Great question.

In realtorspeak, I think large and small are often used in relation to the other houses in the neighborhood (once you scrape off marketing hype, which some brokers use more than others). So a four bedroom house with four baths, four public rooms, and a finished basement is large in an area where three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and three public rooms is more common. In Beverly Hills, it's cozy.

Then there is scale - if all the rooms are huge, the number of rooms doesn't tell you much without the square footage.

And then there's how a house lives - a poorly thought out "large" house with lots of wasted space, an inefficient layout, and too little practical space for pantries and closets and laundry and cleaning supplies doesn't feel generous when you live in it.

A compact, efficient house of half the square footage, but with the layout and infrastructure of the house arranged to support ease of living and moving about, and rooms with lovely proportions, can live like a much larger one.

That is a great question, and I think bronwynsmom nailed the answer.

GW's small home forum calls houses under 2000sqft small. they do not seem to have a large home forum so
I do not know how they define a large house:).

It is definitely relative depending on neighbourhood. Where I live (urban Victorian-era 'hood) my house is large (about 2300 sq feet I think). In the burbs my house is probably closer to medium than large, but still a good size. It has a brilliant lay out though (IMO) that makes it feel quite spacious. There are certain suburbs that probably have many 3,000+ sq foot houses, and I consider those immense. Maybe they all have 6 kids or are multi-generation families, who knows. Based on my city and experience, I'd call under 1,500 small, 1,500 to 2,500 medium and 2,500 to 3,000 large.

I agree it is dependent on location and on family size. To me a small house is under 1800 square feet or so and a large house is over 3000 square feet.

Definitely would consider ours a small house at 1150 square feet. I would consider anything over 3,000 large, 2000 or so average.

We are lucky we have a pretty good open floor plan for the kitchen and LR area.

Are we talking living square footage or total under roof square footage?
If we are just talking living sfâ¦to me less than 1,600 ish is tiny, 1,700 to 2,000 -ish small, 2,100 to 2,400-ish mid sized, 2,500 to 3,000 mid large and over 3,000 large.

During my house search I was originally thinking I wanted a Small downsize house at around 1,600 sf and looked at some 1,450 and 1,500, they were too tiny (I'm not ready for that yet)! Small but comfortable was around the 1,700 to 2,000 sf mark. Better than comfortable and slightly extravagant for two⦠2,100 to 2,400 sf and the more than I need category was over 2,500 sf.

It is just relative...our 3600sq ft house is small for our neighborhood, but it is plenty large for us! :)

I've had several 3500 sq ft houses. Usually they had 4 bedrooms 3 baths and a total of 8 to 10 rooms. When I see a house advertised as 3 or 4 bedrooms and only 1600 sq ft, I know all the rooms are going to be very small. Otherwise how do they fit all that in such a small area. I'm now looking to downsize. At one point I had a cottage that was barely 1000 sq ft but very well planned. It was a Ross Chapin design and brilliant with only 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, a laundry room and a great room/kitchen with a dining alcove. That's what I'm looking for again. It lived large. I think any bedroom less than 12 x 12 is too small for much furniture. So that's my 2 cents worth :)

Purely subjective off the top of my never-been-wealthy head.

Tiny under 750 square feet.
Small 750 to 1400.
Medium 1400 to 2400.
Larger medium 2400-3500.
Large 3500-6000.
6000+ no longer even fun to look at, much less to imagine how I'd use the spaces. I wouldn't.

BTW, I so agree that some places feel and live larger than technically larger ones, and vice versa. Just sitting here I find it amazing that our MH in Florida, an ancient 11' wide single with double-wide living room extension, is less than 600 square feet. It has south and north wings, for goodness sakes. Friends can drop by in front, spend all evening, and someone asleep in the back bedroom (me, this happened) won't even know. I have to say, it qualifies as small and lives larger than many, many of those. Or would if there were only room to bring the washer and dryer in. :)

Homes in my neighborhood are between 1100-1600 SF for original subdivisions. They are single story on larger (10K+ lots). New homes are 2000-2500 SF, two storyon lots well under 7K SF.

As you move further out to the 'country' you will find average homes 2500-3000SF on up to 5 acre parcels.

I consider small to be under 1100SF, and large is over 3000 SF. Anything over that, to me, is too big!

It's all about how it is arranged. if we ever build another house, and I hope we do, it will be half the size of what we have yet so much more efficient and charming.

Great answers. It does make sense that how the space is arranged and used has a lot to do with if it feels small or large. Our house is app 1900 sq ft with an award winning floor plan for use of space. It's just the two of us, and we have plenty of room.

I agree that size of house is relative and regional. In our town, 1,500 sq.ft. is a minimum for any new house built. And based on what most new homes built in the area are, 3,000-4,000 is about average, and 5,000 to 6,000 and even larger are not unusual.

And of course urban environments are a whole 'nother thing.

I need to ask my 4 yr. old grandson. No kidding. My son & family are living with us until their house on the next acre is built.

DS's old house was larger than our's by about 500 sf. It was an open floor plan.

Our house isn't an open floor plan, so it has several public rooms, with a larger than normal LR. Many times my grandson tells me, "Your house is big. My old house wasn't." I never know how to reply to that! lol

So it is all relative.

Annie, you're so right. We traded efficiency and practical design for charm and neighborhood when we moved into our city house.

The house is 65' long and 19' wide (interior dimensions) with long hallways, which works out to about 2400 feet, nor counting the apartment in the English basement, with lots of it wasted. The room dimensions are mostly too narrow to be really comfortable, and are saved by huge windows and high ceilings. The renovation, which was complete when we got here, was so respectful of the original house that it's grossly deficient in practical and storage space.

(The silly closet in the dining room has a 5'7" high door, is 18" deep, and runs five feet off to the right behind the wall. How goofy is that? I'd have cut the wall open and made the whole space into a china closet with glass paned doors, and may yet do it - but I digress.)

We could never live in this house with children or a complex life, but now that we're older, the charm of living on this street with these neighbors in this part of town make the daily frustrations worth it. So far ...

Our home is 1500 sq ft. plus an unfinished basement. We are a family of 5, and go through phases where we think we've outgrown it, but then we find a space solution and it keeps working for us. I think that I am not as eager to get a bigger home than I used to be.

Our family all lives in a low cost of living area, and most of them are in 3000-4000 sq ft homes that I consider big. But they cost the same as our condo in our high cost of living area. We have more kids than my sil and bil, but I think a far greater percentage of their sq footage becomes toy storage. If we go bigger, I want it to be for us, not just buying extra space to hold extra stuff.

For our family with 3 children, I think around 2000-2400 would be plenty of space for us.

My perspective on house size is based on having lived in California most of my life where I've only once seen a house with a basement, not in other areas of the country where, if I understand correctly, basement area isn't generally counted in the square footage.

Tiny: under 1000 sq ft
Small: under 1500 sq ft
Medium: 1500-2300 sq ft
Large: above 2300 sq ft
Too large to think about: above 4000 sq ft

My son and daughter-in-law just bought a small house. They wanted 3 bedrooms and many of the houses in their price range were 900-1000 square feet. They were fortunate to find a house in good shape at 1300 sq feet and that extra 300 sq ft makes a big difference allowing a more workable kitchen size and public room space.

Certainly layout of space makes a big difference too. There has been a trend to put in huge master suits with massive bathrooms. I've seen housed greater than 2000 sq ft with that, a good-sized public area, a tiny tiny kitchen area (called a "gourmet kitchen" on the listing) and 2 or 3 other tiny bedrooms. That really wouldn't work for us.

When we bought our current house, we considered another house that was seductively beautiful. Fortunately we thought about it and realized that the layout of the beautiful house wouldn't work for the way we live - kitchen with no view of the back yard to keep an eye on the kids while cooking and family room far from the kitchen. Beautiful house was 400 sq ft larger than the ugly duckling house we bought, but almost all of the size difference was a 4' wide parquet hallway around a large central atrium. It was a lovely feature but also the main reason that living area was unworkable and not useable space,

Ugly duckling house had the perfect layout marred by old carpets and poor choices in colors for wall coverings, carpets and window coverings. Those poor choices were replaced before we moved in.

A good outdoor area can also make a home feel larger - especially in our climate.

Yes, outdoor area. Presto! Added living space. We have a smallish front porch, same in back, plus a gazebo. They all three get used, mostly by me. I love the gazebo for reading. Our weather allows these spaces to be used a big portion of the year.

Just as a contrast, over at Apartment Therapy, they are running their annual Small Cool contest for smaller homes/apartment and how they are decorated.

Here's their definitions:

Teeny-tiny 400 Square Feet and under
Tiny 600 Square Feet and under (but over 400 Square Feet)
Little 800 Square Feet and under (but over 600 Square Feet)
Small Under 1,000 Square Feet (but over 800 Square Feet)

Most of the teeny-tiny and tiny entries are apartments, but there are single-family homes in the other two categories.

Agree it's as much or more about how the space is arranged and not just 'the number' ie how many square feet.

Our house is officially ~3200 sf. HOWEVER, of that space 500 SF belongs to a 16x18' florida room in the back of the house and a 16x12' self contained room/foyer at the entrance. Neither space is really used so that takes the real square footage to ~2700 SF. That space is laid out with reasonably sized bedrooms that have very small closets. The bathrooms were built to 1950 standards: each is 5x8. The kitchen, another 50s special, is a galley with bearing walls that would be prohibitively expensive to change. What I wouldn't give to magically be able to reallocate some of the wasted footage in our house.

Ann