Creating a downstairs bedroom with an extension. A terrible idea or the answer to our problems?

[Monr0e]

We are currently looking for a house. Due to circumstances and having 2 dc's in different schools we are quite limited on the area we are looking in. There also seems to be minimal properties out there at the moment. The ones that are coming onto the market in our preferred area within our budget are all very similar in design. 2 double bedrooms and one tiny 3rd.

We are considering building a single story extension. As the main thing we need is a decent sized bedroom we are thinking about making the extension a double bedroom with ensuite leaving the bedrooms upstairs free for the dc's. Just wondering if this sounds reasonable? Or a stupid idea? Or does anyone have any better ideas to make the properties work for us? DC's are 14 and 10, neither want to be squashed into a box room!

I will try and add a poorly devised diagram

We have that, and, as a previous poster suggested, we have two doors to the en suite. It wasn't an en suite when we moved it but we put a door in from the bedroom to make it en suite but left the door to the corridor in place so it can also double as an extra bathroom when guests are staying / generally for flexibility.

A friend of mine has something similar; I think it was built by previous owners as accommodation for an elderly relative but they use it as the kids' playroom and their only downstairs loo (which happens to also have a shower).
They have a sofa bed in there so it's also ready for guests who appreciate having their own loo / facilities. I think it works pretty well.
What I'm trying to say is it doesn't always have to be used as a bedroom, or if you sell, sold as a bedroom. It's just extra downstairs space.
Do it nicely though, with a view to multiple uses... put in French doors to the garden and a separate small lockable window that you can leave open a bit on a hot night without worrying about someone breaking in. And if you can, angle the door to the en-suite away from where any future sofa would be.

Thank you everyone, I'm feeling a lot more confident about it now.

I agree with trying to make the en suite accessible from the hall as well and making the room more of a downstairs space rather than specifically a bedroom. We are doing it to suit our family rather than to specifically add value but want to make it as marketable as possible for the future.

And I love the idea of french doors into the garden

Hi @Monr0e did you go ahead with this?

@TulipVictory we are about to build an extension to provide a ground floor bedroom with ensuite. We are only planning to have the bedroom entrance to the en-suite for now, but have planned the footprint of the fittings so that the door can be moved easily to the hall if we ever want to sell (which is very unlikely as this is supposed to be our forever home). Our architects suggested having jack-and-jill doorways from both hall and bedroom, but we would rather keep it as our own space and not have the dc making a mess in there and I would rather plan for our needs now, than consider how others might want to use it if we ever decide to move.

We’re having french doors onto the garden (double doors with side light’s that have top opening windows, so that we don’t have to have a door open for airflow).

We’ve spoken to estate agents, architects and builders and they have all said more and more people are wanting to do this now, as people are having to live in multi-generational families, so often want some sort of self-contained space for either elderly family members or adult dc. The estate agent said, if we ever want to sell, the new room could be marketed as such or even a consulting room/office type set up, especially if it’s possible to enter it without going through the rest of the house.