Why do people want monstrously big houses?

[pumpkinscake]

Well, some people. I'm watching the beast in me on Netflix, and wondering why anyone would want such large houses? I don't see the point. No matter how much money I had. Now, I don't want a studio apartment either, but surely, one spare room for guests, a utility room, a home office. After that what's the point? I see large houses on the market, most people have small families, just seems such a pointless waste of space.

What do you regard as monstrously big?

Because they are there. Because people can afford them.

Much like any other fantastically expensive article really.

Yeah, good question. Many more bedrooms and bathrooms and other rooms than necessary for a comfortable day to day life I think.

@pumpkinscake on that basis a quite small house could have many many rooms which are hutchy.

Would you regard a three bedroom house with massive rooms equating to twice the soace of a hutchy house as monstrous?

I guess people like to host and have lots of family and friends to stay? And have lots of spare rooms for hobbies? Or have large gatherings.

I don’t know, I can see it might be handy to have a study, and then a studio for the arty one. And then you need a sitting room that gets the evening sun, but somewhere to sit in the morning. And then a proper laundry room would be cool. Big enough that you can leave the ironing board up. And a proper boot room.

So, I can see how it seems not to much.

Because Kate’s got one and all my husband’s grandmother gave me was a cottage 😡

Well this is the only reason that would make sense to me!

I keep worrying about the upkeep, but of course, if you have a mansion you can afford cleaners, handy men, gardeners. Still a pain to have to do all the admin though.

In my dreams I would love to have a bedroom each plus two spares so family could visit easily, plus a guest bathroom, two offices as we both wfh. Plus two living rooms so the adults can have a separate space. Plus a big open plan kitchen/dining room. Ideally a space that could be a gym. Is that monstrously big? That’s like 7 bedrooms if one of the offices is downstairs. Seems crazy big to me and wildly unaffordable, but I think we would genuinely use all those rooms on a regular basis.

certainly we could do with five bedrooms with both of us wfh and that’s fairly unusual and very expensive round here, so we don’t.

If money were no object I'd like at least 5 bedrooms, one for me and DH , a spare for when his snoring gets too much, one for ds, two guest rooms, we're having family over for Christmas and some who would stay can't due to space. I'd also want a home office, a playroom which would become DS' hang out friends homework space at he gets older, I'd also like an out building for dh's hobby it would have to be insulated heated, lighting etc, with a main room, for his painting and dungeons and dragons nonsense, plus another room which would be storage for his many many comic books. Ideally it would have a bathroom and kitchenette so he can have friends over to indulge in said hobbies without disturbing ds and I, so basically a one bed annexe. That's a pretty big house for 3 people but we'd use the space. DH would love a home gym and ds and I would get plenty of use from a pool while we're at it!

I do want a studio flat - I miss student accommodation days (although I would like an ensuite bathroom).

Minimal cleaning, minimal stuff. No ability to have anyone to stay.

My family do not agree, but that's fine, they can stay in a bigger house together and fend for themselves whilst I slum it.

To fit their monstrously big families in?

Have you checked those multi million pound mansion estate agent tour videos on YouTube?
I get wanting a massive house but what’s with having twice as many bathrooms as bedrooms? Just how many different rooms to shit in does one need?

If this is America, land is largely cheaper than the UK, they tend not to have greenbelts and it's just a massive place anyway.

But really, as status symbols. Much of human behaviour is driven by competition for resources, and signalling how successful you are at this.

I can see it. Once I think about needing a study to work in, 4 bedrooms for permenant family, 2 to host people coming over from home, a playroom, a gym, a couple of reception rooms, dining room. A pool would be nice.

I don't think most people who have them do have monstrously big families though, if they did, the house would just be appropriate. Here in Ireland I've noticed that families have got smaller while houses have got bigger.

Yes. One was wondering that here, too.

Do you ever worry (in your fantasy) about upkeep and cleaning?

I grew up in very large houses overseas, big gardens. Some rooms we never used, we didn’t even bother to furnish them. I now live in a decent sized (for London) 4-bed home with my DP and two DC. I love my home, but I do feel a little bit sad we can’t host the big gatherings and children’s parties I remember having when I was young. That is the only thing which would make me consider buying a bigger house, that and a garage.

If someone can afford a mortgage on a monstrously big house in 2025 they will surely also have a cleaner

It’s great having a large house when you’ve got kids at home and lots of visitors.

But the more space you have the more stuff you have - and the more work (cleaning, maintenance, upkeep) it all is.

We had a large house but downsized (retirement age) and it’s so liberating to be simplified, clutter-free and streamlined.

I reckon I could easily enjoy a pretty large house, as long as I didn't have to clean it.

I'd love a study, and a craft room, as well as enough guest rooms to put people up if you had a party. I would also enjoy a library though I could probably combine this with a sitting room, if I had a separate room to have a TV in. Chuck in a dining room, and a nice big utility room, and I must be getting towards obscene already.

Gosh it makes me want a bigger house! My two up two down terrace isn't going to fit all that in 😂 I shall have to vacate my mental fantasy home!

Hmmm, well I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's about how I grew up - I grew up in quite a big house, actually! When I visited schoolfriends' three bedroom semis I was horrified and didn't know how they could live like that 😂. I know it sounds bad but please understand it wasn't isn't a snobby thing. I wasn't looking down my nose at them.

I did not grow up in a lovely, close, happy household. My father was/is awful and my mother, while not actively as bad as him, did nothing to make anything any better. Physically and emotionally home was often not a relaxing, pleasant or even safe space for me growing up. The reason I needed the big house was essentially to be able to put more distance between me and my parents. My best friend slept in a room next door to her parents. I was down a long corridor away from mine, a distance that gave me a lot of relief. If I was at one end of the house, I could be quite far away from them at the other end, which was also a relief. In our big sitting room I would sit at one end and it was metres away from them at the other end - at my friend's house, they had only an armchair and a sofa next to each other. Her mother sat in the armchair and so my friend sat on the sofa alongside her father. I couldn't do that. Nothing could have induced me to have that physical proximity to my father. Similarly was the relief at the extra bathrooms in the house. At one point when work was being done on the house and their ensuite, my parents had to use our (the children's) bathroom for a week or so. I stopped using it. I couldn't ever use the ensuite because they did and it meant going through their bedroom so I didn't want to ever use it. My father also used the other available bathroom so I wouldn't go in there either. When he/they were using our bathroom temporarily I found going to the toilet very difficult and I stopped washing and even brushing my teeth sometimes because I couldn't stand using the bathrrom he/they did. When I saw my friends' smaller (very normal) houses I became terrified of the idea that if we ran out of money or something and had to sell the big house and move to a smaller one, I would have to share such a small space with that man and my mother, be physically closer to them, be able to hear and see them more. It was a truly scary thought for me.

That's a pretty grim story, I concede, but it's the first time I've ever written it down in such detail and it looks worse there on the page! Anyway the result is that I got used to and comforted by our large detached house and its space and privacy. It made a difficult time easier to have that extra bit of physical distance at home. I slept better for there being a seven metre corridor between me and them rather than just a wall. Obviously when I first moved out and was a student and lived in my first houses they were a lot smaller and that was never a problem. Our family house now is big by any standards, bigger than the one I grew up in. It's not a mansion or anything flash, it's a complete reform job and we're slowly working through it all. We have a very different atmosphere here to how I grew up (deliberately, obviously!) and my kids seem happy to be close to us and don't have any apparent aversion to being around us at all but somehow I get anxious at the idea of us living in a small house. It's like a second hand fear on their behalf and the need to be able to achieve distance - even if they don't want it - is something I feel a need to provide for them. It's big enough here that bizarrely we've even moved my parents in with us... It's complicated! They're not actually in the house with us exactly, we've built them a separate apartment on the side of our house and due to its size and our lifestyles I usually go many days and sometimes weeks without having to see or speak to my father. That part is still not easy but the truth is that I've found a way to make it work. I no longer fear him although I certainly don't like him and some complex mental gymnastics have convinced me that this is, for various reasons, the best solution for me at this point.

I’d have a couple more bedrooms so all dc can comfortably stay at once, it’s rare because all are adults but currently someone has to have the living room or book a hotel (thankfully there’s a cheap one at end of road)