I notice in a previous enquiry that the minimum recommended bedroom size is 11' x 11'. I am thinking about a home design and was considering 10' x 10' bedrooms (not including closets). I guess my philosophy was that you sleep with your eyes closed. I will re-think that. However, my question is what dimensions would be the best-use-of-space... Take for example an 11' x 11' room is approximately 120 sqft. It seems to me that there is a lot of "unuseable" space in the middle of a square room. Would it be better to have a 10' x 12' room or an 8' x 15' room? Perhaps someone could comment on ideal dimensions for a 100 sqft room too (in case my stubbornness prevails).

Thank you.

Here in the USA a 10x10 room size is a minimum underwriting standard for apartments.

With a king size bed, our 12 foot wide room is pretty good. With a 10 foot room I don't think end tables would fit.

If you're going to put a twin bed in it then the 10 x 12 might work. For me, an 8 foot room doesn't feel like a room.

Sarah says that in Europe, 10x10 is fine, but in the US, everyone wants something bigger in a bedroom, and 8 feet (or anything under 10 feet, for that matter) would definitely be considered too small.

If you're concerned about resale, you would be better to stick with the 10 x 12 option, but if you're not worried, do what you think you'd like. Sarah's St.Paul house had small bedrooms. She loved them, but she often got comments from others that thought they were too small.

For ideas, check out Azby Brown's books, The Very Small Home and Small Spaces.

Thanks.

Marie

I'm not an expert, just a housing consumer, but from my apartment days, I can remember some 10x10 secondary bedrooms (yes I measured), and they felt more than a bit like jail cells. Simply too small.

It's strange but, down at those dimensions, another foot or two makes a huuuuge difference. 12x12 or even 11x11 bedrooms felt a lot better, and you had a lot more flexibility with things like bed/furniture placement.

10x12 might work, but it could force you orient the room furnishings a certain way, like it or lump it. And I can't imagine 8x15* working for most people, honestly.

Best of luck.

(* maybe in a den/guest bdrm double-duty room situation, with a murphy bed or somesuch)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Lee in NorCal,

In our previsous home, my oldest son had a 10x10 room, not counting his closet. It was workable, but a bit tight. The main probem was that with a window, entry and closet doors, the options for funriture placement were very limited.

In contrast, our younger boys shared a 10x12 room, and it worked fine. I think the added 2 feet gives you the option to have more than one kid in there.

It also depends on how you are about "things". I'm something of a packrat; I like "things". My bedroom is 13 by 15 and is snug -- but then, I am using an antique Shaker dining table as a nightstand on one side of the (queen) bed because it doesn't fit in my 9 by 9 dining area.
My point is that there are really a lot of different considerations.

^ Good point. Packrat + perhaps insufficient storage = your stuff ends up in the bedroom, so you need a bigger one. And an awful lot of floorplans seem to neglect storage, sadly.

Another consideration is who's going to be in the secondary bedrooms, kids or adults (renters). A kid won't care if a queen or king bed with end tables can't fit in there, but an adult often will.

There are some conclusions you can draw from the bell curve of expectations though. One of which is, in general, most ppl aside from small kids don't like bedrooms of 10x10 and smaller, and a bit bigger than that would be loads better.

But there are always exceptions.

...

Ran across an interesting article on bedroom size.

It stated that the average bedroom size 30 years ago was 9x10. Nowadays, its 12x12, allegedly

http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2007/11/tax-pol...hind-mcmansions.html

Maybe 30 years ago the average bedroom was 9x10, but that's one reason I wouldn't buy a house from that era. I think there are fads in bedroom size.
I was raised in a house built in 1905, and the smaller bedroom was 14x14 and ten feet high. (My mother painted it snow white with a dark sky-blue ceiling and instead of bringing the ceiling down, it felt like there was no ceiling at all.) The other bedroom was quite a bit bigger, though I never measured it. Upstairs the bedrooms were odd shaped with dormers and pitched ceilings, but big.

That's odd, because looking through some old 1920s bungalow catalogs, I see quite a lot of small bedrooms on the floorplans (like 10x10 or less).

Do the bedroom size fads cycle every 20 years?

.

i don't know, but I'd bet they do. It sure seems like it. There's probably some sociological trend that goes along with bedroom size like there is with waistlines in fashion.