Is there an optimum square footage for a home for a family of four?

[VerityClinch]

What do you think?

I have DD 2.7 and DS 1.3. We recently sold our poky London terrace of 1,056 sqft which was definitely TOO SMALL and are renting a 3 storey 1,900 sqft which feels lovely and spacious by comparison, but 3 bathrooms and a massive kitchen is a bugger to clean and lugging the Hoover up and down the stairs is a pain.

Do you think there is an optimum size for a family of four (we are definitely NOT having any more children although may acquire a pet at some point) and what is it?

There are no requirements or standards on housing on size/scale or number of people.

A three to four bed bungalow? So no lugging of anything up and down the stairs

Well, for you I would say between 1100-1900sqft, over no more than two floors! Or as Flatbread says, a bungalow - with integral vacuum points?
Many houses on the market don't have sqftage/m-age quoted which is not helpful.
We're getting something about 2200 (four of us) but some will then be taken up with building-in storage (you will need plenty of storage) and we hope to have lots of visitors. For us, we were looking around 2000 sq ft with no bedroom dimension less than 9ft. Difficult to be clearer than that as every house is so different. We are getting two sitting rooms and a study - girls will have there own space when they grow up, for having their friends over. We will have one really big bedroom for the girls to share while they're small, then the two smaller bedrooms are almost the same size so they can have one each when they no longer want to share and minimal arguments, plus a useful size guest room and big room will be the master again.
Hmm, so maybe also you need to think about the rooms you (will) need so how you want to live in your next home.

IMHO I thinks it's how the space works more than the actual size IYSWIM.

Agree with PP - layout and use of space is key as you could have a large space but only use 2/3 of it if the layout doesn't work.

We have a 4 bed, 3 storey house which is around 1500 sq ft and it works really well because of the layout and we use all of it. Open plan downstairs kitchen/diner into living room, WC and then 1st floor 3 beds - 2 for the DC's with their own bathroom and then a guest bedroom/playroom with an en-suite. Top floor is all ours with lovely large bedroom which also houses a desk and a few chairs, dressing room and large en-suite. The house is only 250 sq ft larger than our old house which was 3 bed, on en-suite, one bathroom upstairs but downstairs didn't really work - 2 big reception rooms - but we ended up not really using the second as the DC's were too young to play alone, and then a small kitchen and utility and WC. The layout downstairs just didn't work for us.

Well, I'm limited to what our budget allows in the location we want to live in so generally, what your money can buy you! For us, when we house hunted, we looked at houses between 2,500 and 3,500 sq ft. What we actually bought was a house of approx 2000 sq ft on a big plot. We're planning to extend/restructure to add another 650 sq ft.

For a family of four a well-designed 2 storey 3 bed house would be around 120 - 130 sq m (@ 1600 sq ft - sorry but the construction industry went metric in the 1970s).

Two recent commissions for 3 bed properties: one was @125 sq m and one @110 sq m - both were well received by my clients.

As several have already pointed out, careful design will make a property more useable rather than just more space and the larger the building the greater the energy use (all other things being equal).

agree it's more to do with layout - our house has 100 square feet less than the last one, but has an extra bedroom and better kitchen/dining areas than the last house.

Depends how much crap stuff you have.

Our new house has less square foot but the space works so much better.