Box rooms

[Beansonapost]

Why is it that houses in the U.K. are still being built with box rooms?

... and still being built with no laundry/utility room?

I grew up having all massive bedrooms... kitchen diner... lounge/living room... utility... garden... garage etc. This is in the Caribbean. My childhood bedroom could fit two uk sized box rooms.

I've lived in other countries almost all of them had utility rooms... except China where the washing was housed in the bathroom; which to me makes sense. Why would you want to do laundry in the kitchen?

Husband is British so is used to this way of life... but I am confused as it's 2018 and I am certain the way people use their homes has changed. Why are people still being forced to have a box room and do the washing in the kitchen? That slot could be used for extra storage.

We went to look at some new builds... while the house was nice for almost £500,000 it just didn't provide what I would want in a family home (based purely on my experience). I think when people buy a home they don't really intend to move anytime soon unless they have to... so why put a room that is useless beyond the age of 10? Then force people to either sell of "create additional space" why not just build a house people can live in for as long as they need or want?

Also where utility rooms are concerned... in a country where it rains so much, wouldn't a dedicated space for laundry be standard? Wash, dry, iron... leave clothes to dry with windows open. Clothes out of sight.

Why is this the norm in the U.K.?

Also... why are homes still built with such poor storage options? You might get an under stair cupboard, an airing cupboard but that's it?! Why aren't built in wardrobes standard in all bedrooms? Gives you back your floor space and means less furniture to buy.

It seems developers are more concerned about how many people they can cram into these developments than how people will enjoy their homes/space.

Obviously, when I say no advantages- I mean in terms of quality of life.

The main reason families live in flats is because it's cheaper than a house. And that's because it's undesirable.

Why do most UK houses not have basements? Is it to do with damp?

evilharpy, quite a lot do but it depends on the area. Houses usually don’t have them in places which have rocky hard to deal with soil so digging basements is prohibitively difficult and time consuming.

In South East London they have that type of ground (I think it is chalk) so most houses don’t have basements. It’s also the reason why South East London didn’t get the tube. That’s my fact of the day for you!

I am talking about 3-4-floor buildings with family-sized apartments with soundproofing built around quality green communal areas and supplied with appropriate amenities (schools, clinics, underground parking, etc.) and infrastructure.

There are a lot of 60s estates like this in London and they’re not pleasant. I lived in one for a while. The communal sq in the middle was generally used for burning stolen cars, dropping needles and toileting dogs.

The problem is that in houses neighbours are cordoned off so problems with them are minimised and usually only involve two sets of immediate neighbours. Put a load of four storey flats around a shared square and one or two problems families suddenly become a huge issue for 250 households in their shared space.

mightymucks interesting! In my London days I did always wonder why there was no tube in SE London.

I think I have only ever been in three houses in the UK that had a basement. One was a back to back terrace in Yorkshire (it was the kitchen), one was in Swindon (also the kitchen) and one was a ground floor flat in London (scary cellar). I grew up in Ireland and have never been in a single house with a basement.

Interesting discussion.

I had always understood "box room" to refer to the room over the stairwell, where a chunk of the floor space is taken up by a "box" needed to accommodate the ceiling of the staircase coming up. Funny that we all have different interpretations. But yes, even in the smaller standard semis, such a room would until quite recently always accommodated an adult-sized single bed at least.

Someone mentioned garages late enough to park you car. I think this is more a geographical thing. In climates with lots of damp, rain, drizzle and mud, it's not really feasible to park your car in your garage as you quickly run into problems of damp in the garage and in the car itself. Areas with a dry continental climate find that parking in garages works well for them, but there's a reason most people in UK / Ireland don't use garages for car parking, at least not for cars that are in frequent use

How dare you, OP - insult British town planning and you insult the queen!

We’re in London in a 2 bed flat and we will need to relocate to size up so I spend a fair amount of time looking at what we can afford in different places. We have a girl and a boy so they won’t be sharing forever so I’d prefer to have them in 2 equal sized rooms. Instead many places have a huge master bedroom with an en suite bathroom, a double bedroom with en suite shower room, and a box room. WHY? There is a family bathroom, which would be used only by the box room occupier as the other 2 have en suites.

@BustopherJones .. have you cons feted partitioning the master and you have the next room down ?

@pigpoglet unfortunately the masters were on the top floor with no hallway so adding in 2 rooms with 2 entrances would make 2 much smaller rooms. Then next floor down is good sized room with en suite and a family bathroom that is the same size as master en suite, and box room of equal size to family bathroom.

I just can’t work out who this works for.

Clearly some people think I'm daft.

Size of the house doesn't matter so much as good design!

Houses are simply meeting the requirement to provide shelter... 4 walls and some basic fittings... nothing else is being considered.

A house doesn't have to be a mansion to provide decent storage and proper useable spaces.

I think for such a wet country a utility must be standard! Most people can't afford a tumble dryer... but they recommend not drying clothes in the house. I presume people only manage to wash on good weather days or spend their time worrying about laundry drying before the rain. I think as a country Britain can move beyond that... I'd love to wash my clothes, leave them to dry and go on the road and not worry about them.

Yes shanty towns in Jamaica etc. Poverty is everywhere. But not everyone in "poor" countries are poor; that's a general misconception!

Cost of housing is a contentious issue world wide... but in some countries they give consideration to how people will use the space. A family should not be struggling to fit themselves and their belongings into a family home.

But obviously bedrooms sell houses here... so my assumption is people would rather pay a premium for a tiny bedroom than a house that is well thought out and designed to meet changing needs.

I also have two children boy & girl. I can't imagine not giving them equal sized bedrooms.

And for the people who don't like built in wardrobes... these new builds would never fit a freestanding one. You can hardly fit your bedside tables and bed in them.

caper totally agree with you re masses of housing estates springing up in villages, the way they are going everywhere is going to be connected to each other with no green space to be seen, really boils my blood

My last house though was a 50/60s ex council house and all of them on my street were the same bloody tiny 3 bedroom houses, could get a bed in, a small wardrobe and nothing else and that was the master bedroom as well! The whole house was like that though tiny living room, tiny kitchen.

Have recently moved back to the village I grew up in to a 4 bedroom ex farm cottage, it’s 4 beds and they are all big rooms as is the kitchen and living room but the house could easy be 100years old

Oh and big garden front and back and views over the fields and hills for as far as the eye can see, only about 6 other houses along here, bliss!

OP, this is precisely why I refuse to spend any money on buying a new build. Box rooms are ridiculous and should NOT be allowed to be advertised as a bedroom. I've also never seen a new build with adequate storage or a utility room. Unfortunately, the footprint of a new build is so small (to fit as many homes on as small a piece of land as possible) that they squeeze as many rooms as possible in to make as much money as possible. Certainly not my cup of tea.

I would also rather have a utility room than a downstairs shower room, which I’ve seen a lot of, too. These have been added by owners, though, so must work for some.

SaucyJack, here's a good example of a German style shared outdoor space

www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/104071286#/

We lived in a well planned apartment building in the US: three stories plus a shared basement for storage and laundry. Each family had a story to themselves, and our apartment was bigger in square foot terms than any house we'd lived in in the UK

the big advantage of shared facilities is that three small gardens put together makes one big garden, which is better for playing in as the DC get bigger. Of course you have to get on with your neighbours (it helps if you have similarly aged DC and are all decent people) and it's not the same as having your own patch of land to do whatever you want to do, but it's a bit shortsighted to say that there are no advantages at all

But why would that be good caper?

After a few months of having the Labrador from three doors down helping themselves every time you have a BBQ, or having to stop your baby from diving into the paddling pool next door you'd be begging to put a fence up.

I know plenty of people out there are more sociable than I am, but I don't accept that the majority of people would prefer to not have the option of peace or privacy every time they want to sit in the garden with a glass of something.

As others have said, there are reasons why they're tearing down large blocks of flats and going back to smaller houses with individual gardens- and that's because most people, if given the choice, prefer not to live like battery hens.

SaucyJack, but people are living like battery hens. That' what the whole 'box room' notion is about. A 'box room' is a room not fit for habitation (unless you a battery hen of course). So many people in the UK are stuck in these battery hen houses when they could be free range in larger communal spaces.

I get that communal housing projects did not really work in the past in the UK. But this is nothing to do with the idea of more communal living itself but a lot more with lack of regulation and resulting shitty buildings standards in the UK and never-ending huge social inequality and class snobbery. I imagine that people who got housed in those failed London apartment complexes were not a mix from all walks of life - teachers, plumbers, journalists, binmen, nurses, doctors, etc, were they? With their children going to a local and good quality school? Like hell.

caperberries - 136 square meters of living space! That's, ladies and gentlemen, is nearly twice the size of a standard 30s semi (they tend to be around 75 square meters).

Utility rooms aren't really necessary. I have never seen a house in London with one, and I have lived in London all my life.

Everyone I know has their dishwasher in the kitchen.

I did find it strange when I moved here from OZ that people didn’t have a laundry and had washing machines in their kitchens ( which I find ugly).I miss not having a laundry room!

OlennasWimple, I agree. In an ideal world, it would be great if everyone could have a spacious house with a large and sunny garden. But this is not the case for many-many if not most people in the UK. This is what this whole thread is about. And given a choice of living in a house with bedrooms where you have to inch around the bed, a living room that's 2.5 meters wide (rather standard in newbuilds) supplemented with a few meager square meters of outside space and a spacious apartment with a large communal garden, I would choose the latter every time.

Because there isn’t that much space in England and builders can charge more for a 3 bed house than 2.

Also why more 3 storey houses are being built. We have a 3 storey/4 bed house which has 3 big bedrooms and one decent double room. Three bed/2 storey houses on the same estate have the same foot print and quiet small bedrooms comparatively.

" spacious apartment with a large communal garden, I would choose the latter every time."

So why are you looking for a house then as you mentioned upthread?

Flats are cheaper, and there's no shortage of them. You could be sharing a garden the other end of the road with 87 other flats by next week if you actually wanted to as much as you keep pretending you do.

I'm 100% with you SaucyJack.
There was a thread on here a day or 2 ago where the OP was complaining about the NDN children asking he dd to play when they were all out in the garden. Virtually everyone on that thread was agreeing with the OP, that she should be able to sit in her own garden without being "bothered". I was quite surprised with the lack of willingness to let her (only) dc play with the neighbours dc, on that thread, but she did at least have that option.
I would hate only having a shared space. Other people's animals leaving their mess where your dc play. Not being able to leave things out in your garden. As you've said, when your dc are still little, not being able to let your little ones potter in and out, but having to take everyone out, then bring everyone in each time. Not able to just fire up a BBQ when you want. Feeling like you were intruding on other families if you had friends round. Not being able to let your little ones out of your sight, because a neighbour might have a pool, or might have left tools out, etc.,etc.
It is normal to want your own, private space.

SaucyJack is the answer that difficult to imagine?

Because there are no spacious apartments suitable for families with good outdoor spaces near good schools where I need to live. Instead the area is full of not-very-generously spaced 1930s semis with microscopic box rooms and zero utility rooms.