How Big Should Your House Be? Start With the Bare Minimum
How big should your house be? Start with the bare minimum your household needs, then add a little for comfort. In my experience, a family of three needs roughly 60 to 100 m² (about 650 to 1,075 sq ft): two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. Add some space on top. Not double, not triple.
When did you last stay at your parents' house?
I ask this question a lot. Usually to a couple sitting across the table from me, planning a house with one more bedroom than they need. Sometimes two more.
"We know the kids are about to leave," they say. "But we'll build the bedrooms in case they want to come back and stay with us."
So first I ask: are your parents alive? If the answer is yes, I ask the second question. When did you last stay over at their place?
Then it goes quiet. Most people can't remember.
That "just in case" bedroom is a room you pay for every month, for as long as you own the house. So let's work out how much house you actually need.
How many square metres does a family of three need?
In my experience, a family of three needs roughly 60 to 100 m² (about 650 to 1,075 sq ft) as a working minimum. That fits two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room.
On top of that, add some room for comfort. What you want, and what you can afford.
But I said some. Don't triple it. You won't be needing all that space.
Why house projects run over (it's rarely the builder)
In grown-up life, your quality of life is mostly shaped by your own decisions. Not the government's. Yours. And bad decisions come back to you.
House building is the clearest example I know. Picture an ideal setting: the right size, the right location, everything in place. The plan says half a year and 200k.
Then it takes a year and a half and costs three times as much.
Why? Sometimes you get bad builders, sure. But most often, what I've seen is this: the buyer makes the decisions, and the general contractor and the other professionals carry them out. They're paid to do what you say. If the decision at the start was a poor one, they'll build it very properly.
At the end, you can blame other people. Or you can skip most of that by making good decisions at the very beginning. The first one is the size of your house.
Plan A smaller house: the two-step method
Here's how I'd size a house for any family. Two steps, in this order.
- Calculate the bare minimum. Not the house you dream about. The space your household needs to sleep, cook, wash and live every day. For a family of three, that's the 60 to 100 m² range.
- Add some for comfort. A bigger living room because friends come over every weekend? Fair. A second bathroom so mornings stop being a negotiation? Fair. Three spare bedrooms for visits that happen twice a year? That's where I start asking questions.
To find your own bare minimum, answer three questions honestly:
- Who sleeps in this house on an ordinary Tuesday? Not at Christmas. On a Tuesday.
- Who works from home, and do they need a door that closes?
- What will this household look like in ten years, when the children may be gone?
The first two answers give you your minimum. The third tells you how carefully to spend on comfort.
The order matters. If you start from the dream and try to cut down, every square metre feels like a loss. Start from the minimum and build up, and every square metre has to earn its place.
Which rooms does your house actually need?
Some rooms don't care how many people live in the house. Whether you're one person or five, you need at least one kitchen and at least one bathroom. A living room too.
Bedrooms are where the size really moves.
A family of three probably needs two bedrooms. You may want one extra, as a home office or a gym. If the family grows, it becomes a bedroom again. That's a flexible room, and it earns its keep.
Be careful with the extras, though. And remember which way families move. Children grow up and leave home. The house you build at 45 is the house you'll live in at 60, maybe with rooms nobody sleeps in.
What does A bigger house really cost?
You don't pay for a square metre once.
You pay to build it. Then you pay mortgage interest on it. Then you heat it in winter and cool it in summer. Then you maintain it, year after year, for as long as the house is yours.
So when you look at a spare bedroom, don't ask "can we afford to build it?" Ask "do we want to pay for this room every year, for the next 20 or 30 years?" That's a very different question, and it usually gets a very different answer.
That's also why smaller is the lighter choice for the planet. Fewer square metres means less material going in and less energy going out, every single year.
How we plan for this at Avrame
At Avrame, we hired architects to make our A-frame floor plans as functional as possible, so there's no wasted space. The square metres you pay for are square metres you use. And because the A-frame itself is the only load-bearing part of the construction, you can still make small changes to the layout. Today's office can become tomorrow's bedroom.
FAQ
How many square metres does a family of three need?
A family of three needs roughly 60 to 100 m² (about 650 to 1,075 sq ft) as a bare minimum. That fits two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. Add some space for comfort on top, but not double or triple.
Should I build extra bedrooms for when the children visit?
Usually not. Grown children rarely come back to stay for long, and every extra bedroom is a room you build, heat, maintain and pay interest on every year. A flexible room, like a home office or gym that can host a guest, does both jobs.
What does a bigger house cost beyond the building price?
Every extra square metre keeps costing you after it's built. You pay mortgage interest on it, heat and cool it, and maintain it for as long as you own the house. That's why size is the most important decision in house planning.