and moderately healthy street food (so a tiny hot plate suffices as a kitchen). But a family of 4 living in an urban area with lots of shops might do the groceries on the way home from work several times a week and then the refrigerator doesn’t need to be enormous.
Lifestyle plays into it as well. If you have a serious hobby you need space for it - whether it’s sewing, machining, fitness, or gaming. If you live on a rural property, you need space to keep chickens and a lawn tractor and a lot more necessities than someone in a flat in London.
Our house is ~100 m², but legally that doesn’t count the cellar or finished attic. It feels small for a family of five. So maybe 20m² as a minimum, even counting communal bathrooms and galley and laundry.
