Intro
When building a custom home, there are so many questions to ask. There are a lot of concerns that need to be addressed. One of which is how many bedrooms a home can have. This is similar to the question of how many bedrooms do you need to have. Those are all relevant questions. Here is a great place to get the answer to those questions.
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How Many Bedrooms Can You Have in a Custom Home Plan?
You can have as many bedrooms as you want in your custom home plan. The real question then, isn’t how many bedrooms can you have, but how many can you afford?
When building homes, a major aspect of the price is the square footage of the home. Even for custom home designers, the square footage plays a major part in how much they will charge you. For example, if you have a home that has 2,000 square feet, many custom home designers will charge you a certain price for every square foot. Many contractors will multiply your square footage by a certain number to come up with an estimate for how much it will take to build your house. In short, the square footage plays a significant part in the cost of the home.
You can have a home with few bedrooms and a lot of square footage. Imagine the home of an eccentric couple who have few children, but lots of hobbies. They might have a movie room, a workout room, a hobby room, an indoor jacuzzi room, and the list goes on. Most people would naturally make these rooms also bedrooms (as per the legal definition below) simply because it would just entail making sure the room conforms to the regulations. The reason why most people would do that is that it allows them to sell the home with more bedrooms, a fact that may or may not be beneficial to your selling strategy. If you have questions, on what is a good selling strategy, consult a local competent real estate professional.
After you’ve figured out how many bedrooms you can afford (i.e. your square footage), you really want to answer a few other questions. In fact, we’ve given you some more information to consider.
Before you read on, take a moment to list all the things you want in your custom home. There is some great advice in an article by Budgets are Sexy.
The article actually comes from one of the subscribers of the site, however, the advice is incredibly valuable. In a nutshell, the advice counsels people who are looking for a new house to really think about what they need.
In my opinion, the best part of the entire article is where it counsels to avoid getting a room for every need. They say if you think you might start having parties over, don’t get a party room. Instead, make it work with a more normal setting. Start having your parties in your living room. If that doesn’t work for you, then maybe consider doing something else.
They explain it better so you should just read the entire article because it is great advice.
What Constitutes a Bedroom?
A bedroom is legally defined for safety reasons as a room including the following:
- Square footage of at least 70 to 80 feet, with at least 7 feet in any direction
- 2 ways of egress (escape), usually a window and a door
- Utah has specific guidelines as to the window’s size. Basically, the windows, and window wells if you have them, have to be big enough to allow someone to use it to exit the building.
- A ceiling, of which at least half, meets the minimum height requirement (tall enough to walk under)
- Temperature Control ( To heat or cool the room)
These are general requirements for a room to be called a bedroom. Chances are, your area may have a few more requirements, such as the necessity to put in a closet (this varies).
This information should help you decide on what to do with an unfinished basement. If you want to put more bedrooms in, make sure they are actually bedrooms and not just rooms.
QUICK NOTE: For those people who are part of the sharing economy (think Airbnb), make sure you have a space that is perfectly safe. You want it to be the epitome of safe. This means that in your listings you only list the space as a bedroom if it is a legal bedroom. If you are refinishing the basement to put it up as an Airbnb, then make sure it is up to code.
What is a Good Room to Bathroom Ratio?
The Home Owners Association quoted research that shows that the best bedroom to bathroom ratio should be 3:2. This is for convenience and usability. It also makes a lot of sense. Let’s say you have a 5 person family (2 parents and 3 kids.). The parents share a bedroom and a bathroom. The kids split the 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Any more people than that and things can get uncomfortable. Fewer people would give you unused space. It’s the perfect ratio
When thinking of your custom home, think of the occupants. If you have a large family, having more bathrooms might be very desirable. If your children have moved out, then you may not need as much bedroom space. If they come back to visit often, then consider making a few large guest rooms with joint bathrooms.
In all of your decisions, make sure that it makes sense in the whole. Do not go out of your budget. Generally speaking, using debt is only good if used strategically. This often means that debt is used as leverage in business. When you buy a home without really thinking about the long-term consequences of financing, it can be a very bad decision. Think long and hard about what you actually need, and what you can pay for.
How Big Can my bedrooms be?
Legally, a bedroom only needs to be at least 70 square feet. Other than that requirement, it can be as large as you want. That means you can have a giant bedroom.
Build to Sell
It’s important to note though, that if you have an enormous bedroom, that might make it a bit harder to sell the home.
Whenever you build a home, you always want to set yourself up well in order to sell it, even if you don’t mean to sell it. You don’t want to build yourself a dream lemon that you can’t offload.
The average bedroom, in America, is 219 square feet. That also averages the size of most master bedrooms. The average master bedroom size is 309 square feet. It’s probably a good idea then to keep the size of your rooms pretty standard compared to other houses in your market.
Do I have to Have Any Bedrooms in my Home?
Technically, no. However,no one would buy a home without a bedroom in it. The building would have to have at least one room that meets all of the requirements discussed earlier to be a bedroom. If not, it would never sell.
A lot of people face the choice of whether or not to turn a room into a bedroom. All of the considerations assault the mind and confuse the entire matter. To get clarity on the issue here are some of the pros of doing both. Hopefully, you can get to the decision that really benefits you.
The Pros of Turning a Room into a Bedroom
The most prominent pro is that you can list your home as having one more bedroom. Depending on your real estate market, this might be a great idea for you. It could also be a bad idea for you. A lot of people look at the bedroom number in home listings they are investigating. It is really important to show the size of the home.
In most real estate markets, there is also a huge price difference between homes that have different numbers of bedrooms. If you are thinking of selling, maybe also consider adding an extra room to boost the price up a bit. This doesn’t always work, so make sure you’ve done the correct market research.
Another pro of turning a space into a bedroom is the ability to use that as a bedroom. People can now sleep in it and live in it. As in all things though, you want to make sure that this makes sense for your situation. Use good judgment.
The Pro of Not Turning a Room into a Bedroom
There are a few pros. The biggest one is obviously that you don’t have to worry about putting it up to code. As long as it is up to the same standards as the rest of the house, it shouldn’t be an issue.
In a broader sense, not having to worry about bedroom codes allows you to be much more creative with the room. Instead of turning your unused space into a bedroom, you could turn it into a man-cave. You can go all out on something like that. Check these man-caves out to get an idea.
Or you could make a really cool playroom for the kids. Here are some really cool ideas for doing that. In Utah, the home theater has become very popular. These examples could make anyone jealous. You could also turn the unused space into a hobby room or arts and crafts room. It could be a home gym, a workshop, a meditation space, an indoor climbing wall, a game room, a spa, or whatever else you could think of.
The point is that if you don’t turn the unused space into a bedroom, you could use it for whatever else you want or need.
Good Ratios
Here is a table that gives you an idea of the ratios of bedrooms to bathrooms and the people they might serve. This is just an example. Obviously, you could fit 10 people into one room. It would be severely cramped though. These are just to serve as a sort of guide. It will give you an idea.
Here it is:
| Bedrooms | Bathrooms | Who it Serves |
| 1 | 1 | A starving artist in a studio apartment trying to make it big. |
| 2 | 1 | A newly-wed couple just starting out. |
| 3 | 1 | A small sized family |
| 2 | 2 | A married couple with a newborn baby. |
| 3 | 2 | A small to medium-sized family |
| 3 | 3 | A small to medium-sized family |
| 4 | 3 | Medium Sized Family |
Obviously, this table could go on in perpetuity, but you get the idea. Generally, you don’t have more bathrooms than bedrooms, but you can have more bedrooms than bathrooms. Everything else is just determined based on your needs.
Conclusion
The shortest simplest answer to how many bedrooms can you have in a house is as many as you want. You need at least one bedroom otherwise no one will buy the house. Remember that you can get any of your custom home questions answered. Located here in Utah County, we at Higher Designs love talking with clients, or even anyone interested in custom floor plans. We’ll walk with you through the whole custom home designing process. We literally go nuts over architecture and architectural design. We’d love to chat with you so come find us on social media.
We are always available to chat. Give us a call.