Mumsnet Talk

Interested on others perspectives.

Our house is 108 square meters in total and I feel its small. I grew up in houses four times the size, so maybe Im spoilt?

DH thinks our house is fine but he grew up in houses of the same size.

Sometimes I have felt a bit embarrassed when relatives or dd friends have said comments along the lines of "oh its nice- but really small".

Then others have around and said it seemed quite big.

I suppose I class our house as small, an average house about 130-160 and larger anything over 160 square meters.

What do you think?

Don't know how big my house is in metres.
Average I would say, 3 proper bedrooms with kitchen & living area or 2.

What would you class as proper bedrooms do you think? All of them double?

We don't usually measure house sizes in metres in the UK, but number of bedrooms.

I'd say small was 2 bed with kitchen diner, 3/4 with seperate dining room was average and 5+ with a study was fairly large.

I would say modern or traditional 2 beds, kitchen/diner, one reception room small.

modern 3 beds, kitchen/ diner one reception room ( small/ medium)
traditional (medium)

4 bed, kitchen, dining room, lounge (med/large)

anything bigger (med, large, v.large, fuck off mansion)
depending on house style and size of rooms/ garden.

All house plans are in square meters/ square feet in the UK.

Trust me I have spent enough time looking at floor-plans on rightmove!

Yes, but that's not how traditionally we'd speak about houses. I'd have no clue how big any of my houses have been in terms of square metres, but I do know how many bedrooms they had.
All conversations I've had with British about houses has been on this basis, and every conversation I've had with other nationalities (French, Dutch, American, Finnish and India), has been based on actual size.
I didn't mean to offend, I only thought you'd get more response from bedrooms than area.

I've always thought of my house as average (no idea of the square metres) but seems it's small by the scales posted really.

I have 2 good size bedrooms, 1 tiny box room, large living room but no dining room, small kitchen.

Big to me is sniff anything with more than one bathroom, proper bathroom not just separate toilet.

WTF did that random 'sniff' come from?

Well and what they cost in different areas is completely different.

A small house in London is probably significantly more expensive that a large home in other areas of the UK where I live

Im not offended

I just think going by bedrooms is not the best indicator as it depends how the space has been used.

For example fathers house has huge bedrooms- you could easily fit three king sized beds into each one. Yet he "only " has 5 bedrooms.

Where as it might appear his friends house sounds bigger as they have 8 bedrooms, yet in reality the house is much smaller as it's just more has been squeezed in to the space.

I liked the random sniff

Proper bed room can fit a bed/ wardrobe etc with room to walk round. We have 2 doubles & a single which are ok.
We looked at a house with my parents and couldn't work out how to get a double in the 'master' room or a single in the second room.

my house is tiny. i remember we had ours valued about 2 years ago and the estate agent told us our street were the smallest houses built in our town. They are mini and were built in the 60s.

lounge/diner
extended kitchen (you could touch both sides of the room with arms outstretched before it was extended!)
teeny hall
teeny box room
2 other small bedrooms.
teeny bathroom

but its cosy, warm, renovated and in a nice spot. in a shit town

heating bills are mini. its got a big garden and drive. we get a new bathroom soon and the garden/garage are being renovated in Feb....so it will be small but perfectly formed!

(apart from DS box room which needs sorting but we will get to that very shortly....note to anyone with a box room - do not get built in furniture!!)

It sounds like you are very happy in your home Vicar

Our home is similar to vicars except we have a kitchen/diner and our biggest bedrooms are a goof size.

Vicars please tell me more about built in furniture in a box room.

That sniff was awesome

It sounds like you may have a slightly squewed perspective if you grew up in a 5 very large bedroom house. That surely has to be a very very large house by anyone's standards?

Small would be 2 bed or some 3 beds (ie ours -one normal sized bedroom, one single and a box room).

I'd see average as 2 doubles and a single and then large as 4 bed plus.

Very large when you start having grounds . .

We have 4 bedrooms - 3 doubles and one single. Seperate dining room and a lounge. None of the rooms ae massive though. I would say our house is on the larger size of average I have always thought 5 bedrooms upwards OR 4 with big reception rooms is a BIG house

I think sq ft is more usual here. Ours is three-bed but 950ft and I consider it small, though we have a kitchen we can eat in plus a utility roomand downstairs loo so it's not too bad.

Medium I would consider to be 1500 sq ft to 2000 sq ft, ie, your usual 4-bed, two reception rooms, v typical Edwardian-1930s townhouse etc.

Anything above that is large.

People can be a bit snobby about terraced houses and about the town where I live, but my home is a tardis

Huge living room, dining room, utility, kitchen, sun room, downstairs loo and good sized garden (with a huge shed at the bottom which needs its roof fixing), three double bedroom, small attic and family bathroom. oh, and a walk in airing cupboard. It' s huge. And costs loads to heat. And I need carpets throughout.

Relatively speaking, ' twas cheep in comparison to houses five miles down the road.

Our first house I would count as small: 1 reception (only big enough for telly, 2 seater sofa & tiny dining table) The kitchen was a corridor which led to our bathroom on the ground floor.
Upstairs had 2 double bedrooms (biggest rooms we had).

The house I live in now, is terraced has two largish reception rooms (knocked through) good size kitchen (galley) and upstairs 2 double rooms, one single & bathroom. I count it as medium!

Ours is 600 sq feet, teeny detached. 3 very small bedrooms - largest rooms (bedroom and front room) is 11ft by 9ft.

An average sized house is like the one we live in. A small house is anything smaller than that and s large house is anything bigger than that.

I guess I would think of average for the UK as being 3 bedrooms, or 2 if you're including flats.

Do you mean small, or far away?