Recently we have seen a wave of crazy room labels on floor plans. It’s convincing me that some photographers and some real estate professionals don’t know what to call the various rooms and spaces within a home.
Home buyers sometimes cannot identify the function of a room unless there is clear staging and, in the case of a kitchen, all appliances are present. I’ve seen people visiting open houses of unstaged homes and not recognised a dining room as such, even though it was in the right place and they were doging bumping their heads on the chandalier. It can be more confusing still on a layout that’s not labeled, or worse has incorrect or confusing room names!
Agent friends, let’s make this easier, not harder, for them! Check your photographer’s labels and provide guidance, please. And buyers and sellers should check the floorplans too, and keep an eye out for errors.
Here are crazy room labels that I’ve seen just this week:
- There was a supersized house on the Peninsula with 3 rooms labeled “Living room” and 2 titled “Dining room”. Unless it’s a duplex or has ADUs these spaces should have unique names!
- A home with a very tiny breakfast nook had it named “Dining room” and the actual formal dining room was said to be the “Breakfast room”.
- A 3 bedroom house referred to one of the bedrooms marked as an office – a downgrade from a bedroom (this can make sense for homes with a lot of bedrooms, but not for a 3 bedroom house).
These errors cause confusion for some home buyers because it makes it unclear what a room’s function is supposed to be.
Room names 101
Even if the printed floorplan of a home has crazy room labels, or none at all, consumers would benefit from knowing what they are actually seeing and be able to identify which room is which, despite misinformation. So let’s talk about correct room names.
Living rooms are close to the front door and if there’s also a family room the living room is the more formal of the two. In Victorian houses, these are equivalent to “Parlors”. A great advantage of a traditional parlor room is that visitors didn’t see much of the home; it was designed to be closed off from the rest of the structure with heavy wooden pocket doors, making for better privacy and also making it easier to heat and keep tidy. Both parlors and living rooms often connect to the formal dining room, so guests can easily move from one to the other for dinner parties.
Dining rooms are usually adjacent to the living room, often between the living room and the kitchen. Sometimes they are right off the foyer or entryway. When they are a separate room they are often called a “formal dining room”, though sometimes there’s a Dining L, which means that it’s not a separate room but a branch off of the living room. In some more open floorplans there may still be a formal dining space that’s not separated by walls from the living room or kitchen, but has architectural elements that designate it’s use, such as a chandalier for the table, or a wetbar, or built-in display cabinetry, etc.
Breakfast nooks are a small, informal dining area next to or abutting the kitchen. This is not the same as when the kitchen table is in the middle of the work area, with cabinets and possibly counters on both sides – that’s not a nook, but it is an eat-in kitchen (many kitchen islands with breakfast bars could be considered eat-in kitchens), which is the least formal dining space.
Family rooms are the second living space for family and visitors. Often these are close to the kitchen, sometimes they are not separate from the kitchen, but instead flow out of it. They are informal areas for socializing, watching TV, reading, and relaxing. While living rooms are often at the front of the house, family rooms are often at the back of the house, or at least farther from the front door.
Great rooms are a large, open space which usually span multiple functions with little definition between areas. These are typically casual social spaces for family and entertaining friends that include living and dining spaces, and often are open to the kitchen. Dining areas may not have chandaliers, and kitchens may have breakfast bars for more fluid use of the space.
California rooms are outdoor spaces, usually a covered porch off of the family room with a ceiling lamp or electric fan overhead. They often have 2 sides open (or screened) and 2 sides protected by walls, and may have finished ceilings or luxury features like a fireplace or bar. Because they are attached to the strucutre, and have some protection from the elements with the walls, they are not the same as a detached gazebo or a sunroom (which are usually fully enclosed).
If there are additional gathering spaces or large rooms beyond the living room and the family room, they should be given distinct titles which identify their potential use or significant features, such as bonus room, game room, recreation room (or rec room), lounge, loft, parlor, pool or billiards room, home cinema, ice cream parlor, home gym, etc.
Beyond the basics: where confusion sets in
What about smaller rooms, especially the place where people work from home? This is an area of the home with many titles!
These may be called an office, a study, a den, or even the library. They might have a closet, but most of the time these spaces are somewhat like smaller bedrooms without a closet. Other times they can be spacious, feature built in bookcases, and perhaps even a wet bar. Luxurious versions may include a fireplace, a window seat, or other special features. As long as you recognize the name, this is not a place where you will usually find crazy room labels, unless it’s a bedroom that was missnamed.
So how can you tell if it’s one or the other? The bedroom vs office question isn’t always clearly defined, but here are some clues to look for:
- In most houses, condos, or townhomes, a home office is a little smaller than a bedroom and it doesn’t include a closet. Having a window or door to the outside is nice, but not required for the office, wheras it’s required for a bedroom.
- Bedrooms are not required by the state of California to include a closet (Victorian homes don’t have closets, people then used wardrobes instead). They are required to have at least 70 square feet, be at least 7 feet wide, and have a ceiling height of 7’6″. Additionally, there must be egress, usually a door or window, that opens to the outside and, if it is a window, it must be low enough and wide enough to serve as an emergency route. This room must have a permanent source of heat and it must not be a pass through to any other bedroom.
- Bottom line: a bedroom can be used as an office, but an office may not always qualify to be used as a bedroom.
The requirements for bedrooms are much steeper than they are for offices, so referring to a bedroom as an office is usually a downgrade. If a home has a tremendous number of bedrooms, it may be useful to repurpose one of two of them with other names, such as den, craft room, etc., but that is not a super common situation.
What is a mudroom? A mudroom is a it like a casual foyer or entry hall, but it’s designed to store things as residents enter the home, frequently from the garage or a side yard entrance. In the mud room they may leave shoes, boots, backpacks, dog leashes, or items that get carried in or out of the home but don’t need to go any further.
Laundry rooms with a little extra space may qualify for a mudroom if a bench and storage is present. (Laundry closets are not laundry rooms, in case anyone is wondering.)
Home additions sometimes mess with the flow of a home and cause confusion, whether it’s the purpose of the space, the value of it, or if it’s really an improvement or if it’s a home disimprovement. For example, people don’t want to be able to see a toilet from either the front door (when they first come into the house) or from the dining room table. But I digress from crazy room labels!
ADUs, guest houses, and office sheds
Another area we see a lot of different names thrown around are with Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs). Like it says in the name, ADUs are dwelling places, they must meet certain livable space standards like the bedroom regulations listed above, and space to cook, and a separate exterior access, but beyond that they come in a huge range of sizes and with varying amenities.
They can be attached or detached, range from small studio to multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, and they could even be built on a trailer (very rarely, I am only aware of one THOW in San Jose)! Junior ADUs (JADU), for instance, are attached to the main structure and need access to a bathroom, but it doesn’t have to be a private bathroom for the unit.
ADUs can go by many names: In-Law Unit, Bachelor Pad, Guest House, Studio Apartment, etc. However usually when we see crazy room labels in this category it’s because they’ve tried to upgrade a non-dwelling bonus space by giving it one of these names.
Detached sheds or other detached structures with interior finishes can be a valuable additional space, but sometimes are misslabeled to suggest they are dwelling space. These out buildings may or may not have heating and cooling or electric, and rarely have any plumbing (though occasionally you’ll find one with a sink, or a poolhouse with a bathroom or shower). Instead, these might be called things like office shed, yoga studio, garden house, play room, bonus room, flex space, clubhouse, poolhouse, or even just called a shed.
Bathroom tidbits
It didn’t seem right to close out the topic of crazy room labels without touching on bathrooms, which seem to have a large number of aliases and odd titles at times. Here’s a quick list that I hope will be helpful.
- Full bath – in our area, this means a sink, a toilet, and either a tub or shower (or both).
- 3/4 bath – this isn’t a phrase we use in the Bay Area, but it means that there’s a sink, a toilet, and a tub or shower (but not both).
- Powder room or half bath – no shower or tub, just the toilet and a sink.
- 1/4 bath – this suggests only a toilet. Just say no!
- WC (Water Closet) – in our area this is typically a toilet in a small room by itself, but unlike the 1/4 bath the WC is placed within a larger bathroom (which should have a sink!).
- Jack and Jill bath – this is a full bathroom with two doors, usually each door leading to a bedroom. Sometimes, though, the bathroom has one door opening to a hall or public room in the home and the other opening to a bedroom.
- Primary bath – bathroom that opens to the primary suite. (We are getting away from Master bedroom and Master bath.)
- En suite bath – a bathroom connected with a bedroom, possibly the primary bedroom, but not necessarily.
- Luxury bath – indicates a larger area and high end amenities, such as heated floors, heated mirrors (to reduce fogging), steam shower, sauna, deep soaking tub or jetted tub, a bidet, or any number of other costly features.
I’m hoping that this is helpful for people who find the purpose of rooms to be confusing and also those responsible for creating or overseeing floor plans for residential real estate so that they know how important editing can be.
Did I miss anything big in the realm of crazy room labels? If so, please email me and I’ll consider editing or adding to this post.
Want to work with agents who will make sure your floorplan is well labeled, or will help you “read the rooms”? Please reach out! We love helping nice buyers and sellers in the greater Silicon Valley area.
Reading related to crazy room labels and floor plans:
What is a cripple wall? (from our popehandy.com website)
Ranch style homes (this site)
