Minimum bedroom size???

Due to a 'mis-communication' between my builder & I.... we now have a bedroom that is quite small.

I initially told him not to worry about fixing the issue (long story short, he put the door to the hallway in the wrong spot, and therefore made the adjoining bedroom 300mm smaller).

But now the rest of the bedroom walls have been moved, I'm having second thoughts.

It was always going to be a small room, and really all I could do is make it 300mm wider.

At the moment, it's about 2.2m x 2.3m with a walk-in robe of 1.2m x 1.5m

Our plan is to use it as a study and spare bedroom, but for possibly resale value in the future I want to make sure it's passable as a bedroom.

Single bed size is about 90cm x 188cm (plus a little extra for a frame). So the room would fit a single bed & bedside table reasonably comfortably - and with the huge walk-in for storage.

Due to the size of the "walk-in", our plan is to fit out the walk-in space as an office alcove so that the rest of the room is free to be a guest room (with a sofa bed, such as this one http://cebas.ikea.com.au/prod_template4 ... 11&Scat=45)

Do you think that room size is ok? Is it worth going to the expense/hassle of getting back the 300mm (doing this will have a follow-on effect of making the walk-in smaller).

I'm convinced that as a single bedroom / guest room / study / nursery the room will work fine and there's no point trying to make it a tiny bit bigger. The other 3 bedrooms in the house are all big enough for queen beds (1 has a built-in robe and the other two have walk-in robes).

Your thoughts?

It somewhat depends upon what your intentions are for the property. Do you intend it to be a family home for a long time or just a stepping stone for the future?

If you intend it to just be a stepping stone then I would have to consider that to a small degree. I recently sold a 2 bedroom house to a family of 5 for a substantial amount above what the real estate agents had all quoted so I personally disregard people who say that you have to have a 4 bedroom house for resale value. But you also have to consider the rest of the house. If it is top heavy with living space then potential buyers would probably be expecting 4 decent sized bedrooms and I don't think it would qualify in that category. If I had kids I would want a room a fair bit bigger than that even though it has a decent sized WIR.

If you intend the house to be a family home for quite some years and it would only get used as a study/spare bedroom for the odd guest, then if you are happy with the size then I don't see a problem. The only issue I would have is whether putting the study area into the WIR would give you enough natural light/space if it was to be used regularly.

Just some food for thought but perhaps if you posted the plan then people might be able to comment further.

Good luck!!

Your room is to small. Dont understand why such a small room will have a WIR.

3m x 3m I would consider small. 2.8 x 2.8 would be the absolute bare minimum for a bedroom I reckon.

Your room is a study with storage, I really don't think anyone would see it as a bedroom.

If the room will work fine for you - and sounds feasible as a study cum occasional overnight guest room - and you have 3 other decent size bedrooms, which you do, and overall size of house is compatible with 3 bedrooms/study and some of theother houses in your area have 3 bedrooms so re-sale would be ok then I dont see a problem.

Are you saying the WIR alcove will in fact be open - ie no door into the robe, this would make a good study niche but I wouldnt do it with a door on , would be dark and clastrophobic

As klsclomps says, the re-sale factor is less relevant if you do not intend selling in the relatively near future.
We have built a 3 bedroom home which is fine for us, and have larger liveing areas rather than a 4th bedroom which we would very rarely use.
From a re-sale POV, probably would of been better with 4 bedrooms and sacrifice some liveing or garden area but this house is for us, not distant future buyers

Not the responses I wanted (but I guess I expected it).

I should add - this is not a new build, we are renovating our current house so are limited somewhat with the options we have.

Before renovating it was a 4 bedroom, with the 4th bedroom being quite small (we used it as a study).

There's only one way to make the room significantly bigger, and that's to move the front door again - this would make the room about 3.2 x 2.3

This is where the front door was originally (you entered the house through the laundry)


We've taken out the logs and moved the door to the right so it's next to the window. Now you enter directly into the living room.



This is how it's looking from the inside... the far wall is the kitchen, and where the extension cord goes into the wall is the doorway into the hallway.


With regards to making the room bigger, I could move the front door to where the window is and bring the bedroom across another metre or so. That will eat into the living area, however it's a pretty big room anyway and open plan living, dining kitchen.

This floor plan isn't quite accurate but gives you an idea of where the room sits in the house. It's the room to the right of the 'double doors' (we don't actually have double doors for the front) and is next to the dining area.




This is what will be the 'walk-in' (still currently our laundry!). Basically, the door to the bedroom is just to the right of the walk in, and the walk-in is that size due to the required entry into the hallway.


Oh - and you may notice there's no window for the bedroom at the moment, but there will be one - it's just been all sealed up for now because of the weather.

For us personally, we didn't want any of our bedrooms to be shorter than 3m. But it sounds like you are cool with the space for your needs so I'd leave it.

When it comes time to sell and you believe you could get more money by making it look more of a bigger bedroom, you could always just ditch the walk in robe, put in a built-in, and you'd have a good sized bedroom - providing we don't have any load bearing walls.

Position wise, great as a study, and also great as a nursery because it's near the master. If you were to sell it, you could take that angle?
Realistically not a 4 bedroom home. A great 3 bedroom home!

I agree with Joles .

Thanks

I think I can live with that

We have no plans to sell, but you never know what will happen in the future.

As for other properties around here and their value... it's all a bit subjective! haha There's a 2 bedroom place with a bit more land than we have (the 2 bedroom place is on an acre, we have 3/4 of an acre) and according to the realestate website, it's under offer... not sure what price they're getting but it was advertised at over $600k. Then there's also a 4 bedroom place near by for sale on the market for over $700k.

We have 2 main aims for the renos that we're doing
1) Making this place our 'home', we want to raise our kids here
2) Increase it's value so we have the option of using the equity to invest in another place (can't see that being an issue considering what we paid for it)

I would leave as is for the moment as it doesn't sound like you need it as a bedroom at the moment but can still get good use out of it as a study/spare room with good storage. If you do decide to sell later you can make the decision then whether to spend money on altering it or whether to sell it for a slightly less amount and let the new owners make the changes.