What's a Good Bedroom Size?

I hope to soon be building some T/H and will keep them to rent, not sell. So I'm keen to make them as good as I can without overspending.

Just how small can you go with bedrooms ?
I know that the living areas take priority recently however I'm also aware of complaints by people about the ever shrinking size of bedrooms. I would've thought going under 9 sqm is a bit too small.

Of course there are bedrooms and there are bedrooms.
The master would normally be biggest, room for a queen bed, some draws, etc and some space for the chandelier swing approach run up.
BR2 would need space for at least a singlebed, drawers and/or study desk, tv and/or stereo with twin tower 5,000 watt speakers, to drown out the wild sounds of teenage sex.
BR3 would need a desk perhaps drawers if it's an office and of course a bed of some size for dad to entertain his office assistant.

Seriously though if that's possible in this forum, excluding robes, what size in sqm do you think the 3 BRs should be ? I'm sure other would be developers and perhaps even those builders out there would appreciate everyones views.

Thanking everyone in advance.
 
Well coming from Adelaide I'm kinda spoilt by having generally decent sized bedrooms. I can't believe the closets that people live in here in Sydney !

My rule of thumb used to be when comparing floorplans of potential house puchases, was that if either wall of the bedroom was less than 3m long, it was going to be a small room (unless the other wall was 5m !). That would make it 3m x 3m = 9 m2 absolute minimum size.

If you can somehow incorporate builtin robes without cutting into the 9 m2 of actual floorspace, you are actually making the rooms effectively much larger. Cupboard and such - especially freestanding ones - take up a huge amount of space in a room because you need to allow not only for the floor space, but for access space too - even more so if they have swing out doors (the worst possible thing you can do to take up space !)

My other pet hate is when people build a tiny third bedroom and call it a "study". I've had walk in wardrobes bigger than most of these studies ! Coming from someone who works from home 90% of the time, let me tell you that you really do need some space to be serious about productivity. The second bedroom in my unit is a pretty decent size - and I could still do with more space. Admittedly, 2 PCs and a laptop, 2 printers and a fax machince, flat bed scanner, filing cabinets, 3 bookshelves 6'x3' and several hundred books do take up a lot of room !

If you are building and want to keep in mind the "occasional computer or office user", think about designing some type of "hutch" arrangement or compact work area especially designed for the task. Don't waste a tiny room on a study - if you give them a work area out in the living area somewhere, then you can still have a completely functional 2nd or 3rd bedroom as well as a work/computer area.

Oh, by the way, yet another pet hate is floorplans where they ended up with a small room (usually leading to the back door of the house) which didn't serve any purpose what at all. Usually these rooms had 3 or 4 doors opening onto them so no usable wall or floor space. They tend to call them a "lobby", which actually translates to "wasted space that you can't actually use".

Just my opinons ;)
 
Hi Paddy,

I tend to look at a minimum 9m2 per bedroom (basically 3mX3m). But the last 3bedder Villa I had built (focussing on rental) 1br was 3X3 net space (plus double door built in robe), 2nd bed room was 3.5mX3.7m net space (plus tripple door built in robe, I know you will say it is too much, but if you saw the plans you would understand) & the 3rd bedroom being the main was closer to 4X4 plus a large 2door built in robe...

I hope this helps...

Cheers,

MannyB.
 
bedroom size

Our rooms are 2.9 x 3.0 metres way to small
We are about to build and will construct the kids rooms at 3.3 x 3.6 allowing a study nookand later an entertainment area:) :) :)
Good luck
 
We built our own house and made minimum bedroom size of 3.6x3.4 in two of the kids rooms. This was before we had kids. Now that the rooms are occupied by the girls (1 in each) the rooms look very crowded. Very glad we built 'big'.
As for our IP's I have tended to think positively about larger bedrooms and therefore thats what we bought.
Memories of being a uni student with 6 of us sharing a small 3 bedder AND having associated boyfriends/girlfriends over may have something to do with my perceptions!!


Cheers Bill.
 
Hi,

Just a thought, I like the idea of wall nooks, I see them in shops with the backwall lit for nick nacks.

I think putting these in walls cant be too difficult, and as extra storage it may be ideal for personal items (pictures vases, etc) and may make a room feel bigger without the need for stand alone shelving.

Michael G
 
Thanks guys, I too thought that 9sqm should be a min.

A question about nooks though ?
In the big living area I can easily understand the concept of partitioning a section off as a study type nook. However I'm not sure what you mean by putting a nook into a wall. Wouldn't this mean stealing space from behind the wall ?
 
No,

a small cavity for a vase or picture to be placed. ie imagine a small section of wall say between two doors in a hall, you have say three small "pockets" in a line vertically where people can place items of decoration, that way they have no need to a small table or shelf to place these items on, most walls are hollow anyway, would be interesting to use them, another idea is a fishtank between two walls.

Michael G
 
Hi Patosan

What type of tenants are you expecting to rent your townhouses? If it could be a share household then I imagine decent sized bedrooms might enourage higher rents. My experience tells me that share household would ideally like all the bedrooms to be of good size and would appreciate seprate toilets separate from bathrooms (two bathrooms would have them rushing in).

If I bedroom is $150 per week than a good sized 2br at $250 per week is good value.
 
GoAnna seems to have confirmed what I have found through looking through the To Let section in the paper for the last couple of weeks, and that is that properties with extra bathrooms/toilets, especially 2 x 2 seem to get much stronger rent than those properties with just one bath/toilet.

Glenn
 
Thanks again guys,

OK I7ve got the nooks understanding. It sounds really good.
Could certainly add that little extra difference to a property, give it that edge or "wow" factor. I must check about the costs involved.

Good point about target tenants having a bearing on BR size. I guess my target tenants are families/executives, since the price range would be in the 330 -380 pw range for each T/H. With this in mind a little smaller BR doesn't seem too bad, though under 9 sqm would certainly restrict the rooms usage options wouldn't it ?
 
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