What makes a bedroom?

Hi All,

What makes a habitable bedroom apart from a window and ceiling height?

Certain real estate agents call a 2m x 4m a bedroom. 2m?!! In particular in old houses, there are plenty of 2.5m's that are classified as bedrooms. About time there was a minimal requirement?

16 Sinclair Avenue Blacktown NSW 2148 - House for Sale #121985526 - realestate.com.au

Calling @Jacque for opinion....

 

Seems the market demand is what determines the bedroom size.....smaller rooms are cheaper to build.
Older houses had realistic sized double bedrooms that you can walk around and open the door.
These newer houses have shoeboxes with shrinking bed sizes to fit the room.

Seems any space that has 2.4m height, damp proof, has some light & ventilation and can fit a bed qualifies...........

BCA has the following:
A habitable room is "a room used for normal domestic activities" and
Includes a bedroom, living room, lounge room, music room, television room, kitchen, dining room, sewing room, study, playroom, family room, home theatre, and sunroom, but
Excludes a bathroom, laundry, water closet, pantry, walk-in wardrobe, corridor, hallway, lobby, photographic darkroom, clothes drying room, and other spaces of a specialised nature occupied neither frequently nor for extended periods."
Habitable (bed)room must have a minimum 2.4m finished ceiling height and be damp proof.
Otherwise it is called a utility room.
BCA Vol 2 part 3.8.2

 

As said before, so long is legal height. has a window or skylight and can fit a bed then for an agent its a bedroom.

That looks like an open void area that could have been closed up to become in the agents words another a huge bedroom.

 

Above posts are technically correct. I will just add to me absolute min in a new bold is 2.8x3m but I try and ensure 3-3.2m x3.2-3.4 for B2-B4.

It just gives you enough room to walk around the bed. But when I go smaller I stick with sliding robes.

 

I'm pretty sure to be classed as habitable it must have 20% of floor area as natural light and 10% ventilation. Actual floor sizes vary, for me I don't see the need to have 4 rooms that all fit a queen size bed. That's not what house are designed for or used for.

 

Please explain? Ta

 

Access to daylight
"The Building Code of Australia (BCA) states that 'habitable rooms' require permanent access to fresh air and natural light, most commonly in the form of windows. This access must come through translucent windows of a size not less that 10% of floor areas, or through roof lights (i.e. skylights) not less than 3% of the floor space of a given area. You can also use a proportional combination of windows and roof lights to satisfy the requirements."
Note that these windows need only be translucent not 100% transparent , as long as they are not totally opaque to visible light.

Ceiling heights
According to BCA Vol 2 part 3.8.2, in a class 1, 2 or 3 building a habitable room's (other than a Kitchen) ceiling height must not be less than 2.4 at any point: Technically the height is measured from the finished floor covering to underside of ceiling or lowest protrusion of the ceiling.

Access to outside air
Ventilation is generally the ability to have the ability to have a direct opening to the outside air, equivalent to a minimum of 5% of the floor area of the habitable room.

Note that buildings that predate the BCA do not need to conform to these requirements. eg your new house @Gockie

 

Sorry thanks chilli blue
My figures were off been along time since I studied resie drafting.

 

Thanks @Chilliblue and @QbiK Evolution.

 

BCA first introduced 1988 ?

 

@Hanison - similar regulations applied under NSW Ordinance 70 prior to the BCA.

BCA was meant to come into force in 1988 but was delayed several times so was sometime around 1992 IIRC.

 

Don't disagree but I prefer my dimensions due to retaining flexiblity of use as a guest room, study, two kids beds sharing, play room, king single bed and computer area. Its better to plan for more scenarios so that the occupants can grow with the house as its a lot harder to get the house to grow with the occupants.

 

A family member has an old weatherboard place with 2 bedrooms. The second bedroom is 1.8m x 2.5m. It was always meant to be a bedroom, a single bed only fits long ways in the room though.

 

What the hell does this mean?

 

Sorry everyone I will try and explain in more detail.
The bca code requires a certain percentage in ventilation and natural light as you see above.
If you have a bedroom which is 3 x 3 you have 9m2 of floor area. There for the code requires you to have 10% of floor area = 0.9m2 of natural light usually in the form of a windows. They then ask for 5% in natural ventilation, this is easily achieved by simply using a sliding window.

This is almost never an issue with a room that is meant to be a bedroom as most people love to use large windows anyway, where it sometimes is not achieved is when people do dodgy conversions or additions on there houses.

Hope this helps

 

Haha I don't disagree with you either, I'll just clarify my motives I would never build rooms at such small sizes unless absolutely necessary.

I would never skimp on a few square meters just to save on construction costs. However if we are designing and building all bedrooms at the full size and its limiting the design in other places or pushing us to a 2 story development instead of single this is usually the first place I try and cut square meterage.

 

Agree with that 100%. I Avoid second story unless there is a view to take in or the area values can sustain it and the size of the lot requires it.

 

The place where I live now is cutting it fine with this legal bedroom thing.

My bedroom is about 4.2x3.2m but the window is maybe 50cmx50cm. It has a room off it that is an enclosed verandah that is maybe 3.2x1.5m at the widest point (it is curved) that I use as another bedroom. It doesn't fit a single bed, I have an Ikea toddler bed in there and my (very small) 5 year old stays there when he visits on weekends.

We use the house as a 5 bedroom house but it was rightly described as a 4 bedroom + sunroom.

The worst thing about this house is that it is a 1920s house with quite large bedrooms, but the bathroom is barely 1.8m square and there's not enough room in there to hang towels for 5 people.

 

Do you own the house? If so, give the brains trust a floorplan of your house and we'll think of ways you can best put in an second bathroom.

 

Lol no, I'm not a millionaire (its a freestanding solid brick period house on a corner 12km from Sydney CBD). The kitchen is also small and a delightful combination of shades of green, if I owned this place I'd turn the kitchen into a second bathroom and knock down the godawful 1970s toilet/laundry/family room extension out the back and redo that as a kitchen/dining/family/laundry area.

I'm going to take out my urge to renovate when I start owner-building my retirement home in the blue mountains later this year