Master bedroom with en suite or extra bedroom: please help us choose

[Claraa2018]

Hello! We are starting a renovation project including turning the loft into a bedroom and are deciding between a few choices for the bedrooms. The space for bedrooms is restricted and we are trying to determine the best use of space.

These are:

1. A four bedroom house with our en suite master bedroom in the loft. The master bedroom will be small with sloped walls and a skylight and tricky wardrobe space. We would have our own bathroom/shower (also with a skylight).
2. A three bedroom house with a first floor master bedroom and en suite. We use the loft and en suite bathroom as a guest room.
3. A four bedroom house where we don't have an en suite. We use the loft and en suite bathroom as a guest room.
4. A three bedroom house where our master bedroom on the first floor is connected to the loft by stairs through our bedroom (this is where the stairs currently are). The loft then becomes a walk in wardrobe and en suite for the master bedroom.

For options 2 -4, the first floor bedrooms have nice windows and views and we'd be closer to our DDs (ages 1 and 3).

For option 1, we don't know if this is a nice option (the lofts has exposed beams and character) or a compromise (we've never slept in a bedroom like this).

Is option 4 strange? I have never seen anyone do this?

Other factors:

I do like spending a lot of time in our bedroom with the children and I think with this option we would mainly use the bedroom to sleep. I am sad and feel a bit awkward about being farther away from the children. On the other hand, they will get older and a bedroom on the second floor may help us get better sleep and it could be nice to have our own space?

My family lives overseas and would like guest accommodation though we also have a fold out sofa downstairs.

If we don't have an en suite we'd have one family bathroom to share with DDs but could still use the shower in the loft.

I guess we'd like to hear which layout is best. Are en suites beneficial? Has anyone slept in a small loft master bedroom?

We hope that this is our permanent home so we are thinking about our needs for now though it is good to think about resale value as well. We have lived here 3 years and the house currently has 2 double bedrooms, a box single bedroom and a very small office.

I hope that makes sense. Sorry for the very long post - it is our first renovation and the house is quite tricky with lots of sloping walls and smaller rooms in the upstairs (the downstairs is a bit bigger as the house had a previous extension). Thank you very much for any thoughts.

Unless you have guests week in week out option 1 and vacate the room for guests if you have any.
You will always have two bathrooms which is plenty. I wouldn't creat a second en-suite when space is at a premium.

If you work from home a lot then I think you'd be mad to do anything other than 4 rooms. If you did option 4 you'd need to set the loft room up as a study I think rather than a walk in wardrobe.

I think I would go for Option 3. It seems the most flexible and you can use the loft as a guest room/study and presumably store clothes etc in the eaves.

Given that the loft bedroom is realistically the only one that would use the loft bathroom, and that your first floor bathroom is a great size, I don't think it matters that the loft isn't technically an en-suite.

Thank you everyone! It seems like the consensus is four bedrooms. I guess I became influenced by the many en suites/ wardrobes we saw on our house hunt but maybe an extra multifunctional bedroom is most useful. I guess people also have different points of view over using a low ceiling loft bedroom as the main bedroom.

We don’t have guests that often - maybe a few times a year. Hopefully a bit more now that travel is becoming easier.

En-suites only add to a property value if they make sense in the context of the space. I’ve seen en-suites where you can’t even swing a cat. An en-suite should have an air of luxury not some cramped toilet and shower space.

Ideally, a 4 bedroom house should have a nice big family bathroom with a separate bath and shower.

Too many small cramped spaces are just not nice and I would not buy a house that feels like cramped rather than spacious.

I would add the guest bedroom and en-suite into the loft

Use guest bedroom as playroom for children also as they grow, guest room when needed. Can also be children’s hang out tv/ game room when older when not in use for guests and where they have sleep overs and host friends. Then the en-suite will be super handy. Impromptu office as needed

Thank you @Maximinimalist, that sounds wise. We did worry that we would end up with a small pokey en suite and family bathroom if we try to get both. The only other benefit I can see is that using different showers may reduce conflict over mess (an ongoing issue right now) but candy have everything.:)

Thank you @Caspianberg. The loft space is not very big and has low sloped walls but these are good ideas. Do others find that the shower in the loft gets used a lot if the bedroom next to it is just for guests? It would be accessible to all of us (not en suite) but it would be up a steep set of stairs (alternate thread stairs).

I wouldn’t put alternate stairs on at all. That will really reduce who can use it as small children or old won’t be able to safely use. That completely changes things.

I wouldn’t buy a property at all without a proper staircase up and would only use it as loft storage

otherwise with proper stairs you can use that bathroom daily for children shower room as they grow

Does option 2 give you a standard staircase?

Ah. Yes agree with this - sorry but you should have mentioned that. Do not do anything with those sorts of stairs. Get your builder/architect to rethink. That's even more important than working out your bedroom/bathroom configuration.

Sorry - I think the issue is that regular stairs would cut into the small loft bedroom space even more and potentially block the door (I need to check this again). My impression was that some space saving stairs are less steep but I haven’t seen any yet in person. As our main guest is my dad who is getting older and our kids are young this is an important consideration.:(

I think if you either started the stairs further along, or even above existing ones, with a 180 turn in both cases, that might give you enough headroom for normal stairs.

In fact could you start the stairs further into the bedroom, half flight toward the front, then 180 to be above the existing proposed stairs?

I love having an ensuite, so I'd say one of the options that gives me an ensuite. I didn't know how much I loved having one until I had one.

I'd do 3. You could move to the lift later.

Think about the quality of the spaces though. When it comes to re sell people can tell when you've tried to squeeze in too much. How big will your rooms be? Can you furnish them easily? Look at neighbours and the highest selling similar house. What have they done?

Option 4 will really put people off. It's not a good use of space.

@titchy, this option works for regular stairs (we had gone over a few possible plans originally). It will just mean cutting more from one of the first floor bedrooms but it’s probably the best option.

@TaraRhu we are trying to come up with layouts that give us decent bedrooms (currently there are only two good bedrooms even though the house was marketed as having more than two). All the bedrooms are a bit challenging though with sloping walls or limited wardrobe space.@CatSeanythere is one other way you can make an en suite which is to divide the fourth bedroom into a smaller family bathroom and smaller fourth bedroom (I guess we could use this for guests so our daughters get the other two more equally sized rooms). Then we would use the family bathroom on the proposed floor plan as our en suite (giving us a small family bathroom and two en suites in total). Don’t worry if this is too confusing to follow and I’m very grateful to everyone who commented.:)

I think that would be best in terms of balanced accommodation. You've got good room sizes, you'll still have three decent doubles. A large single/small double would be fine as a fourth bedroom.

Check building regs but I believe that space saver stairs don’t allow for the loft room to be classed as a bedroom - so you would spend all that money and still only have the same number of bedrooms. To add value equivalent to the spend, you need that extra bedroom to count.

We converted our loft into a bedroom and shower room. It’s not en suite, because I don’t see the point of them at all. I can walk an extra metre to enter the room via the landing, and it means other people can use it when we are full on the holidays.

We now have 3 doubles and a box, which we use as an office, but when we come to sell, it’ll be turned back to a bedroom. The kids share and when they want their own room, if we’re still here, we’ll lose the spare room and turf one of them out when we need it.

I like having a spare room now, but must be honest that it’s used as a laundry more than anything else at the moment!

I’d really think about what works for you on a day to day basis - how often do you have guests overnight? Do the kids want to share?

@TaraRhu I think a lot of neighbours have done what the previous owners of the house did - divided up and got rid of bedrooms to make tiny windowless not very nice ensuites. The renovated houses seem to have a lot of bathrooms compared to bedrooms. Our upstairs is a bit imbalanced to the downstairs as the previous owners did a large ground floor extension so the first floor feels quite small compared to the downstairs.

@Bingbangbongbash thank you for your reply. Sorry - when I said en suite in the loft I also don't mean a connected bathroom but a bathroom that is close to the bedroom on the same floor. The idea is that anyone can use it. I believe the stairs that were proposed to us are allowed (they are not as steep as some) but I think we will forget about the space saving stairs and carve some space from one of the bedrooms for regular stairs. It's a shame as it's the nicest bedroom in the house and the regular stairs will also affect the landing and make it darker (right now we have a nice bright landing). But this is a tricky space and will involve trade offs. We have guests a few times a year but hope maybe more will come (especially as my family is overseas). The kids are happy to share but they are only 1 and 3.:)

Have you had a specialist loft company in to quote - or even an architect? We have a different layout to you, but we managed to get our new stairs over the existing ones and the finished ceiling height of the dormer is the same as the rest of the house. So we got a large new room without losing space in the existing bedrooms. I didn’t think that was possible, so was happily surprised.

Good luck with it!