In the abscence of an Interior Design/Renovations topic - is it always better to have more bedrooms even if it means having a small living room?

[Malaleche]

We are doing up a small two storey house and adding an attic floor and roof terrace.
At present the plan is to have;
ground floor: hall, kitchen/dining room, walk-in cupboard off kitchen, WC with shower and small double bedroom
1st floor; bathroom, small double bedroom, tiny kids bedroom with bunkbeds, small living room
top floor: small double bedroom, roof terrace

Question is: should we make a bigger living room by joining the tiny kids room and living room thereby having to have our bedroom on a different floor from theirs (theyll be 4.5 and 1.5 when we move)? We may not even move in but sell and get somewhere with a patio instead - in that case would it be better to keep the 3.5 bedrooms or have 3 and a bigger living room?

would put the living room on the same floor as the kitchen & have the bedroom on the first floor.

I'm with Maisym, why not put the living room on the ground floor with the kitchen and all the bedrooms upstairs?

I was going to say that too - only the small bedroom on the ground floor might be even smaller than the small living room on the 1st floor?

Thanks all but wouldnt work - ground floor has only one good window allocated to kitchen/dining room, the ground floor bedroom at back of house has only a small high up window onto someone elses property, however first floor has 3 floor length windows with good views and light so prefer living room to be there. Bedrooms on ground and attic floor could be used as spare rooms/study/ours or kids bedrooms

tricky one - like garden access for the living space. Could you put in any windows or a sliding/double glass doors to the garden? Separateing the kitchen & living will make two level living difficult with kids.

If I were you I would try to have less bedrooms and a better sized living room.

If the living room is in the small side it would be regarded as another bedroom if/when you want to put the house in sale.

Besides, people looking for 4 bedroomed houses are normally families who are also expecting a garden so it wouldn't bring much return for the money spent and may make the sale a bit more dificult.

Personally I would have your downstairs small window room as the dining room/ kitchen and then make the living room have the good window. It would be hard to sell a house with kitchen/ dining and living rooms on different floors. HTH.

Thanks for your thoughts - house has no garden. Views from first floor are really good - you can see the top peak of the snowy mountains (we're in Spain) so would be wasted on bedrooms i think. i think this house is more suited to a family with 1 or 2 older kids or none, or as a holiday home. when we bought it we didnt think we were going to have kids, 3 weeks later i was pregnant! i think i want to sell it when its done up and get something with some outside space for the kids and living room and kitchen on ground floor...

could the kitchen and downstairs bedroom be swapped over? you can light a kitchen to give light so the small window wouldn't be a probelma dn would then give you a ground floor livign space with bedrooms upstairs and personally i would love a master bedroom with a view

What's normal in your part of Spain? When I was a kid we used to go on hol there to a house which had kitchen, open plan living and dining and a balcony on the top floor overlooking the sea and bedrooms downstairs where it was cooler.

How does the small double bedroom on the attic floor compare to the small living room? If it's going to be slpit from the kitchen/diner I'd shift it to the top to gain access onto the roof terrace. Maybe add small sink/fridge area for drinks etc.

IfI were being really radical I'd shift all/most of the bedrooms to the groundfloor and put the living spaces on 1st and attic levels.

Can you put the kitchen/dining room on the 1st floor, so that it's on the same floor as the sitting room? Then you can have all the family bedrooms on the ground floor and use the top floor as a spare bedroom/study.

I agree with bran and soupdragon. If there is no access to garden etc from the ground floor, then I would put the bedrooms there. The put kitchen/diningroom/living rooms on the next floor, and leave the loft room with acces to roof terrace as playroom/family room.

Actually, the more I think about it the fabber that sounds. Do you have piccies, I like the sound of this unique property!!

Thanks for all your suggestions, unfortunately i cant do any major changes at this point as work has already begun and it took us 4 yrs to get the planning permission as it is near the Alhambra. The ground floor is just too gloomy except for that one window at the front to be used entirely for bedrooms (one of those small high windows is going to end up in the walk-in cupboard off the kitchen) and the stairs take up too much room so they start in kitchen. the bedroom on the ground floor could be made as an extension of the hall, i mean with no door on and then kids could play in there but it is gloomy, i had it in mind as a spare room. All the rooms in the house except kitchen and bathroom could be used as bedrooms/study/livingroom but the more i think about it the more obvious it seems that we will never live in this house - kids need outside space! I do have photos but don't know how to put them on here...

I think living space is more important than bedrooms that you just sleep in, so I'd go for a bigger living space at the bedrooms expense.

You sleep in bedrooms! In the dark

yes hana, thats what i think although i think a good window is a bonus for a bedroom. We are in a rented flat at the mo and we moved our bedroom just before DD2 was born last year swapping it with the studio/office. Before we had a window onto a small internal patio (we're on the first floor of a 4 storey building) and now we have a floor-length one with a balcony onto the street, its definately nicer and brighter now and feels much less depressing. I think it doesnt matter if bedrooms are small as long as they are bright and there's good storage space in them or elsewhere in the house.
In answer to B1977: Its either very hot or pretty cold here - the house has very thick walls so the temperature inside is quite stable year-round. It was actually warmer than the flat we live in in the middle of winter even tho it was uninhabited! And it's cool in the summer too.

Does anyone - apart from someone with mobility problems - ever really want a bedroom on the ground floor?

well exactly, and i want to avoid carrying shopping up the stairs too. Actually the street is so steep and the cobbled steps are needing re-done that i cant even get my 3 wheeled pram up it ! So might have to live in a tent at the bottom of the hill instead...

NKF, in a standard UK type house, no, but in a house where the ground floor is dark and the upstairs sunny with outside space and views then yes!

I would happily live in an 'upside down house' if there is something to be gained from having living room etc upstairs. In this case having big windows, and access to a roof terrace.

I have seen several houses in Spain where the secondary bedrooms are downstairs so it shouldn't be a problem, actually, some of my friends had a baby and a toddler sleeping downstairs and, provided the baby monitor was available it wasn't a problem.

My mother in law has a four story house, with most of the space used as an art gallery. She has the kitchen in the ground floor, her bedroom in the first one, and a living room with a wall wide window looking into a nice terrace at the top. The best part of the house is the top floor (particularly when the window is open), she says that from time to time she finds tourists there relaxing and reading her magazines (!)

I don't know how big is the well of your staircase, MIL's is big enough as to have the dining table there when there are dinners. SHe has a huge flower sculpture hanging from the top floor and with all the balaustraude around it, it just looks magical (now, if she were as good as her taste...)

Living space needs to have the best rooms (and that goes both for size and light).

chandra - your MILs flower sculpture would probably fill my entire house! I don't do feet but the ground floor is only about 36 M2...

Which would make around 100-110 m2 - staircases? thats a pretty good size for a 3 bedroom house but probably a struggle for a 4 bedroom one

Considering that you mentioned the alhambra and have a 3 story house... are you leaving in the old town or the street to the front has some traffic?

We have been looking for a holiday home in Spain recently and we want it to be in the old town, considering the difficulties to park, I think that converting the ground floor to a parking space would bring more revenue than having more bedrooms (we have been told that in the area a place to park the car off the street can reach the 60,000 euros mark, and can be rented for about 200 a month! Any possibility of doing something like that?

If you had the plans available I can have a look at them, I trained as interior designer, my dream is to specialise in optimisation of small spaces so may help a bit.