Whats a maisonette?

[Toanswer2025]

I have noticed recently on social media many people see maisonette/flats/bedsits/studio flats differently to other people.

For me a maisonette is a property that has an upstairs and down stairs but there's the same above or below you.

A flat is a property that's all on one level

A studio flat is where you have a separate kitchen and bathroom but your living room and bedroom is in one .

A bedsit is a room . That may had a small kitchenette within the room. Shared bathroom and possibly kitchen

I have seen people calling a studio flat a 1 bedroom flat . Or a maisonette without stairs . Its bugging me 🤣

Agree with your description of them all

Id maybe collate bedsit and studio though

That’s how I’d define all of those terms as well.

A maisonette is a flat, but has its own entrance to the outdoors, whilst a flat could have a shared entrance, and you access it internally from a stairwell.

I agree with your definitions of a studio flat, and a bedsit.

Maisonette is a two story property but where the upstairs and downstairs are separate dwellings with the stairs on the outside. If the stairs were internal and they shared a front door it’d just be a flat.

Good question. Is it the same as a duplex?

The difference I think is the door - so a maisonette has its own front door leading to outside usually 2 stories - it can have different levels but doesn’t have to. We have a load around here that don’t and are basically a house split into two self contained properties - the US call them duplexes.

so it is to do with how you access it

I wouldn’t say a maisonette has to have a dwelling both above and below? So you could have a ground floor flat with a maisonette over the first and second floors.

There's also conversions. I live in one. Large victorian house. Ground floor is a 2bed flat. I'm on first (then a half floor) and second floor, 4 beds. So wouldn't really fit into the maisonette description. Though you could call it a flat. But people tend to think of something different if I say it's a flat, mainly as they think I then don't have stairs.

Maisonette is a flat with its own entrance from the outside.But does it need to be more than 1 storey?

If you have to go through a common entrance to get to your property and its more than 1 storey, it's a flat.

If it's 1 storey and you have a common entrance, then it's a flat??? But I'm not sure

Maisonettes don't have any internal communal areas. I used to live in a block wiith four maisonettes and we all had own own front doors and the upper flats were accessed via an external iron stair case at the front of the building.

Flats with two floors are called duplexes.

Yes - you often have maisonettes above a shop. They have their own entrance.

I don't think a studio has a separate kitchen - it's all in one apart from the bathroom.

I forgot about conversions

As many have said, they can have different layouts, but what makes a maisonette a maisonette (, French for 'little house') is that it has its own street door.

I think of studios as having one room for living and sleeping but with a separate kitchen and separate bathroom. A room with a kitchenette in the same room is a bedsit.

Really old school bedsits (ie from the fiftes) were just single rooms with a kettle and gas ring and the bathroom was shared with the other tenants.

I define a maisonette as a flat with its own front door. I used to live in a first floor one, it had a front door and stairs up to what was essentially an apartment. There were four in the block.

Maisonette has an entrance directly into the property instead of a communal entrance. I had a maisonette as my first property and it was all on one floor, in a building which was a block of 4, 2 ground and 2 first floor which still had their own doors they just led directly upstairs.
The gardens were split into 4.

always thought of maisonettes as a house on top of a house sometimes wonder what the point is
bedsit a room
studio flat bed with a loo and shower cubicle plus a sink unit with a cooker
bungalow house with top storey not there

A maisonette is a self contained property with its own front door, from the street. It can be on one or more levels. The difference between it and a flat or apartment is, those have shared communal areas and a shared entrance from the street.

It all depends on where you live. Where I live a flat is all on one level, regardless if your front door is shared or not. Bedsit one room with separate bathroom. Studio flat, separate bathroom and kitchen, maisonette is a house in effect but could have a flat either above or below. We have a huge amount in the town where I live.

However my husband insists a maisonette is a flat with its own front door, because that's how they describe them where he comes from!

Maisonettes round here are usually a block of four, two upstairs and two downstairs, so at first glance you might think they are a lair of large semi-detached houses till you notice the extra doors or external staircases. Some here have 4 front doors next to each other in the middle with the upstairs ones in the middle and going up inside the downstairs ones, some have the upstairs ones outside on the gable end. I guess they are a good way of getting 4 properties onto a relatively small piece of land but not compromising on layout or windows, if you had 4 terraced houses on the same plot they’d be very narrow and dark, maisonettes I’ve been in have usually had spacious rooms and lots of light.

Bedsit to me is everything in one space plus shared bathroom, likely to be in a house conversion. Studio flat is self contained with everything in one room apart from the bathroom, likely to be purpose built in blocks.

Near us are some former military quarters which are like two sets of 60s terraced houses one on top of the other, so four floors in all, no idea what those would be called.

I used to live in a maisonette, it was all on one level. The difference between a flat and a maisonette is that a maisonette has its own entry, so there is no communal space.

A maisonette is on two levels. Could be ground and first floor or first and second floor etc etc. Its nothing to do with the doors or communal entrances. It's that it's on two levels.

That's simply not the correct definition of either a maisonette or flat

That said I'm in Scotland so perhaps the rules are different in England

I’m in a maisonette. It’s a house but has a flat on top of it so not classed as a house so it’s a maisonette that’s always what I thought was the definition anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️