At what age would you sleep on different floor to your DCs?

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We are looking at buying a new house, with DCs who are currently 3yo and 16mo, and who currently share a room right next door to ours. Thinking of trying for DC3 soon too.

The potential house has master bedroom on one floor, and smaller bedrooms on the floor above, and I am trying to work out if this will work. My plan would be to all sleep on top floor in first instance, and then move down to master when kids are old enough to sleep on separate floor.

But I remember being quite old and sneaking into see my Mum in the night when I was scared or couldn't sleep, and can't really imagine at the moment being a floor away from dcs and not being able to hear them etc.
and not sure when you might get to that point, as I don't have any experience with older kids or friends with older kids and awkward houses!

Any experience/thoughts gratefully received!

Age 12 in our house. We are trying to sell it now, as dd won't sleep in one of the large attics, and is crammed into a tiny room next to us. She's 7

I'd be inclined to use a monitor in that situation, to be sure to hear them if they called out during the night.
How is 3yo with stairs? Would you need a stair gate?

Hi, we live in an oldish town house, so lots of split levels, stairs and floors.

DH and I are in the master bedroom next to the bathroom, and the 2 DSs are up on the next level in separate rooms.

DS1 is 2.3 and in a bed but we do have stair gate across the door. We hear his door open in the night if he needs us.

DS2 is 10 months so still in a cot with monitor; but to be honest we hear him without it too.

DS1 has always been very good up and down the stairs as we taught him early to make it easier for us.

I would worry too much, just give them bit of time to get used to new layout.

I wouldn't advise it at all. We have really struggled with selling our house because of the bedroom issues. Ime, young children want to be on the same floor as their parents. Not so much as toddlers, but when they are about 4/5/6/7/8 they do not want to be on a seperate floor.

Its fine,just use a monitor.

We moved downstairs two weeks ago today, DDs were sharing a room but fighting all the time (aged 8 and 3) ds just 16 months and has moved into his own room.

We have moved to our unused dumping ground room downstairs and it's great.

Ds sleeping through, DDs in own rooms and not fighting so much, wish we'd done it months ago.

We have a monitor so we can hear the goings on upstairs, and if ds disturbs, I'm up there in seconds, so DDs don't get disturbed.

We preferred this option to dd1 moving downstairs, while we all sleep upstairs.

From 6 months for us. house had rooms on hiddidly piggledy levels, it was different floors or baby having a vast but strange shape ( wouldn't fit a king size bed) bedroom with the door to the garden in it.

DS has never come looking for us in the night, if he wants us he shouts, if he cries we hear him.

ooh thank you so much for so many replies.

yes I think I would want monitor at least at first, whilst things settling down, or at least would try it to see how it goes.

orangeanddemons - I don't think we'd struggle to sell for that reason actually; I just think the house is probably much more suited to a family with teens/older kids - lots of space but also lots of stairs etc. If we did all sleep on the same floor until the youngest was say 8 or 9, that would be a hell of a long time not to use the big fancy 'master bedroom'...

Yes we have bedrooms on different floors of our townhouse. DD2 went into her own room on 2nd floor when she was 12 weeks old, we were on 3 rd floor. Never had an issue, now she is 3 she comes up if she needs us.

However, the original layout of our house meant her room would have been on the ground floor which was a deal breaker so we knocked our integral garage through to make an open plan lounge on the ground floor and converted original lounge (2nd floor) into a bedroom and playroom.

I live in a row of houses where the master bedroom is on the top floor and no-one has had a problem with children being on the middle floor. DD (now aged 6) moved down about 5 months old and DS, coming up to 5 months is in with us but getting a bit cosy in the moses basket so will be moved down in the next few weeks.

DD just comes up the stairs if she needs us in the night.

We did use a monitor for quite a while so we could always hear if she did wake up. I think that was the only difference from being on the same floor. We could still hear crying without the monitor though.

My sister has your arrangement - with children on top floor and master bedroom below. She says ours is better as you don't have to hear noisy children stomping around their rooms. That is the only issue I would have with the house you are considering!

Also - I don't think it has caused problems when anyone sells their house in our road. Several people have bought them with young children.

We are on a different floor to ds although dd on our floor. We use a monitor. Ds is the oldest and has been downstairs since he moved into his own room at 8 months. We ended up with a fold up bed in there for bad nights. Dd is 20 months and we plan to move them in together shortly (ds is nearly 4) which will be downstairs. But they'll both come up into the room next to ours once the room is decorated did that make sense

Our DDs sleep on the middle floor a f we sleep in the attic room. We still have a monitor on (youngest is 4), but only in case of sudden illness or something. It's not seemed to worry them. On the plus side, it's very quiet!

We did it from when they were about 14 months, we had a monitor for a good while, and they knew no different and were fine with it.

I've just moved out of a 3 storey townhouse and was in the loft conversion with 3 dc's on the main floor aged 1, 2 and 3 at one point. We had ds3 in the loft with us till he was 9months ish/sleeping through and he had day time naps on the main floor below. The dc's used to come up without any problem in the morning for a lie in, and it was an open plan house with all the doors open so we could pretty much hear them breathing downstairs! I loved it, we only moved for more garage + garden space.