In this house we have 4 bedrooms (including master) on 2nd floor. And laundry. Our youngest is 2. This is handy as he finally sleeps through the night, but wakes early and needs to be taken out of his crib. However, it is very inconvenient for privacy reasons. Since I can hear every noise the kids make, I am paranoid they could hear any noises I'd make. Enough said. So... for this next house that will hopefully be done soon, we are doing a main floor master (its a story and a half, 4 boys bedrooms are upstairs) and our master is not under any of the upstairs. Definately more private. Its still out of the way of the main parts of the house, I don't want it feeling like part of the common areas. The youngest will require us hauling ourselves up the stairs for a little while longer... but that stage doesn't last much longer.

Laundry is an important consideration. We have put a laundry in the master area and a laundry in the 2nd floor. I don't have the cash immediately to put appliances in both places, but plan to have that on our short list of purchases.

If you want the main floor master but want to have more babies etc... my sister has the main floor master, but has a guest room upstairs. When her baby was young she kept him in a bassinette in her room. When he was bigger and sleeping in his bed she slept in the guest room for a little while. So you may want to be flexible in the arrangements.

We are planning to do upstairs masters but split the kids rooms upstairs and first floor. We have a 4 yr old, a 2 1/2 yr old and a 10 month old. Our thought was that we don't want to be too far away from the kids right now, but as they grow up we may want some closer than others (heh). Also in case we do end up here for ever we designed to have the downstairs bedroom be adjacent to a bathroom and be easily converted into a master suite like area.

As for the privacy concerns, we are so with ya midwestmama. We designed to have closets separating the two rooms so there is no shared wall instead like 3 2x4 walls with 6 total layers of sheet rock. Hopefully that will be sound proofing enough.

I much prefer the master on the first floor. It was a requirement when we bought our house (I was pregnant at the time with our first child). I haven't regretted it for a minute.

We are building again and I will have the master on first again. This is our last house (hopefully) and we are in our early 40s so we hope to stay here until we can't any longer - 35 years or so.

The laundry is a very personal decision. I would prefer the laundry to be where I am (I am a stay at home mom), rather than upstairs where I rarely go. My kids are still young and often play downstairs, so if the laundry was up (particularly when they were younger) it wouldn't have worked very well. We also generate a fair amount of kitchen laundry (cloth napkins, dishtowels, etc.), cleaning rags, etc. so it is very nice to throw the dishtowels in the laundry room sink and wait for the next load of whites. Also nice to have a place where boys with wet bathing suits, filthy baseball clothes, etc. can drop their clothes before tracking it all through the house.

That being said, we have an open floor plan (too open!) with a balcony overlooking the vaulted great room. When it is time to wash, the boys throw their clothes over the balcony into the den and I sort and carry them into the laundry.

We won't have that in our next house. We are stubbing for a small upstairs laundry only because we had the room and it was inexpensive to do so, but I doubt we will finish it. My hope is to build in shelves to hold 3 small laundry baskets, sort the clothes into these and have the boys carry them up and put away.

Theoretically all of them, but certainly the oldest two (9 and 7) could carry down their laundry to be washed and carry up the clean clothes, and if it becomes a problem I might have them start doing that in our next house.

We live in a house with all of the bedrooms on the second, floor, and the laundry on the second. It has been great with young kids. Now that the kids are getting older, and we are designing a house, I am really looking forward to having the master on the main floor. We debated about whether to put the laundry on the 1st floor, with a laundry chute from the 2nd floor, but in the end decided to put the laundry on the second floor. Our master is at the bottom of the stairs (which are not front and center). We also have a small laundry on the 1st, but it is more in relation to the kitchen and on the other side of the house from the master.

One thing I noticed while looking at new houses, and designing my own house, is that it seems to be much more efficient from a house design perspective to put the master on the second floor. A master suite takes up a lot of space on a first floor, and often creates a situation where there is a room above the master, or the master is a wing. I think that our house ended up being larger than I originally planned because of having the master on the main. But, I am thrilled with the plan and wouldn't do it any other way.

In our current house, our master is on the 2nd floor but is nicely separated from the other bedrooms. I think that is really important if you go with the 2nd floor master.

In the home we are building we went with the first floor master. It seems to be what people want these days around here and we think we will really like it. Although the kids bedrooms will be upstairs, we will have the laundry on the first floor. Like athensmom, I like to have my laundry near the mudroom entrance so dirty clothes and bathing suits all stop there. Also, I tend to fold my clean clothes while sitting in the family room so I prefer to have it on the first floor. I fold, put everything into baskets and then bring it to the appropriate rooms to be put away. I also tend to do a lot of laundry in the evenings and wouldn't want to have the noise upstairs when the kids are sleeping (or taking naps during the day). Think about how you like to do things because everyone is different.

People have said that it is nice to have a first floor master as the kids get older (teenagers) because it is easier to hear them coming and going. :) Our kids are 6 and 8 now so I am not worried about them being upstairs by themselves, but I am thinking about putting little stair lights on the wall by the stairs to make it safer if they have to come down at night. One concern I have is if it will be too loud in the master if someone is watching TV in the family room while one of us goes to bed. We will have a finished basement that will be an entertainment space so hopefully if teenagers or DH want to stay up later, they can do so down there.

I agree with thingsthatinspire that the master takes up a lot of room on the first floor. But we still got everything we were looking for. We were able to fit three bedrooms upstairs, none of which are over the master. The total square footage is about where we wanted to be, but the footprint is slightly larger and thus costs a little more. In the grand scheme of things, I think that will pay for itself based on the desireability of the first floor master (at least in our area).

Those are some of the various thoughts we have had when thinking about this. Overall, we are really excited to have the master on the main floor. Good luck!

How about both?

Would it fit your budget to design your house so that you have the master upstairs now -- close to the wee ones -- and have a guest suite on the main? That way grandparents can come visit and not have to climb stairs or be in the middle of the ruckus. As your kids become older, you can switch rooms, taking the 1st floor room as the master and having your guest room upstairs. In either location, the guest room could do double duty as a study.

Our kids are 12 and up with one in college and another headed there in a couple of years, so part of our design criteria was to have their bedrooms upstairs and be able to close it off when we are empty nesters. It will just be a large, furnished (expensive!) attic that can easily been opened up when we have a house full. We also put a small laundry downstairs so that we won't have to climb stairs for laundry when we get to that stage.

We had single floor for 30 years in our 'starter home'. LOL We have it now, as Seniors, in the house we built ten years ago.

I grew up in a two-story house. There was always *something* near the stairs, waiting to be carried up -- not just laundry. There was a laundry chute with openings on first and second floors. The laundry was in the basement.

I like a laundry room in the 'back hall', near where I am during the day so that can easily tend the wash. Kids can carry their clean clothes from the laundry to their rooms. Teens can do their own wash. Since teens tend to be 'vampires', that's likely to happen around midnight -- not near my MBR!

I want a laundry tub in the back hall anyway, convenient to the garage door and the door to the back yard. I soak gardening clothes there. I wash our dog there -- often just his feet. A powder room is another back hall necessity for me, along with a BIG closet.

I prefer the MBR to be upstairs with the kids BRs. I want the laundry on the 2nd floor with them. I like the MBR at the top of the steps with the kids BRs at the opposite end.

As the kids got older, the common areas became busier. It was nice to be able retreat away from the commotion.

You can incorporate sound control where ever your MBR is located.

I also agree it makes it easier to balance the common area to BR ratio. I prefer a house with more common areas and smaller BRs. I want the BRs to be about sleeping and most of the "living" to occur in the common areas.

We wanted first floor master as that is what we had in our last house but when it came time to build we went with 2nd floor master and here is why.

We built on a 100 ft wide lot with a neighborhood that mandates side load garages (which we like anyway). If you are building a house with large common areas, it doesn't give you much width to do a nice size master suite on the first floor. Yes - you can always build back but on smaller lots, you resist side windows, and as you build back, you have less window space per floor space (think townhouse).

So after looking at spec houses in the same neighborhood, we realized that we liked what we could get only in 2nd floor master plans. The footprint stayed smaller which kept our garage entry easy and kept us away from a river running through the back yard (more like a seasonal thing but either way something you don't want near the house).

Our neighbor has a 1st floor master - he has a hard time getting in his driveway. And his closets are smaller than ours.

So for a "city" lot with a bigger house, 2nd floor master allows a better suite.

For privacy - two walls are exterior, one is against master bath and then laundry room and the fourth is a large master closet bumped up mostly to a closet in a guest bedroom. There is a small area that goes from master closet directly into guest bedroom but otherwise we are 3 walls away from anyone. We also have 2 doors - one to the suite and one to the bedroom. And for virtual separation our suite is a foot higher so you have to walk up 2 stairs to get to it.

I think having one bedroom on the main level is very important. You never know what may happen-aging parent or someone in the family with a broken leg. Ideally. you would have 2 master suites, one on the main level and one on the second floor. Use one as the guest suite and you can switch dpending on your lifestyle and current needs.

We have 2 bedroom on the main level and 2 on the 2nd floor.

Our master suite is on the second floor. All by itself. There's nothing else up there but a study, mechanical room, and DH's hobby closet. Our son's suite is downstairs. There is also a guest suite on the first floor. When one of us is sick, injured, our son is ill, etc., we sleep downstairs in the guest room. When we get too old to manage the stairs, we'll move down there permanently and use our current master as the guest suite. For right now, though, we enjoy the added privacy of having our bedroom be the only one on the upper floor.

FWIW, our laundry room is downstairs in the back hall by the kitchen. It works for us.

Our master is on the second floor, which is the way it is with about 90% of the two stories in this area. When we built the house we planned to have kids, but that didn't work out. Still I like it up there. I feel safer, I wouldn't leave windows open on the first floor. And there is a nice view. The bedroom is well separated from the other bedrooms, with multiple closets and bathrooms in between. If money was not an issue, I would do 2 masters. But then I would have my MIL living with me, which is not something I want to encourage.

This is a very personal thing to people. What does your gut say? Have you always envisioned your master upstairs or down. We had our master down even when our daughter was young. I felt like it encouraged independence and privacy. It must have worked, she's now so independent that at age 16 she's currently in France for five weeks! Regardless of the master placement, I'm in favor of the laundry being downstairs. Trust me kids won't have trouble carrying laundry up and down the stairs, and I'd rather have the laundry sink and all the utility of the laundry room near the back door (dogs, recycling, gardening, etc.)

Our kids are 5 and 2, and we did a main floor master with kids upstairs. I made sure the staircase was near the door to our room though, for middle of the night wakings now, and to help prevent sneaking out later. LOL

My sister did a main floor master with a nursery next to it that will be a guest room later.

Both of us have our laundry rooms between the kitchen and garage because that's what works for us.

I don't have children, but for privacy alone, I prefer the master to be upstairs. I always feel creeped out when I sleep on the main level. I feel like people could be looking in or break in. Maybe this is because I've always been on the second floor, or maybe I suffer from paranoid delusions. LOL. Either way, that's an issue for me, regardless of the children issue.

In our "forever" house we will have to incorporate some way to add on a master for when we get older, though. Going upstairs when you're 75 is no fun.

I've had both and would never go back to an upper master. We have five boys ages 2-11 and it is not a problem to have them upsatairs. I go up and down usually three times/day-get them up-naps-bedtime! However, I go into my master bed/bath numerous times per day. I was on crutches for a week last month and never made it upstairs. We kept the babies with us in our room for their first year, then switched to monitors. I also can't imagine my laundry upstairs. I spend all my time on the main floor and would never get any laundry done if upsatirs. We have a laundry shoot and it is AWESOME! It all makes its way down to me and the older boys carry it up for me. The custom homes in our neighborhood with upstairs masters have had tremendous difficulty selling compared to main floor masters.

We don't have kids, but if we did I would want the master as far away from the kids room as possible for obvious reasons. Or do sound proof walling with child monitors on nightstands.

Privacy is so important and nobody wants to hear their parents having sex. Growing up my bedroom was on the opposite side of the house, but when they would go in for a "nap" I could hear them from the living room. Disturbing to say the least to hear your parents shagging.