As always, the answer is somewhere in the middle. We live in an 800 sf cottage. We live very comfortably as a childless couple with two large dogs… but will move or build another 300 ft addition before having children. In part this is because I run a music studio out of one bedroom, and my husband’s HUGE musical instruments take up the whole other bedroom. Leaving us no place for children. But… we don’t see the need for much more than two more small bedrooms and a small bathroom… 300 to 350 ft more.
I am SURE that in 1911, there was a whole family in an even smaller version of my house (minus back 200 ft addition from the 30′s). Funny how we as 2 live comfortably in a space LARGER than a family did.
I think that space is good… to a certain point. There should always be a space to “escape” to. Sometimes this can be overcome, as you saw, by simply decreasing the size of rooms (your airplane hanger bedroom).
The bedrooms in my house are 8×10 and 10×12 (including closet)… just barely big enough for a bed and dresser, and possibly small chair. Why do we need more than that in a bedroom? Or, if we choose to turn our bedroom into a library or study as well, why do we then need to have a huge living room or other study? Just questions to think about!

I agree with you Christiane, the good old days weren’t always all that good, and the 4k sq.ft. mansions are out of hand. We initially planned a two room addition to our 1200 sq.ft., but ended up with about 2400 sq.ft. in the end. For the four of us (plus dog and cat) it feels about right, and when we’ve had guests (as out of towners we get a lot of them) it feels perfect to me.
If we could put the pocket doors on our studio like we originally planned it would help — our open floor plan is a little too open sometimes. Do you guys make interior doors yet?…

You raise interesting points. I’ve heard the take that people used to live in much smaller spaces, but had never connected it to the fact that they were unhappy there. Something to sit and chew on.
I think my biggest issue with ‘McMansions’ (as opposed to large houses, which can be great) is that there’s so much wasted space for the sake of space. i.e. there may not be a pantry, but the kitchen is open to the second story.

A corollary set of question,s and perhaps impossibly difficult to determine, is: what is good taste, what is bad taste? I was thinking about this yesterday while walking around Cambridge and looking at old houses and new ones and thinking, what is it about the old ones the feels right and what is it about most of the new ones that feels cheap and bad? And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of moderns our here that I’m falling in love with. It’s not style, per se, but something. Is it materials? That certainly does make a difference. But I have a feeling it’s a very subtle level of proportion.
Square footage seems like a clumsy shorthand for these other issues. It’s politically easy because it doesn’t deal with questions of taste (unless, of course, to paraphrase Sir Mix-a-Lot, you like big houses and you cannot lie…). So the question I throw back at you is: can we come up with other measures that would improve house design and neighborhood suitability without demanding particular styles or structures?

People used to just be able to live closer and didn’t have this selfish feeling of “entitlement” that seems so prevalent today. I came from a family of five with usually a dog, a couple of cats, a guinea pig… We lived in a 1200 sqft house. It was plenty big. Mom and dad in one bedroom, the oldest kid in another and the two younger to forever share (I was in the latter). That’s just the way it was. We never felt short-changed. One bathroom also housed a washer/dryer and that was fine. We didn’t expect to have a separate crafts room, or home gym, or home office. These so-called necessities are all very recent.
Master bedrooms didn’t have room for gigantic king sized beds (this is why you rarely see antique bedroom sets with king size headboards), they usually were full size and the bedroom, if it did have a separate bath was usually a toilet and sink. And now the new trend is….get this….TWO MASTER SUITES so that husband and wife have their own domain. Isn’t that cozy????

Christiane,

Thanks for considering my very-late-to-the-party comments which I wrote as if this was breaking news (it was to me!). I’m curious where this situation (the “McMansion ordinance”) is now?

To perhaps (hopefully) provoke more discussion about what used to be normal size-wise, I think the real issue about large houses is energy use. Looking at this stuff as matters of aesthetics, taste is peripheral to the VERY real problem which is that comfort trumps almost anything else in our society. Sure, it’s common for most people from generations that pre-dated most modern conveniences and space considerations to express a preference for what we consider “normal” today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all these things are “good” per se. Dishwashers, nice…but was it really that hard to just wash dishes with a sink full of water? Air conditioning, nice…but at some point in the past being able to make it 88 in a house where it was 100 outside was probably pretty awesome, now that would be a broken air conditioner! Lawns, pretty to look at, but not much else to recommend them. Giant bathtubs are fun, but honestly, I can’t even bear to fill one up in a hotel once or twice a year, decorative outdoor lighting, looks great, more energy use, mosquito killing machines…never even occurred to me?! (And please don’t think I’m picking on anyone personally, I’ve got plenty of these same issues I’m struggling with/working on in my current home.)

Whether we like it or not, the earth’s resources and co2 emissions are a zero sum game. A couple of quick statistics: per capita CO2 emissions, US citizen-19 tons per year, (distant) runner up- Northern Europe at 8.3 tons per year. So we emit SIGNIFICANTLY more than double the average European in CO2 emissions and more than 6 times the average Chinese citizen! Our homes emit a combined 25 percent of the world’s household greenhouse gas emissions (at 300 million people) while China (1.3 billion people!!!) emits 18 percent of that same total. Yet still we get more gadgets and conveniences each year (and let’s not even start on the life cycle/garbage issues of this kind of consumerism!).

All this leads me to have a pretty bleak worldview, yet even though I feel we are all more or less doomed, I still manically turn off lights, keep my climate as unregulated as I am allowed (I do have to negotiate this issue with a spouse!), collect water runoff, etc. etc. but this is maybe half a drop in the bucket at best. We haven’t even begun to act collectively to make significant reductions in co2 emissions and if we ever did, what would it look like? I think it would HAVE to look like something that would make the “McMansion ordinance” look like less than a slap on the collective hand. Thoughts?

I blogged today about Crestview Doors and then kept surfing and found my way somehow to Erwinhouse. I just put 2 and 2 together, and want to let you know we’re of like minds, and that I admire you greatly! Hope you don’t mind some free publicity.

I personally have started looking at it as ‘how much space does ONE person need’ and then calculating that times the other people in your home. I am single now and live in 550, which is fine for me. So how much space would I need to be able to have another person move in and not feel stuffed? Calculating in children would then require space for their rooms and a certain amount of space added to the common areas. Depending on the design and possible home office requirements, I think 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft should work for a family of four.
I also believe in functional living rooms used by the family; no need for a living room AND a den or basement family room.

I think about this a lot. Right now Brian and I live in a 3 br townhouse with a huge basement. It’s way too much room for 2. The rent is going up so we are moving, and we decided to downsize to a 2 br condo. Ppl think we are nuts!! I am nervous that we will be at max cap w/ 2 adults, 1 baby, 3 cats. But I also look forward to how simple it will be to maintain. Does my 3 month old really need her own bedroom? I don’t think so.

I live in a 2300sf house now–one adult, two young teens and two large dogs. We are moving to a house that’s half the size, and everyone is excited about it. We spend almost all our time in the dining room–doing homework, working on the laptop, eating–and many of our rooms sit empty much of the time. Our new house has no dishwasher and (gasp) only one full bathroom. My son compared it to a small apartment in a villa we rented in Italy a few years ago–it had just enough space for our purposes, and kept us connected to each other.
Many of my friends with teens are looking to up-size–my response to them is, in just a few years they’ll be gone and you’ll be knocking about in a house that’s far too big. And anyway, they have to learn to live in the confined spaces of a dorm or student apartment!