AIBU to wonder why new houses are so badly designed?

[StarlingMurmuration]

We're planning to move house soon and I've just spent an enjoyable though frustrating half hour on Rightmove, wondering why on earth modern houses are so poorly designed. We have been renting a small three bed new build terrace, with a WC on the ground floor, and a family bathroom and ensuite on the first floor... I liked my ensuite but at the same time thought it was ridiculous as two of the three bedrooms were significantly smaller than they needed to be to allow the ensuite to fit. But I've just seen a house that takes the biscuit. A four bed, three floor semi with five (FIVE!) toilets/bathrooms. A WC on the ground floor and one on the first floor, a family bathroom and two ensuites. Meanwhile the master bedroom and the second bedroom with ensuites are both tiny (9'5" x 8'11"), and the other bedrooms are even smaller. Why in earth do developers think people want so many bathrooms at the expense of actual room space? AIBU to find this infuriating, or does everyone else actually ant five toilets in a four bedroom house?

Fell = feel obviously...

Our under stairs cupboard is huge. Have drawer units in there, dyson, carpet cleaner, ironing board and iron and ironing bag overflowing, routers, camera tripod, camera, tools, hats and scarves, all the coats and umbrellas, manuals for the appliances, waterproof all in ones for DD, bike helmets.........

We have a superking storage bed which I had made taller than usual. It's that big I could probably live under there. Old clothes that are being kept to pass on are under there in vacuum bags, along with spare/winter duvets and pillows, suitcases, a guitar that DH hasn't played for decades but must be kept .........

I'm all about smart storage these days.

Being effective with your storage is fine, but the rooms still have to be big enough to fit the furniture in. Our house is an okay size for a small 3 bed but you couldn't have a bed larger than a double in the main bedroom and still comfortably walk around to both sides.

The smallest room is half a foot too narrow to be used in the most effective way as a bedroom and to have space for the persons clothes and a desk.

We have a wall of cupboards in our front room which is pretty effective, but if the room was only 10ft wide like the living room in the OPs house there wouldn't be space to have any cupboards!

Also, a lot of the really clever storage ideas are not cheap! We are dealing with the tiny box room problem by getting a carpenter in to build a half a foot short raised bed, with drawers and a lift up desk. It's not going to be anywhere near as cheap as it would be to just buy a standard one.

It's totally wrong that well designed houses cost so much more - we shouldn't be building so many crap houses that a bit of common sense in the design costs a premium!

A house/flat doesn't have to be massive to use the space effectively, but it does need a lot of thought and currently that just isn't happening.

There is a newish house close to where I live which is build in a stunning position overlooking a sea loch. I have no idea about its interior layout but the wall to the West (towards the sea and the islands) doesn't have a single window. There is no reason I can see for this, no close neighbours or anything. If I had the money to buy a piece of land like this and build a house on it I would spend a lot of time making sure that it is perfectly designed to make the most of the location. It's such a waste of a great site.

When we were house hunting we saw 6 new builds in the area we wanted before finally saying "no". Not one of them had any storage. They all had shiney sparkly kitchens (all that white!) but nowhere to put the fridge freezer. They all had ensuites (one had 3!) but no space for wardrobes. We wanted a 3 bed (us, DD, DSD/visitors) but were having to look at 4 and 5 beds to get 3 doubles. We really wanted a detached house too after having noisy neighbours for the last 6 years.

We saw one that boasted about the attached garage being longer than usual and with "4 gang sockets" to allow for electrical equipment to be stored as well as a car - but no way to get to it from inside the house? Oh and in the same house I measured the 'master bed' and it was a 4ft double; there's no way we'd have got our king in it, but they still called it the master.

I also don't get how you can market a 4 bed house on a completely built up estate as a 'family home' (so say 3 kids) and provide a garden no bigger than a postage stamp. Where the hell do the kids play?

We ended up with a 1930s semi in a semi rural village. Bags of room, huge garden. Good thick walls. We will never move again.

Why do British houses not have basements? At least I don't know any new houses with basements. I'm aware basements add considerable costs to the build but they are so useful as storage and facilities space and it saves valuable living space upstairs.

We have a new build , it's an amazing design . Yes it has 4 bathrooms but that means we get one each . All the bedrooms bar one are huge and the en suites are as big as most bathrooms if not bigger . our master is more than big enough you could divide it and still have two big bedrooms . I think maybe you are looking in the wrong place .

I don't know about the layout but we have a huge number of newly built flats where I live. Most of them appear to be timber framed, with a cement/fibre cladding.

Yesterday a small fire started on a top floor in one of them and within an hour or so the whole block was alight. It was really shocking, the fire spread through wall cavities and the roof space which doesn't appear to have had any divisions.

It's a joke given building regs in most houses - fire doors as standard, double boarding with fireproof materials if higher than 2 floors etc. Think how hard it is to get a loft conversion right these days, and these clowns can get away with a timber frame and flammable walls.

At least 25 families have been evacuated, the building has partially collapsed and 5 homes were completely destroyed.

The fire service commented on how difficult it was to control the spread of the fire due to the timber frame and sadly this isn't the first time a modern TF building has gone up like matchwood.

They normally use quick-grown timber which ignites at the drop of a hat.

Aside from this the building exterior looks rubbish after only a couple of years.

Cutting corners is not the way forward. Even when it's for HA tenants

Oh and press coverage mentions the fire and rescue service 'breaking a hole in the wall to get access'. Yeah well you can learn a lot from the fact they were able to do that.

No one got killed, thank God, as it started in the afternoon on a warm day when people were out or at least awake.

If it had begun at night there would very likely have been people killed.

Tinkly...storage as i dont want my shoes, hoover and clothes out in public view. One flat i saw had not a single cupboard! I mean not a single one but two bathrooms. Do you want to look at your hoover sitting in the lounge every day?

I've visited one friend's place that was a good new build - it was on a road that has some nice semi-detached brick cottages, a bit Arts & Crafts style, so the new builds are in keeping with that style.

The kitchen/breakfast room actually has space for a table you can sit at without squeezing round, and there is a huge living/dining room at the back. Cloakroom downstairs and 2 bathrooms upstairs. It really did seem to work as a house and it's the only new build I've seen that does.

My pet hate is dining rooms that are on the other side of the house from the kitchen and are barely big enough to seat 4 people. Who uses a separate dining room, especially if it's tiny, and miles from the kitchen? Make a decent sized kitchen diner and give people the extra living room space or a study/home office/utility room, all of which are more useful.

Oh and apparently one other reason for squeezing in 2nd ensuites is for live-in nannies/au pairs. My DB's house has a second bathroom that seems a bit unnecessary but apparently was put in by the previous owners for their au pair to use, as (so I'm told) that's the way it's done these days!

I live in a Victorian house - well a large part of one, anyway - and there isn't much storage tbf. No under stairs cupboards as it's staircase after staircase, so you can't store anything there, there is a nice big airing/linen cupboard on the top floor and it has two decent sized attics, one of which we only discovered when we had moved in (yay!) but other than that, the halls and landings are tiny and we really struggle to keep our shoes out of the way. The hoover lives wherever it was last used!

Mind you if we had the ground floor as well, there would be more space for stuff like that.

We live in a new build two bed and I love it. Both bedrooms can fit a king size bed, bedside cabinets, wardrobes etc. Living room is big and spacious. We have a downstairs toilet with storage room and a large cupboard under the stairs. Upstairs we have a bathroom and large storage cupboard on th landing plus an airing cupboard in the second bedroom.

We also have a huge garden which is relatively unheard of with new builds.

Not all new builds are tiny with no storage

After living in 2 new builds over the last 9 years, we're now living in a house built in the early 80s. Everything about it is better tbh. We can hang shelves anywhere we want, the rooms are bigger and there is sound proofing as our internal walls are packed with straw. We'd never go back to a new build.

Our upstairs flat is part of a building over 100 years old so huge rooms, high ceilings,big windows but tiny bathroom with no shower, poor heating and roof constantly needing repairs! Worst is no bloody storage. Fitted cupboards along one wall in DDS room and .......that's it. Hoover, ironing pile and every bloody other thing just stuffed in our bedroom which resembles a junk yard. Things are stored under beds where we can, Ds has no storage whatsoever other than two drawers under his bed. The place always looms so untidy....

I fucking hate new builds full stop. I had one once. Only cos I was struggling to sell my flat and the builders offered me fill market value plus 5% deposit. Never again. Walls made of cardboard and squeaky stairs. No space between you and the next house. Everything tiny. Couldn't fit decent sized table in the diner. Everyone I know at the moment seems to be snapping up these 3 storey soulless monstrosities and paying top dollar when you could get a beautiful period home with decent sized rooms and gardens. Each to their own I guess, but I feel like it's some emperors new clothes type thing.

When we were looking for 3 bed house - saw a few new builds or builds less than 10 years old that people were selling where the third bedroom was too small for a single bed.

Estate agents were busy telling us we could use it as storage room - we were looking round together 2 adults and a child of each sex and which left us wondering why we were wasting our time looking at them. We'd have had to move in a few short years.

I find the whole new build thing in the UK quite strange. In Australia you generally buy a block of land and then (within reason/planning permission) build whatever you want on it. Plenty of decent home building companies to choose from, and you get to choose everything, all fixtures and fitting etc. and can even make small changes to the plans. Instead here we have greedy developers building substandard, tiny crap rabbit hutches. There has to be a better way...

Admittedly I have seen some decent smaller companies new builds.

Four bedrooms here, family bathroom, ensuite, downstairs shower room and an extra loo in the garage ideal tradesman's loo (Don't flame me, I am JOKING!!!)

I remember when I was young, it was the norm to share bathrooms with randomers in hotels but, these days, almost unheard of except backpacking hostels etc so perhaps it's en extension of that and people don't want to share with their own family either!

I must admit, I would dearly love to not share a bathroom with DH (I tried to claim the ensuite as my own when we moved here but he was having none of it!) and I know DD would love her own ensuite so I can see the attraction.

I live in a 4 bedroom, 4 toilet property. It is lovely! It is quite spacious though. It is super energy efficient and people can bath and shower at the same time!

Small builder / self build though! So saw plans prior to being built!

We have a 2 bed terrace, built right at the end of the 1970s. It's not huge - reasonable sized lounge-diner and kitchen downstairs, 2 bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Small garden

I went to look round some new build 3 bed terraces down the road, which cost about £80,000 more than our current house. They were about the same size as our house, but had somehow squeezed in a third bedroom, an ensuite and a downstairs cloakroom. The rooms were absolutely tiny, it was ridiculous. The third "bedroom" couldn't even fit a single bed, let alone a wardrobe or chest of drawers, and neither the kitchen nor the lounge could fit a dining table (there was a bistro style high table and stools tucked into the corner of the kitchen. The garden was tiny and at an odd angle.

My house was built in 2012 and has three storeys, four bedrooms, two living rooms, downstairs loo and three en-suites. Ground floor is loo (with loads of room, so we put a huge shoe storage unit in there), kitchen with room for small table, 5m2 living/dining room with huge understairs cupboard and full width windows/patio doors. Middle floor has bedroom over garage, another living room with full width windows, bathroom which is ensuite to second bedroom as well as door to landing. Top floor has two bedrooms, both with ensuite shower rooms and one with a balcony.

We could fit a car in the garage if it didn't already contain an enormous 1600cc motorbike. The garden is quite small but kids are teens and there's parkland behind the house anyway as it's on a private gated estate. We have put built in wardrobes in two of the bedrooms and the only thing I sometimes miss is loft space, but the sort of stuff I'd put in the loft is either in the garage or the shed instead.

It was built by Linden Homes, we've had very few issues and they've been really good about fixing anything that came up.