Large downstairs and small upstairs…

[Namechanged2026]

Hi all.

Currently looking at purchasing a house with only 3 (large) bedrooms upstairs (and 2 bathrooms), despite the house being just under 3,000 sqft in total. There are a further two bedrooms downstairs sharing a shower room.

I’ve always discounted houses like this, but this one is quite appealing due to its location.

We have 2 DC and may have another in the future.

I don’t actually mind the guest bedroom downstairs. It is primarily used by us when DH comes home from work late and doesn’t want to wake me and the baby. But I wouldn’t want to be on a seperate level to the children.

The house is fairly highly priced (£1.1M), so my head says it’s too much money to spend for such a big compromise. What does MN think?

At the moment I am assuming you only need 3 bedrooms upstairs? You may not need a fourth if you don’t have a 3rd child and if you do then two could share till older or you could partition a room perhaps. If the house is otherwise right, I don’t think this configuration would put me off.

Well we would have the main bedroom and tel children’s bedrooms. Then we also need a guest bedroom and a bedroom for a third child.

I’m worried that resale would be super hard as I suppose it’s technically a 3 bedroom.

Those kinds of houses are usually designed for downsizers whose families have grown up and left, who don't need many bedrooms, but don't want to scrimp on downstairs space because they entertain a lot and/or work from home -- a developer put about 30 of these on a lovely site, the grounds of an old mansion near where I used to live, and they all sold off the plans 9for a lot of money, too.)

But it just doesn't sound as if this house suits you.

I have something similar though 3-storey. A downstairs bedroom with shower and WC may be useful if one day you have an independent teen or an older family member in the house.

Can you do the loft and get another bedroom and bathroom that way? But you are right, to me this would be a 3bed house with downstairs space pinched to use as a bedroom. Which is also not an issue if that’s just a guest bedroom but not a permanent one. Also, your kids may be young now but you will really appreciate being on another floor to them once they approach teen years (mine are 8 and 12 and being in the loft master bedroom is bliss.

There comes a time when being on a different floor to your kids becomes a positive. It doesn't sound like that will be you for many years but if it's a long-term house then this could be ideal. Whilst the kids are young they can share the two kids rooms upstairs and then eventually you move downstairs and they have a room each upstairs. It's a future-proof home in many ways, even after the kids have moved out.

Why do you say it’s technically a 3 bedroom? We have 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 downstairs, (house built as a bungalow originally), that doesn’t make it a 2 bedroom house

We have a house like this. 3 bed upstairs; 2 kids so the upstairs is our private family space.

Downstairs is humongous and it’s glorious! We have a number of reception rooms; a 1000sqft family room with 14 seater dining table, kitchen and tv/sofa area.

Then we have a large hall, library, bathroom, cloak room, utility, large study and an evening lounge. We are going to make the evening lounge an optional guest bed by putting a sofa bed in there but haven’t go round to it yet.

The top floor wouldn’t have a loft. It’s a modern purpose built house but almost looks like a dormer bungalow.

Ah I see. In any case if the space works for you then I wouldn’t worry too much. Particularly if it looks like a bungalow as people are used to the bedrooms being downstairs.

There’s definitely a time when having DC on a lower floor is amazing - it’s about the time that they start (literally) rolling in from bars and clubs when they’re 17 or so

you might not be there yet but it’s a real positive IMO and in fact starts being a bonus from about 12 when they have hoardes of friends round and they’re not all trekking up and down stairs and into more private places.

Depending on whether two of your DC can share until one is old enough to move downstairs (if you have a third), I think this bedroom arrangement sounds like bliss.

It is nice for everyone if houseguests can have a bit of privacy. Eventually you might prefer to move downstairs yourselves, or an older DC might wish to - there are many appealing options.

If the house is otherwise appealing I don’t see the bedroom and bath/shower room arrangement putting people off.

We have a large 5 bed over 3 floors. (Myself, DP and Dd but ss also stays.

we have top floor, kids have middle floor (one large bedroom is used as ‘their lounge’) and the downstairs is currently a large office (that we don’t need) but I love having the extra rooms for flexibility. The downstairs room has been a snug, office, workshop, dumping ground and soon to be gym. We don’t have a guest bedroom. Both kids have king size beds so guests gets that and they sleep on the sofas in their lounge

I would actively prefer this set up. It means the extra bedrooms can be really flexibly used as guest rooms, teen hangout/playroom, office.

We had a similar set up a few years back when we moved from a much larger (six bed) house. We'd been used to loads of space and didn't want to lose that feeling as we owned lots of large furniture (bookcases, sideboards) that housed our collections of Art Nouveau etc.

The house we bought had two bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor which suited us as there were just us two at home most of the time with DS and his GF coming home from uni occasionally.

On the ground floor, in addition to the kitchen, we had - living room, dining room, office, breakfast room, library, music room (DS's living room when home), plus two further shower rooms and utility. We had a sofa bed in the library for when my parents stayed over.

When we sold that house our buyers had two young teens plus a newborn and went on to have three more DC so they utilised more of the ground floor rooms as bedrooms. This was a very old house that had the external appearance of a chalet bungalow.