Overall Britain now has the smallest homes on average in Europe

and the abolition of the minimum

space standards through the 1980 Local Government, Planning and
Land Act is to blame, Riba
says.

IKEA in UK Booms after introducing

smaller sizes

Ikea said sales of bedroom items

were particularly strong
following its decision to switch
its
range of mattresses and beds
from European dimensions to
slightly smaller UK sizeslast
April. Mattress sales increased
by 41% in the final four months
of 2014 and the company's topselling product was the Friheten
comer sofabed, where salesmore
than doubled after the price was
cut to 395 from 450.

Government policies such as the controversial

help to buy mortgage scheme are expected to
fuel the building sector and they now want
developers to give something back to
communities.
In return, ministers will reduce more than 1,500
pages of guidance to fewer than 80, a move
they claim will save builders time and money.

Developers could be forced to build homes to new

minimum space standards as the government
called for an end to the spread of rabbit hutch homes.

Millions of Britons are living in 'rabbit hutch' family homes that have halved in size since
the 1920s,
it was revealed today.
The average semi-detached house now has one less bedroom and is much more
cramped, dark
and artificially lit than those built in the early 20th century.
After analysing data from 16,000 English homes, the team from the University of Cambridge, found
British homes are the smallest in Europe, study finds - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/10909403/British-homes-...
1 of 4 7/11/2016 9:00 AM
that 55 per cent of them had less floor space than the London Housing Design Guides internal
space standard.
More than a fifth of the properties fell short of total space requirements when the number of
occupants was taken into account.

Today, a bed is not just to sleep in; its more. People want more room in their beds because
they have become
a social space.

Figures from Tesco and John Lewis suggest that, for the first time, more 5ft-wide king-size beds
are being sold
than doubles in Britain. The figures reflect the fact that adults are now heavier and taller than
before and that
consumers are willing to pay the cost to recreate the comforts of a luxury hotel in their own
home.
Tesco said sales of king-size beds and super-king-size beds, which are 6ft-wide, had increased
by 45 per cent
during the past year a rate of increase that completely eclipsed the growth in double beds.

Even though bedrooms are getting smaller,

the bed is now the main fashion focal point of
the room, rather
than, say, the dresser, as it used to be.
Interior designers also said that many clients
wanted to recreate the opulence of hotel
suites inside their own
homes, and have beds big enough to
accommodate all the family watching
televisions or using laptop
computers.
This trend is on the rise as it allows people
to recreate the luxury of sleeping in a large
hotel bed within their
own home, said Katharine Pooley, an
interior designer.
As our lives get increasingly busy, the need
for escapism and total relaxation becomes
more and more
important.

The largest "double bedroom" is just 3.4m (11ft 2in) by 2.5m

(8ft 2in), with barely enough room for a double bed.
"It has a fitted wardrobe and I can just about squeeze in in a little chest of drawers," she adds.
"But there's no room for even a little
chair to hang my clothes on overnight."
The other two bedrooms are even smaller and downstairs the picture is the same.
Says Dorothy: "There is just a small kitchen and a lounge-diner which means that there isn't
enough room for furniture or for space
to eat and relax."
And houses are getting smaller. The average UK home - including older and new-build
properties is 85 sq m and has 5.2 rooms with an average area of 16.3 sq m per room.
In comparison the average new home in the UK is 76 sq ms and has 4.8 rooms with an average
area of 15.8 sq m per room.
The Home Builders Federation, representing the biggest house builders in England and Wales,
defends the policy of squeezing
more properties into smaller and smaller spaces.
"If you increase standards you're going to increase costs," says the federation's head of
planning Andrew Whitaker.

The UK Self-Storage Association says more than 350 specialist companies now operate
and there are now more than 800 self-storage facilities across Britain serving some 250,000
customers; renting 20-5osq ft oflock-up storage (the size of a garden shed) can cost well over
100 a month in central London, half that or less elsewhere.
There are currently 40 books on how to declutter your home currently in print. The Association
of Professional Declutterers and Organisers will put you in touch with any of several dozen
firms around the country that you can pay to do the job for you - at a rate of about 25 an hour.

Only 42 percent of Germans own their own

home, compared to 65 percent in the US and
69 percent in
the UK. But then Germany was able to avoid
the major mortgage crisis that first hit the US,
the UK,
Spain and many other countries in 2008.
Most German (and European) apartments,
condos and houses have no built-in closets or
storage
space. Only in some newer residences will you
find closets as part of the construction, but often
not
even in newer homes.
So what do Germans and other Europeans do to
store clothing and other items? They buy
furniture!
A typical German bedroom has an item of
furniture called a Kleiderschrank or Garderobe,
which is a
clothing cabinet or wardobe. A Schrank in
German is any kind of cabinet, whether used as
a wardrobe,
a pantry, or a cupboard.

Apartment complexes
In or around almost any German city, you will see the rows of Wohnsilos (residential
towers), the tall
and usually Spartan-looking apartment towers that dominate the cityscape, and were
mostly
constructed in recent decades to provide the higher quality housing that Germans
expect today.
Lacking the charm of traditional European architecture, these utilitarian living units most
often resemble
the unexciting condos and apartments that can be found all over Europe and the world.
Built in
response to a chronic lack of housing, these towers are usually located in what are
termed satellite
towns at the edges of the city.
many other factors. Already in the early
years of the German Democratic Republic, the availability and
quality of housing was much lower than it was in West Germany.
By 1986, there were 1.6 rooms for each per son in the GDR,
compared to 1.9 in West Germany. The amount of living space
per
person was 27 square meters, compared to 37 square
meters in West Germany. As

In 1960 there was just an average of 19

square meters of living space per person, in 1980 it
was 30, and currently the average is 42 square meters.

cooperative housing estates. On the whole,

housing standards are one of the areas of life
for which the Germans have achieved the most
significant improvements in their quality of
life. The improvement of housing quality for
the citizens in the former East German states is
also one of the especially successful aspects of
the societal transfor mation after the
Reunification. And how

the Czech Republic, Hungary). The European

countries in this analysis differ not only in their general level of economic wealth; they also show a
variety of characteristics specific to their own housing sectors, which we cannot analyse in detail7. These
include, for instance, aspects of the housing and real estate market, state regulations and sup port
programs to support private housing purchases and building renovation, public housing construction
programs, the prices of construction and land, urban planning

at "rent-free" housing in all analysed coun tries shows that these residents are usually older or younger
singles (over 65 or under 30 years of age). In Eastern Europe they are also often single parents with
children; surprisingly, "rent-free" households in Eas tern Europe are not only households with a low
income. Whether residents rent or own their homes depends not only on household income, but also
household type, household size and the charactrnst:ics of the area of resi
dence ffable 1). The probability of owning
have to be seen as a disadvantage. The wide variety of housing available in the
rental market in Germany provides not only, but especially, low-income and lowasset households with an attractive opportunity to live in quality housing, without
having to purchase a home.