Sacrifice a bedroom for a large landing/ gallery?

[Tatlerer]

Hello
We're on the cusp of commencing a large scale refurb of our 5 bed house. We're adding on 2 bedrooms in a top floor extension and knocking another 2 through to make a master suite, leaving us 6 in total. However, the builder has now suggested that we could consider sacrificing one of the smaller existing doubles to create a large landing/gallery type area at the top of the stairs. The pros would be that it would allow a lot more natural light into a quite dingy top floor landing, and would add a bit of 'wow factor', especially if you added a feature light, small sitting area or something, but the con would obviously be losing a bedroom! There are only 3 of us so we don't need 6 bedrooms, but I guess logic has always told me that more bedrooms equals higher resale value if we ever needed to move. I thought I might ask an estate agent what their thoughts might be- but do you have any? Thanks!

Thanks 5am. What about the other way round? Have you ever worried about noise from downstairs carrying up too easily if kids trying to sleep?

Wine room

I worry about noise and agree it does carry a bit albeit we are on three floors - living/kitchen where we spend 90% of the time on lower ground, formal living (and galleried hall) in middle ground and bedrooms on an upper floor so it works out ok.

It does make the whole middle section of the house cold though as we have a large open area and lots of glass. This means when the cosy family room door opens into the hall it lets in a blast of chilly air!

Definitely worth it though. We've used the large expanse of wall and the masses of light to put up a cool spiral bookshelf, a modern chandelier, a sculpture and some striking art that no other area of the house could carry off.

Your house some wonderful and I think if you go for this you won't regret it. Doesn't sound like you really need the bedroom anyway.

Thanks Blackbird, your house sounds wonderful too! The spiral bookshelf sounds really striking.