Celebrity homes are too big*
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- Опубликовано: 31 май 2024
- Last time we talked about 151, now we're back to cover the 154 Architectural Digest Open Door Tours, but this time we're talking square feet. The size of these celebrity homes and how it compares to the homes and apartments of regular civilians like you and me.
Previous title: I watched 154 celebrity house tours and they’re too big
00:00 Intro
01:15 How big is a square foot?
02:28 NYC vs LA AD houses
03:28 My favorite houses
04:10 Book: The Not So Big House
06:12 Kitchen and entertainment
07:15 Heart of the home
8:52 How we use indoor space
9:55 Attics and storage
11:47 Too small apartments
14:13 Celebs and their small spaces
15:14 Closing
Patreon: / kendragaylord
All data from Architectural Digest Open Doors was initially collected between Aug 16, 2023 - Sept. 6, 2023 with a follow up collection on Oct 15, 2023 - Nov 13, 2023
Articles cited:
Reduction in apartment square feet: www.king5.com/article/news/lo...
Apartments less than 400 sqft: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...
No 3-4 bedroom apartments in Seattle: seattle.curbed.com/2019/3/5/1... 
Развлечения
I have now added the square meter conversion in the subtitles! If you want the conversions, click the subtitles/closed captions button on youtube.
Thank you! I find it really hard to do that particular conversion in my head
Was gonna leave and then saw this. Thank you.
came here to thank you for that!
I usually just divide or multiply by 10. It's not perfectly accurate but it gets you most of the way there.
Thank you, the rest of the world appreciates it❤😂
The thing that bothers me most about supersized celeb homes is that they feel intellectually dishonest. Big country manors, stately homes, and sprawling ranches of the past were built that way for a purpose. They accommodated large families, multigenerational clans, large staffs of household and field workers. For more modern styles of architecture, large spaces are usually used to evoke a monolithic, imposing feeling. Both of these attributes are dishonest for these types of houses, because their huge size is totally incongruous for the few people living in them, and "monolithic and imposing" are not usually considered positive traits of a family home.
Wow I didn't know that. Thanks
I think they were and always have been status symbols, most staff did not stay in the big house and plenty of the peasant and working classes had huge families and would often live in the same house as extended family but they didn’t have that kind of space.
The modern stuff feels soulless and empty. Like it has no purpose but perhaps it reflects it's time and those building it.
Amen.
Hear hear
I love Kris: "Someone is always cooking in here." Yeah, your staff, Kris, that's your staff cooking for your dozen family members that wander in and out all the time. 😂
LITERALLY. i was like "yeah, anyone but you"
++
To be fair, she is their manager, and as a good manager she provides high-quality catering for her staff
I also feel like rich people say that to sound ~relatable~. Like they think it sounds quaint and warm and normal, but it’s fully not.
Cooking for the enormous film crew!
Perfectly normal four-burner apartment stove:
Celebrity: World’s tiniest stove!
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anyone with a 6-burner in real life! At the same time, multiple people with a 2-burner for one reason or another
@@nataliatkaczyk8631my parents recently got a new stove and it has 5 burners (griddle burner in between the 2 normal rows). We still only ever use the front right 🙃
However people who are stuck with a 2 burner usually didn’t choose to have it, they have it because the developer who owns the building wanted to save money.
I looked over at my stove, thinking it was the same size as mine. Confused of course, thanks for clarifying...😄
One thing that mcMansions neglect is the outdoor space! I think it's much better to have a smaller home that takes up less of a lot so that there's more room for trees and gardens and outdoor spaces like decks and gazebos. It's good for the soul
That’s our home. We always ask how much space do we really need? If people have tiny homes then our small house if more than enough. And our big yard we’ve broken up into human sized spaces, because as human beings you only need so much space to make a space “big”. Human beings are human being sized no matter how much $$ you have.
Between wildfire smoke that makes the air poisonous and heatwaves that last for months, I don't see suburban homes trading more indoor space for outdoor space.
Where I live the whole McMansion thing still exists where you have an oversized quasi Tudor /French style house with a three car garage, a back deck on a tiny lot . They’re awful. And you never see anyone outside . I live in a simple mid century brick ranch on a lot bigger than many of those stand on . The house balances with the yard , plantings , big tree, vegetable garden etc . .
Right?! They put these huge McMansions on these tiny plots of land and it not only looks tacky but so depressing! You have a big house but no decent patio or back deck or yard.
I think this depends a lot on climate. I live in an area that gets bitterly cold for stretches in the winter. A McMansion certainly isn't needed, but I'd absolutely prioritize space for all members of the household to have breathing room during those days or weeks of being essentially stuck inside over outdoor space. Too much forced togetherness under those circumstances is literally dangerous - both for physical and mental health. In warmer places - like all the homes in these tours that are in California - it's definitely a missed opportunity to devote so much to wine rooms bigger than most apartments instead of outdoor space.
I love how all these celebs call the kitchen the "heart of the home" but also admit to never ever cooking. Another thing that bugs me is when they have a seated kitchen island, a breakfast nook, and a dinner table all in the same room. How many different ways of eating your oatmeal do you need in one room??
"This is my heart, I never use it"
@@WlatPziupp Haha
@WlatPziupp I'm glad I wasn't eating or drinking anything when I read that 😂😂😂
It bothers me so much! They've got those gorgeous kitchens, with so much counter space for kneading dough and preparing elaborate recipes and and then they're like "but I don't really cook haha". Dang. Just give me your kitchen.
@@lovecinnamonxx Ikr? Such a waste
The thing that I kept noticing is that these people, for whom money is no (or very little) object, apparently just sit around their giant house scrolling through their phone most of the time. I started watching the tours expecting there to be far more custom single-purpose rooms, but it seems so rare to have, like, a basketball court or a giant computer room in your home.
they are "busy" people with meetings, socializing, movies to film, shopping, dining, partying, etc. I doubt they spend mush time at home.
@@thekingoffailure9967so what's the point then? Lol. A hotel room, it's probably cheaper in the long run. If all you do when you go "home" is sleep
It is almost like these are not homes, but investments that they are expecting to constantly trade and upgrade all the time. Personalising the home is a low priority and perhaps represents either an overcaptalisation or even a detriment to the future marketability of the asset.
I live in Toronto and our basketball team is a big deal here. If you browse mansion listings in the GTA, quite a few have basket ball courts. The players get big money, build/customize a huge mansion lot, then get traded to a new city team, or retire, and sell the house. It's pretty interesting. I think a lot of these celebs don't have those rooms because they don't need them. They need a fancy entertaining living space and a bedroom. A lot of them are actors or singers, so I don't think they have other hobbies or special interests that would require a whole room. I bet a lot of them have an at-home gym though. Idk I haven't watched any of the actual videos haha.
@@user-hy2qo6lj2qcame here to comment exactly this lol
Can you imagine knowing there’s an intruder in your 10,000 sq ft home😂 I’d take myself out cause I can’t handle that level of anxiety.
Right??
Someone could just move in and you wouldn't even know 😂
But if you had a 30 000 sq ft home, you could be safe in the knowledge that if someone broke in, you'd never even meet each other.
During my university years, I lived in a big historical house, giant staircase in the middle, 5 stories, 8 bedrooms, a rental for 16 students. During a holiday, it had been just me and two housemates there for a couple nights. The second night we were sitting in my bedroom, on our phones at 2 am, then some random man walked past my door, looked at us in surprise, then rushed further down the hall and went out the front door.
It was so unexpected, we didn’t even get scared. Who tf knows how long he was in the house for though……….
I thought you have "panic rooms" in America. I know that's true because I've seen them in the movies. I suppose you don't need to worry about heating a 10,000 sq ft home with 30ft vaulted ceilings in the Hollywood Hills, because it's always "safe and warm in LA". It says so in the song.
Deadass I’d be fine because the two of us are both just gonna wander around the empty place lost as hell- the odds of us running into each other before one or both of us dies of starvation because WE CANT FIND THE FRIGGIN KITCHEN is so small
This is why I love the RUclips channel Never Too Small. They showcase thoughtfully designed small apartments from all over the world and how the people living there actually use every part of the space fully.
I have a love/ hate with them because they're all "We put the kitchen on the other side of the apartment and built out $30k worth of cabinets." Ugh
Europeans are a bit shocked on what goes as "small" on that channel. "Never too small": 60 m² apartment. It is a small family apartment, not a small apartment.
@@new-lviv Exactly! I went to look at this channel (not heard of it before) hoping for for space plan inspo, and many of the flats are bigger than what I'm working with 🙃
I usually watch Roomy Room Tour's videos cause my apartment us 6畳. I have a tiny kitchenette, tiny bathroom with a shower and bathtub, one tiny closet, and only enough room for a bed and a desk. But watching those videos helped me redesign everything so my apartment is extremely functional, looks open, and I feel comfy in it. The only things I wish I had was a bigger closet and space for a table.
Sorry to reply twice. 6畳 is about 106 square feet or about 10 square meters.
I live in Dublin. Near-ish to where I live, some American developer was proposing to build something like 400+ apartments 7 stories tall in a small seaside town. The locals hated it and protested so hard. The developer submitted planning permission and the local council (who were making the decision on whether or not it could be built) rejected it, mostly because the plans contained too many 1-bedroom apartments (most would be for rent, not for buying). As with many places around the world, Ireland is going through a housing crises but it was refreshing to see the council reject something because this development was not going to suit the needs of anyone, the locals or the potential residents.
I disagree! Dublin is a place in dire need of nice solutions for people who are not CEO but - crazy! - would like to live alone in something that - crazy again! - was actually designed to be a self-contained unit and not a badly subdivided big house. As a result, unless you are a couple with very good income, everybody ends up sharing with strangers, in places that were not meant to be apartments in the first place. 1- bedroom or maybe 2-bedrooms places would be a really nice thing to have I promise. The locals hate it because they overpayed their houses so want to keep the shortage going now that it's not their problem anymore. I hear you about the 7 stories tall, maybe 4 or 5 would be less of a contrast with what exists around, but man is Dublin in need of that (at affordable rates of course).
So did the developers come back with a plan with more 2-3 bedroom apartments? Or were the council using that as a scapegoat while really appealing to the anti housing contingent?
@@Jack-fw4mw I would give this 100 thumbs-up, if I could!
@@gamaceoulapprentiessage5716Completely agree with you! Obvi there’s more nuance to everything I said but, those units were far too expensive for one (regularly-paid) person to begin with and the area isn’t served by great public transport to the main city centre (which is where anyone that could afford to live there would be working anyway). So yes, we need viable and realistic options for people looking to rent (but shouldn’t have to spend >50% of their paycheck on rent). Trust, these apartments were not it 😂
So what got built instead? The people who would have rented the apartments, where are they living?
i think there's also a larger issue with apartment sizes, which is that landlords don't want families living in their apartments, so by a large management company building an apartment complex with only studio and 1-bedroom apartments, they're self-selecting for couples and single people, rather than families, causing housing discrimination against families.
Living below a family with children running around all the time is a total nightmare tbh...
@@calibby85I guess so but the families with children have to live somewhere, right?
@@corvus_da Just requires good soundproofing, which isn't even that expensive. Hundreds of millions of families across the planet live stacked on top of each other.
Part of The Plan :-/
@@katie7748what plan? Capitalism needs individualist consumers and an underclass to exploit I guess. But that's not a "plan", that is a system.
Those in charge can't even imagine an alternative to that system, let alone try to implement one. Not so much an evil plan as learned helplessness in the face of an all consuming ideology
"I thought I was done this this spreadsheet. But like an architect working on the Parthenon, I thought this could use a few more columns."
😂😂😂😂😂 I had to pause the video to laugh. I will never be able to work with a spreadsheet without saying that ever again.
are you ever REALLY done with a spreadsheet?
The supercut of everyone saying "Heart of the home" 💀🤣
So happy to see you back with another video!
"To all my viewers not in the United States...how many times must I apologize? I know." Brilliant.
They never taught us the metric system in school - as a US citizen I feel really dumb at times!
according to google 10.76 times, because that will give you the equivalent of square feet in metres.
@@SisterSherryDoingStuffI was not taught the imperial system either. Please don‘t feel dumb ever. Just google it.
My favourite was when she gave a rugby field as a size reference 😂
@SisterSherryDoingStuff I was taught the metric system (maybe because I was blessed to have parents who prioritized my education so they pinched pennies to send me to private/parochial schools...but I've heard plenty of publicly schooled individuals say they learned it as well) but I wasn't taught to convert from one to the other. We are homeschooling our children and plan to teach conversion next year.
It felt like a punch to the gut when you mentioned how going through a small (or big) life change can mean having to leave your home/building/neighbourhood because housing often doesn't accommodate those changes (either due to size or price point). I'm going through exactly that right now. It makes normal, albeit difficult, life changes like breakups or illness or aging or whatever feel IMPOSSIBLE to manage. I got lucky and figured out my situation relatively quickly and comfortably but I had to pay through the nose to do it, only adding to the precariousness of the situation. It's tragic. It shouldn't be this way.
"What is that column holding up? In my case, that one column is holding up my entire video essay."
aaaaaaand subscribed
I loved David harbor's apartment, I loved how he created a separate work area using plants and shelves, I loved his bathroom, just everything about it, and then in the next video when he's married to Lily Allen, the place was clearly designed by her and it was so hideous and the window swags just looked like dust catchers. But to your point, I think apartments are probably tiny because there's still this thought that apartments are for young adults, and when it's time to size up, you buy a house. And that's just not realistic anymore. And even if the apartments are being built smaller, the houses being built are far too big.
Yess!!
Those are not apartments. Apartments are a set of rooms for living.
Those tiny dwellings are bachelorettes or garsonieres - a small, self-contained living space typically consisting of one main room that serves as a bedroom, living room, and sometimes a kitchenette, designed for a single person or a couple and usually lacking separate bedrooms.
I.e. That's a product build for singles, not families and ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY FOR RENTING. It's what you get when buildings are designed BY "investors" instead of FOR home owners.
Paying patron pigeonholes - not peopled by permanent possessors.
Exactly. I know from experience that it's great to live in the middle of a city, and it makes sense for people to live in areas with easy access to schools, public transport and hospitals, but if the apartment sizes are designed for a maximum of two people then families are forced to live in suburban deserts, then there's pressure for governments to spend taxpayer money on building additional infrastructure to service those areas.
The curtains in that house tour were so suffocating. I felt like someone was holding a chloroform soaked cloth over my face
The most harrowing part of this video, for me, wasn’t the ostentatious waste of space that celebrities create but the lack of diversity in new build apartment sizes and how it prevents communities of people from growing and flourishing.
A building of 150 people in a community of 1500 won’t be able to accommodate the addition of children, elderly relatives, or new spouses where every living division has the same number of bedrooms, nor does it allow for older parents or ageing people to downsize and remain in their community.
It’s really quite upsetting to know that not only is community dying, but the infrastructure on which it is built no longer remains
I would argue that the overly large hollywood style mega mansions are not "homes" per se, but places of business that include a residence (or 2 or 3) in some wing somewhere. The One (21 bedrooms, 49 bathrooms!) finally sold at auction last year for $141 million. It's not a house. It's a machine with housing, and other functions as output.
Very well said. That’s exactly it - places of business - because the modern celebrity is a small business, esp if you include support staff like cleaners, drivers, chefs, stylists, PR.
The One should just be called The Monstrosity 🤮 I absolutely can’t fathom the time and money that went into building something so unnecessary
Big houses have always had 'staff', though. The stately homes and chateaus in Europe, for example.
@@karladenton5034 Yes, those are places of business too!
For a lot of people who are famous enough to have trouble moving easily through the public, their homes often include the places that the rest of us go out for. If a celebrity can’t go to a movie theater without being swarmed by fans, they’ll have to build their own movie theater at their homes base.
AD House tours always make me wish that we could’ve gotten a Marie Antoinette led AD Tour of Versailles.
That said, I usually hate the giant celebrity houses because they’re rarely well designed. Like imagine paying an architect and receiving a 15,000 sqft back rooms / liminal space dotted with rare and bizarre pop art. On some level it just feels like a sin to have so much money and to spend it on objectively bad Architecture. It’s clear that the purpose of so many of these houses is to be unattainable instead of inspirational, and to me, that’s kind of sad because they’re some of the only people in this economy with enough wealth to actually experiment with their homes and meaningful and cool ways.
"welcome to the hall of mirrors, this is really the heart of the home"
@@kendragaylord ITS WHAT I CRAVE😭😭
Not to mention how poorly built many of them are !!
@@kendragaylord "This room's sole purpose is to impress Venetians."
"This is the ballroom. That's the corner where the guests go to defaecate.
It tickled me that you used the size of a pickleball court as a reference for _non-Americans_ who don't have an intuitive grasp of square footage. :D
PS: Even if I had the money to throw at an architectural vanity project, I couldn't feel _at all comfortable_ in a house so large that I'd need staff to maintain it. As someone who has lived in rented homes for much of my adult life (and endured property managers doing inspections at least twice annually), it is my _dream_ to never have another stranger poking around my sanctum sanctorum.
I have no idea what pickle ball is either….
@WifeMamaArtist pickleball is specifically a PNW US sport. I wouldn't even expect other Americans to know what it is 😂 Silly
Same! I really hope she did it for purpose because it's comedy gold
@@withelisaWe have that in the Upper Midwest too...
I moved back in with my parent during the pandemic to save money and help them out, because they have more house and garden than they can manage as senior citizens. I don’t know the square footage, I just know that when they first moved in as newlyweds they had so much extra space one room was designated “the box room” because they just put all their empty boxes in the room. I so stressed trying to keep up with just the cleaning and the yard at first, I can’t imagine the kind of manpower most of these houses demand.
As someone outside of the USA its so hard to understand your measurements. But I googled 14,000 sqft and it equals 1300sqm which means that those celeb home are 18.5 times the size of my cottage which is 70sqm or 753sqft
So, a size of a small cottage town.
Same. Most of the houses here are around 100sqm(~1100sqft) which is basically half of the average US house. And even the mentioned 400sqft apartment size is pretty standard in most cities in europe.
I dont know what the heck i would do with a 200sqm house even if i had like 3 children. And who would clean that place?
@@collan580Remember the *** note she had. This isn't the *overall* average. Most houses I've ever been in (and I've been in a LOT...everything from 800sqft to 2500sqft) are 1500-ish, often more like 1200.
@@collan580 No-one mentions the cost of heating. Must be as "cheap as chips" in America.
And I bet your cottage is just delightful.
Watching this video, I had flashbacks to the time that in the Sims 3, I tried to build a house that looked like a bungalow from the street, but actually went down with the cliff it was standing on, 5 stories down.
I had so much space in that house that even with making huge balconies, a three story library, a private gym, and a personal movie theatre, I still had more space than I knew what to do with.
Kendra is absolutely right: there is such a thing as too much space.
I've only seen about 35% of AD house tours, but Liv Tyler's stays my favorite. I love the story behind her brownstone and she just seems like a very down to earth person. Great video, as always!
One of my favourites too! It was so homey. The tree in the courtyard is everything. It had grown with her. It was personal without being egotistical. One of my favourite brownstones.
She looks so much like my cousin that I miss dearly, my heart melted even more 🥲💔
I think a rise in studios and one bedrooms could be good but only if they are priced reasonably. Adults shouldn't be forced to live with roommates because they cant afford to live alone. But likely these studios and 1Bs will still be very expensive.
We just bought our house in March (Im 26 and have lived with my mom up until then) and its 1300 sq ft, 2B. It is perfect for my husband and I who do not plan to have children. When we were house hunting we saw so many giant houses that I knew we pointless for us because we would never use that much space. Our house is 1.5 stories with the top floor just being the master bedroom. I WFH and have a corner of the open plan downstairs as my office. Put a room divider around it and its perfect.
We need a variety of sizes to be available at affordable rates. Some people prefer to live alone, some with a partner, some with a few room mates or family, and yet others in larger collectives.
This!!
Wow. I have 580 square feet, two bedrooms, and I don't consider it to be small. Your place sounds massive to me.
I immediately thought the tiny studio apartments would make very nice housing for homeless people. In my moral universe it is a sin to waste that much on yourself for any reason. We all see the need and privation around us and shrug as we close the door to our 5,000 sq ft "home".
@@virginiaoflaherty2983The stereotype surrounding the homeless exists for a reason. I was homeless and didn't fit the stereotype but there's a damm good reason (a few, actually) why that's not how things work. It sucks, but that's reality.
Seeing this just reminds me of Amy Sedaris's apartment tour -- which is the antithesis of most of the lavish home tours. She owns ironic furniture, everything was chewed on by her pet rabbit, she keeps fake resin food around because she thinks it's funny, she pretends to have a child. Amazing.
😳
Up until the moment I saw this comment I thought Amy Sedaris was a made up name for the actress who did the finish unstoppable pearl ads...This is mindblowing to me. I remember the ad clear as day, because I thought it was so funny, since they didn't shoot a new ad for Germany and it was so very different from our usual type of ads^^
We used “The Not So Big House” as a educational guide for what we wanted when searching for our first home 17 years ago when we were first married and wanting to start a family. I rediscovered it when we were getting ready sell our first home and buy our 2nd one, now with two kids and a dog in tow. I like to think I’ll rediscover it once more when we are ready to sell again and buy our retirement house. The advice is timeless.
I live alone with my cats in about 1200 sq ft. I am admittedly a Cat Guy and more obsessed with my cats than most people, but I sometimes lose track of one or more of them in the house I live in now, I can't imagine how easy it would be to lose them in much more space.
I hear you. I keep the door shut to my spare bedroom (might as well call it what it is... book storage) just to keep my cats out of it. They find enough nooks and crannies as it is.
My rule is 1 cat per 250 square feet. 10000 square feet? That could fit 40 cats!❤😂
Went into one of the spare bedrooms to dig out my winter clothing. Rooms always have the doors closed, so closed after me. Two hours later I'm walking past and hear desperate scratching. My calico rushed out when I opened the door. You need to be so careful with cats. When I haven't seen one for a while I start opening doors 😂😂
You would have to accept not knowing where your cats are, quite often. They would hide somewhere as cats do and you would just have to have faith that they’re fine. Maybe there’s an app that tracks pet microchips in a house?
@@partiellementecreme If they're hiding, there's a real chance cats aren't fine, so I need to know if they're actively hiding, or just somewhere doing cat things. Anything too big or too full of holes isn't compatible with this knowledge, so if you're a cat person a McMansion might not be for you, that's all.
Shrinking the vid every time she called the house tiny.. comedic genius
my favorite clip show
Portland, Oregon here. I live in just under 400sq ft/studio apartment. It's cozy. It's plenty of space for myself and my art. I do feel like I'm paying way too much for a studio apartment built in the 1940's - with little upkeep from the property management company - but it's the cheapest I could find without losing my soul and safety in the process. Living in such a small space has made me look at what is important to me: living with intention within my space. I like your videos. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing...I feel the same about my studio apartment in Vancouver, BC. It's certainly pricey but the best deal I could find in the city without having to share a place with someone. I am worried that I might not be able to make all the art I want here because of the size of the space but certainly agree with having to live with a bit more intention so as not to over-fill the studio.
My wall space is gone...hopefully etsy will kick back in!! 😊@@jassvir8503
I think it's interesting that you mentioned Troye Sivan's house numerous times. It's not in the US, but in an inner-ish suburb of Melbourne, which may explain some of the size difference. It's my favourite AD, mostly because I've always wanted to see inside that particular building (I drive by it every now and then).
Kirsten Dunst's house is absolutely one of my favorites. And Sarah Paulson's tiny house is wonderful.
I grew up on a series of Air Force bases, in base housing or in the adjacent working class neighborhoods when the wait list for on base housing was too long. We were a family of eight and I doubt any of them were much over 1500 square feet. A typical setup was 3 bedrooms (small by today's standards), one for the folks and one each for boys and girls, with a small bathroom for the folks and the siblings shared a single bathroom. It was a pretty typical setup for my peer group, military brats or not. To my parents, who grew up in Depression-era poverty and postwar Eastern Europe--we're talking no indoor plumbing and cooking on woodstoves--it was the height of luxury. But it was cramped in retrospect and the lack of privacy led to a lot of conflicts. I think the mcmansion trend was spurred by people who grew up in that same situation and dreamed of their own room and a bathroom where no one was banging on the door yelling at you to hurry up, with the shower draped with your sisters' bras and pantyhose and all the corners overflowing with their products. It's easy to judge and look down on the bad taste, but to understand why it happened you need to know the psychological roots. Ironically a lot of these giant mcmansions are open concept, where families seem to seek the togetherness they lost in the vast square footage that came about as a response to baby boomers and Gen Xers looking to escape all that togetherness. Everything is a reaction and counterreaction.
Agreed. For example, the plandemic has shown a lot of people how much they actually loathe open concept.
I agree 💯. I grew up in a house of less than 900 square feet and there were 6 of us. For an introvert like myself it was sheer torture. Plus the house was a very early open concept. God, how I hate open concept!
I've watched, bordering on hate-watched, a lot of these AD home tours. I've noticed almost nobody uses their formal dining rooms. I guess the owners get talked into it by the designers as something a mature person should have. Especially in LA, a big gathering will probably just eat outside.
Living in a one room apartment with my partner feels like living in that all purpose room living situation of the past. We learned how to use space and make it cozy. I used to live in much bigger places, but the way everything in my rented place right now is placed for OUR convenience, OUR needs and OUR practicality makes my current place so nice. I look forward to going home. Best part - we sleep on matresses, so during the day, they go up against a wall, which creates extra space.
My grandfather bought me “the not so big house” when I was just beginning to draw floor plans and designing when I was a kid. So much of how I design now is based off of her example of boat design and how every nook and cranny has a purpose. I really relate to your thoughts here and you make some incredible points! Thanks for sharing.
"yea we found some nice wood ... "
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
"So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?"
Oh my gosh McMansion Hell!!! Our family friend's daughter runs that blog, she's absolutely brilliant and funny. I'm so glad you included it!!!
Very cool to find a local RUclipsr talking so well about our housing crisis. subscribed!
troye's home is definitely one of the best house tours ad has made
I learned something really cool about colonial homes at a living history museum recently. They said that large "country" houses in the 18th century had two or three rooms on the first floor - one with a giant fireplace that was slightly above grade, one with a smaller fireplace that was slightly below grade, and then a small office for professional matters. The higher room with the larger fireplace was used in winter because it was warmer. The lower room with the smaller fireplace was used in summer because it was cooler. Meanwhile "city" houses had to have parlors and whatnot to keep up appearances. Making everyone summarily less comfortable as a result.
I've also done the room-by-room usage assessment myself. I just moved from a 950 sq ft house to a 1900 sq ft house. And interestingly - in the 950 sq ft we used every room every day (with two people working from home). Now we use all but one room every day (with only one person working from home). So the efficiency is still there and we really needed that extra space! The lone "Underutilized" spot is our guest room - but we still use that at least 1x a month when family comes and visits and we need somewhere for them to sleep. Previously - they slept in my WFH office. Which kind of worked, but wasn't ideal and meant that during-the-week visits were 100% off limits (I do super confidential work so nobody can be just hanging around). I've had the really lucky experience of getting to live in a beautifully-designed not-so-big house. And I'm very grateful!
I feel - personally - that 1700 to 2500 sq ft is the sweet spot for most multi-person households - smaller for just 1 person or for couples who don't both WFH - especially those with children! Anything bigger is just extraneous space to clean and heat!
My parents designed and built their house so it’s designed with them living in it and my brother and I got to add some input when it came to our rooms which is why my room has a walk in closet and his doesn’t. My parents wanted a mud/laundry room, a shower in the main floor bathroom for cleaning the mud off (we live in the country), a lot of cabinet space in the kitchen, etc etc etc it’s not a copy and paste house,everything was chosen for a reason. Which is awesome
The "everything room" really explains why I never felt cramped in 430sqf studio. I had minimalist furniture and good storage, it allowed me to do yoga, pin large pieces of fabrics together, play with the cat, invite friends over, etc. without ever feeling like I lacked space. We need more "everything rooms" in our lives!
The first condo I ever bought had two bedrooms and two bathrooms. I never used the second bathroom and it literally felt weird if I walked in there, like it just wasn’t mine. And while I did set the second bedroom up as an office, I never wanted to be in it cuz I liked the living room better. I now have a 1BR/1B with one long, open space for the LR/DR/kitchen and it all gets used…it’s so much more livable without wasted space.
We have a spare bedroom/office in the house, and same thing : we're all working at the dinner table in the living room. It's just more pleasant!
Even when I was a kid in the 80's, I hated suburbs and mcmansions with the power of a thousand suns.
What appealed to me and still to this day is mid century modern / minimalist living. Some people just live that way.
Oh my goodness I love Liv Tyler. And that man’s attic clothes, closet, full of clothing would be my clothing dream come true.
I find that a lot of advice about what kind of house YOU should have, that comes from other people, isn't always great. I wanted a big old dining room. And people thought I was out of my mind. "Nobody entertains like that anymore, least of all you." yeah but I'm an artist and a big honking table where I can spread all my stuff out never goes amiss. Different people have different lives and I find we are happiest when we are honest about what life we have.
YEP!
Better to have too much space and complain about how you never get to use all of it than have too little and realize you needed more when it’s already too late.
I’m an American living in France. When I first moved here, my husband and I left a 2800 sqft house in Colorado and moved into a 870 sqft apartment. We then bought a house in the SW, about an hour from Bordeaux in a small village. Our house is 1100 sqft and it feels HUGE!
Layout has an effect, too. You can have two houses next to each other, both 1200sqft but with different floorplans. One will feel cramped and the other will not.
i'm a person of many hobbies and interests. Seeing so many celebrities have large homes they just don't use feels crazy. Oh man I'd go crazy, a server room, a historical research room with a big globe and books, a computer room for LAN parties, a Lego room, a movie room, a welding and metal fab room, I can imagine having so much to fill up these spaces but the people who actually own them, don't seem to be able to.
There was this time back during when my family was doing better and I was a bit younger. My dad painted and laquered old chairs and a table, put them on a nice rug and essentially created a 'no-go' zone in a part of the living room. You couldn't touch it or mess with it, it didn't "exist" in the same world as everything else in the house. It didn't last long, but it reminds me of a lot of these celebrity homes. Something nice to look at but not to experience. Where so much of it isn't used or lived in. It's there to look nice and appreciate value. An asset where the only value is the price tag you can get for it, or the show that you have it.
I like your point later in the video about most houses being too small to permit families or friend networks to expand and contract over a lifetime while remaining rooted in the same community. Changing the size to match current needs inevitably means moving not just out of the current home, but out of the current community into new communities where such sizes are available or permitted. Needs for different amounts of space change multiple times in a lifetime. The excessively sized house may look sterile and unlived in for now, but it might be an investment for the potential future when the space will become useful without needing to move to a different location.
So apartments have gotten smaller AND more expensive. Real cool.
My bed, drum set, living room, and office are all in the same 11,11 ft room and I like it that way
When I bought my home following my divorce I made a very considered choice to buy a much smaller space. It’s just me, I eat my meals off my lap on the sofa, rarely have overnight guests, and don’t entertain much, so my home with a small second bedroom for an office (I’m self employed and work mainly from home), small kitchen and cozy living room suits me just fine. I’ve gone from a home where I rarely used many rooms to one where every room is used, every day, and where I have space to do everything I want to do. Being really considered about how I actually live, and what my life plans are, as well as living in an area where there are a range of different sized homes at vaguely affordable prices, meant being able to choose a space that feels neither too big nor too small, but still gives me options.
I will never understand big houses. My mom's house growing up was 1,400 square feet for a family of 4 and that was the perfect size for us imo. Every room was used for something. My dad's house on the other hand was 3,000 square feet and there were a couple of rooms just never actually used for anything. A separate dining room with nothing in it but a few wall decorations. A 4th bedroom (again for a family of 4) sitting empty aside from an unused bed. Especially when my dad and his wife (at the time he built the house himself) weren't very social people, they didn't have guests over for anything ever, they would just sit home by themselves. Hell it was a 2.5 bathroom house, but it took him 20 years to actually finish a whole bathroom, so it was more empty spaces.
There was a study I read about years ago about room usage in homes (The Ladders also has an article on it), and it was something like 30% of the average family home (around the same 2k sq ft Kendra mentioned) goes unused. I also grew up in an approx. 1400 square foot homes, whether it was just my parents and I, my grandparents, parents, and I, and now just my husband and I, and it always seems like just enough space so you're not on top of each other, but every room gets used. Every time I see these AD videos or see people with big houses, I think about that article and wonder why you'd need so much space that goes unused
My parents own a huge house (that I grew up in) , 600m2 (6500 sq feet) and it’s a nightmare to maintain and a financial pit, now that they’re retired, I suggested selling the house and downgrading, buying somewhere next to beach, but they don’t agree… even if we’re a big family ( 5 kids), and we’ll all together, there are still places that no one uses gathering dust.
So thoughtful. I wonder if you'd be interested in co-housing stories. I think a lot about how guest bedrooms (and banquet halls) get used a very small handful of times per year, and almost never at a moment's notice. If people had only enough space for their every day lives but had easy access to communal space for occasional use, you could have the best of both worlds (if you could somehow avoid the tragedy of the commons).
As someone who has lived in 350 sq/ft to 500 sq/ft places for most of my life, I now live in a place that is about 1100 sq/ft with just my dog and me. Legally, Its listed as a one bedroom, because there is only one door closing off the bedroom. But there is a second space that is just as large as the living room/den, that I use an an office. If I include the double garage which I uses as a studio, the place is around 1500 sq/ft.
I have so grown into this space and I LOVE it. I feel adult having some spaces just for their tasks. My bedroom is just my bedroom. There is no desk in it. I can eat in my kitchen. I watch movies in the living room. Multifunctional spaces can be really heavy. I now have the ability to walk around my home and get a different vibe in a different space. I love that feeling.
To me, anything larger than what I have I think would make me feel overwhelmed because I already sometimes don't visit every room of my 6 room home every day. I cant imagine people with 10, 15, 20 rooms. Even if someone does have a house that large, they have all that extra space for other people and they typically live in line 2-4 rooms.
Sarah Susanka is a favorite author of mine. I like how she explains in one of her books how she spent a lot of time as a young architect putting ceilings into the triple-height living rooms in those 90s houses, how people liked how they looked but hated living in them because they were not "human-scaled." I have a relative whose giant house had a giant front entry and an abysmal garage entry, which was the one they actually used. Susanka has loads of tips and her books are well worth reading. She thought of everything, including how to live with a great room.
One of my first thoughts on AD tours is that the houses are massively too big. I will end up enjoying someone's style, but the home itself is always very 'eh' to me, simply due to the size. When my husband and I were house hunting in 2019, I set the size limit at 1,500 sq ft. I wouldn't entertain anything larger, and really, I was looking for something fairly small. We ended up buying a house that's just under 1,100 sq ft, and it's great for the two of us. We each get an office, and cleaning is not a painful undertaking.
My husband and I recently renovated a small house to be our first and also 'forever' or grow-old-together home (1000sqft). Originally we had planned to build an even smaller home (850sqft) and I spent the years (while we saved, searched, made palns, etc) thinking very carefully about creating something in the size/ layout goldilocks zone for us. I didn't want to waste any space/$ nor have to do more to keep the excess clean and in good order.
I was surprised by how difficult it is to find small house plans that aren't tiny (loft ladders to the "bedroom" type) or one room cabin/cottage vacation homes. Also, it was extremely rare to find something without a dining room and ensuit bathrooms for every bedroom. We eventually ended up buying and renovating our current home instead, but I'm so happy I spent a lot of time thinking about how we use our space and what was superfluous before the reno.
I don't think many people put a lot of thought into it, either because they make do with what they can afford, they do the 'done' thing (like a mcmansion), or what would work better just isn't available - as you mentioned with newer apartment trends.
the server room lmao kill me
I think my parents house is the perfect size and layout. It's three floors. Each floor has three rooms. Bottom floor: kitchen, dining room, living room. Middle floor: 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. Top floor: bedroom, office, shower room. It means I don't have to share a room with my brother, and my parents get an office in which they can do work from home. Upper floors are pretty standard.
But the ground floor is my favourite: you entre the house through the dining room. One way goes to the kitchen and garden, the other to the living room. And between the kitchen and dining room is half a wall with what used to be the door into the kitchen but is now half bricked up and just a large opening in the wall. (The kitchen used to be half the width of the garden but the previous owners of the house expanded it to the full width of the garden, and left the former back door open as an arch) so whilst the kitchen and dining room are distinctly separate, they are still connected, you can still hang around in the dining room and whilst chatting with someone in the kitchen. And by being the first room a guest enters, the dining room is treated as a much more communal space. I've seen people come in, pull out a chair from under the table and sit in it. And as for the living room, as it is on the other side of the house to the kitchen and garden, people who want to go from one to the other must pass through the dining room. People are forced to spend at least some time in that room when they come over.
And it's pretty common even in houses in the area that don't have the doors on the side of the building, because most of the houses have the door that opens into a hallway that gives straight on to where the stairs are, and the only entrance into the ground floor is through a door at the bottom of the stairs that opens into the middle of the three rooms on the ground floor. I know some people just eliminated the wall between the front and middle room to make one massive sitting room instead. I know people who switched the living room and dining room from what my parents have, or even just opened the wall up more to make the floor more open plan whilst still keeping rooms sitting and separate.
And the best part? None of it is intentional. It all comes from how the houses were originally used that required the first and second floor remained separate: most of the houses in the area are industrial revolution era and would house probably 2 families: one on each floor.
Quick tip for us people living the metric life: take the square feet number and divide it by 10, then subtract 10%. It's not completely accurate, but you will get a reasonably close approximation in square meters.
For exemple, at 1:48 the US football field is 57'600 ft2, so divide it by 10 and you get 5'760, then you take 10% of this number (576) and your result is: 5'184 m2. (the actual size of a US football field is 5286 m2).
Something something joke about how Americans always use football fields as the universal example (/j)
My house is 1,300 sq feet and i dont have every square inch clean at one time.
Same I live in a 940 sq foot house and I do a good (not great) job keeping it clean but I have no idea how people clean homes double and triple the size without help
There's definitely a lack of care put into McMansion designs where rooms become large just because they can. There's something to be said for negative space and openness, but at some point you create so many additional paces to simply get between things it becomes counter productive, and you start needing to add additional half-bathrooms, kitchen nooks, refrigerators whatever so you don't have to trek so far to get a snack or use a toilet it defeats the benefits
My husband and I both love to cook, so even though we only have a 1000sq ft home, we made sure the kitchen remained quite roomy with lots of "flow" and right in the center of the home. It's all about priorities! Granted, we will have to do an addition for more bedrooms when our family grows.
so lovely
I just watched Orville Pecks house tour…it was really cozy and modest…it was refreshing
Beautiful video! I love the not-so-big series and the case for real homes (and Liv Tyler!). The housing trends are so short-sighted! I also see plenty of building expensive skinny units... where the stairs take up a ton of living space *and* are absolutely terrible for elderly people, anyone with a leg injury, families with toddlers, etc. I wish we would be able to invest in some long-term strategies for appropriate housing diversity and overall supply.
I live online, the heart of my home is the immediate surrounding of my laptop.😁
As a french, I sincerely thank you for adding the sqm conversion that made this video even more pleasant and clear than it already was. Much love to you, keep up the good work !
I agree. It sounds like sour grapes, but I honestly would never want a house this huge.
imagine having two bedrooms
I wouldn't mind having one!! I live in a studio apartment.
Loved the Tour of Orville Peck's home because it was clearly an older stucco style full of character and it fit his personality so perfectly.
I read that book about 20 years ago, and that changed my mind about what makes a house a good size 😊
Me too
I currently live with my dog in a 800 sq ft one bedroom apartment. The thing I love is the big closets for my food (I bake) and all my accoutrement for my baking and other hobbies. It is much bigger than the 400 sq ft Parisian flat I shared with my ex and our bunnies, but somehow I love every inch of my current space.
A Parisian flat with bunnies sounds like fun 😅 or the beginning of a great children’s book ❤
We bought a house 2 years ago, its not huge. Its just a ranch, and its an older house so its been added to over the years. Its a 3 bedroom 2 bath...but my husband and I are still uncomfortable with how big it is. We both come from poor-ish childhoods. I can't put it into words but I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable with a home this large. It doesn't feel big everyday with just us and our pets living our life, but when people come over and ask for a tour I find myself apologizing. The sunken living room that's an outdate addition to modern standards, "sorry, don't know why we have 2 living rooms", the massive bathroom off our bedroom, "I know, its crazy huge, not sure why they built it so big". Its crazy, I don't know why I'm so uncomfortable with this. For reference, its 2200+ square feet, on almost 4 acres. But its a super small town in the middle of nowhere so it wasn't crazy expensive (still apologizing).
I am in a similar situation to you. We moved a couple of years ago. Our old home was a 3 bedroom 2 bath and our current home is 4 bedroom 3 bath.
I hate all the spaces. Not only do they require more furniture which costs more money, I never had the budget to get new carpet and I cringe to think about how much it will cost to replace windows. (Northern Canadian winters)
I am learning that I don't have to give people house tours. I am learning to respect my private spaces by not showing people my bedroom, laundry or storage. I am learning to take a page from how people would entertain a visitor in the parlour. It's not easy when we always see home tours that welcome people into the bedroom.
You need to stop apologizing. One easy way is by not giving a tour and just using whichever space you are using to entertain. It's like renting a space in a large facility. You might be hosting an event in a meeting room but you don't have to apologize for the size of the rest of the venue or even show off that space as it is not the space you are "renting" for the current entertainment use.
My parents tore 70% of their house's first floor apart to build a great room and it's been a remarkable improvement. My kids love it and so does anyone else that visits. Having the kitchen, table and living room all in one large space just makes everyone congregate easier.
To be honest,I love to watch all this arcitectual digest and homeworthy videos, Just to get in a rage or have a good laugh,very rarely I´m really astonished and positively surprised. Why watching then? Just for the few times ,when there is a wow factor for me,it´s worth it. Now the square footage, I think as well that most of the houses are far too big,but what I find weird in many private homes (no celebrity,no well known person,but very rich) they have a "formal" sitting room and a "formal" dining room, plus a kitchen with barstools a breakfast nook,a sofa and lounge chairs. On top of that there might be a family room,a sun room,sometimes a library, an office and the main bedroom all with sofas and lounge chairs, I mean really? If you have so much room or space and clutter it must be terribly hard to say "good bye" when you are leaving this world. I have some experience concerning this aspect. And I say poor rich people.
The Not So Big House was really helpful to me back in 2004 when my husband and I decided to downsize from 2500 to 1150 sq feet just as our kids were 5 and 2. Everyone thought we were so crazy to choose to go down in size with young, active kids, but it was such a positive move for our quality of life. The move was driven by a desire to be in a more walkable neighborhood with better commutes, shrinking our square footage just made that more possible, but it definitely let like a gamble. Turns out,our smaller house had a much smarter layout, better finishes, was far easier to keep in good shape, kept our kids’ bedrooms closer to ours in a positive way, and just felt way more like a home from day one than the bigger one ever did in the several years we lived there. We’re still in our little house. There were moments when the kids were in high school when it maybe felt a hair too small, but not many. I still think downsizing was one of the best decisions we ever made.
I’m soooo glad to have found your channel, your videos are so specific yet so broad and I love it so much
You are delightful to listen to! Love all of your observations and connections
We designed our house 20 years ago following Sarah's Tiny House philosophy. We designed a liveable small house for our family. Love her series of books.
I lived in the Seattle area this summer with my husband and two kids. We could only afford to rent a one bedroom apartment and picked one with a walk in closet so we could put the kids somewhere. Although the square footage wasn't that much (I think about 700-800 SQ ft) the layout was pretty thoughtful so that it functioned really well. But there's this stupid law that says you can't put more than three people in the one bedroom house. The only way we could rent that house was because our youngest family member doesn't count as a person in the head count until she reaches a certain age (I think 12 or 18 months? I forgot.) But because of the cost of housing in this area, nobody with a lower income would be able to live there.
Another issue with the cost of housing that we've discovered is that as the value of your home goes up, the government taxes you more simply based on the value of the home. So without having any changes in income, you might find yourself paying more for a mortgage every year because the government wants their dip in your real estate value increasing. So again, your family may have grown, your cost of living may have changed a little bit, and you didn't get more income that year, but you have to pay 140 more each month for your mortgage to cover property taxes. And in our specific case we also saw an increase of 105 in condo fees while experiencing a decrease in income because I was on maternity leave. That's 245 dollars more each month that we do when we had budgeted to buy a house where we could easily enough afford the mortgage and condo fees in spite of a low income during a season of low income.
Doesn't count as a person?! What the actual dehumanizing fck?!?!
I don't know how to articulate how much i love this channel and your podcast. I just found this channel a couple months ago after my algorythm had been off for a while, but you make content about so many things that I am into! Thank you for the cool stories, thoughtful dialogue, and great spreadsheet!
This video reminded me of my childhood home! My mom decorated the dining room to look so nice and welcoming and yet we ALL congregated in the tiny kitchen. The kitchen was the last thing to get renovated so it looked outdated and there wasn’t much space for people to stand let alone sit, and yet we all would sit in that kitchen and chat for HOURS. My mom and I would sit on the ground, and more and more random chairs would begin to make their home in the kitchen, regardless of what they looked like (one of them was a cheap plastic folding chair 😂). It’s so funny to look back on it and realize how little we actually used the “designated” rooms we were told to.
The kitchen really is the heart of the home in my heart :)
Brilliant as always Kendra!
I just discovered you, Kendra, and wanted you to know what a delight you are, and interesting and funny besides. You make my day infinitely better! So thanks for all your hard work.
My husband and I wanted a three bedroom apartment/townhouse in 2019 to accommodate our new son. We searched for a whole year and finally had to settle for a 1,000 square foot, two bedroom apartment with a small dining space (not room, just a portion of the living room that could be used to dine) where my husband's studio would be located right outside of a bedroom. We gave our son the master bedroom because it was further from my husband's studio, and we took the small bedroom which required us to shimmy along the wall to get into our queen-sized bed, and I would sporadically hear my husband working through the night while I was sleeping. We made that work for two years (through the pandemic - not at all ideal as I started my own business at home during that time, too, and had to work right outside our son's room), but as far as growing into that home with a child who would only get larger and louder, it just wasn't possible. We were priced out of the market entirely (Vancouver, BC) and wound up moving to Alberta (one province east of BC) where you could get a house for almost $100K LESS than any apartment in the Vancouver area, or its outskirts. It was a big change, and we created many a pros/cons list and didn't know if moving away from family and friends would be the right call, but owning a whole house has been such a step-up and we're so lucky we were able to make the move we did at the time we did. More square footage makes things so much easier, and you don't have to worry that your child's footsteps will wake an angry neighbour (which did happen at our last apartment).
I feel you. Having neighbors is the worst! I don't enjoy my kid running around the appartment and feel sorry for my neighbors but there is nothing I can do about it. (Yes he is in daycare playing with kids and running around and we take him for walks, he likes to run pre sleep time and before school 😅)
Society seems to have less and less compassion for kids and their full time working parents living in an appartment.
We moved bc of this as well.
This is a great video! You make great points, and you’re so well spoken. Thank you!
I just found your channel tonight and LOVE it! You are so smart and witty. Thank you for your hard work!
Another banger!!!
I've always loved peeking into people's storage. Be it your attic, garage, deep closet, medicine cabinets : I'm trynna know what's in there
I live in a 3 bedroom apartment with 3 roommates, and let me tell you I would LOVE it if there were four bedroom apartments. It’s COZY. But we often talk about how we’d like a little more kitchen space and room for doing bigger crafts and things. But tbh I’d never move to a huge place. I like the convenience of never being more than one room anyway from anything you need.
I'm so glad you revisited that spreadsheet! - and the conclusion of this video was not what I expected it to be, which is what I love about your content.
A very entertaining video. Thank you for creating it!
Wow. Your videos never fail to disappoint. This one was exceptional! Your sense of humor is unmatched and your videos are brimming with interesting factoids. Can't wait to listen to your podcast 🎧
"your videos never fail to disappoint" LMAOOO
that's probably not what you meant to write, but that's hilarious 😂
Oooh I love having a peek into US and Canada attitudes towards living spaces! You guys have such high standards for them 😅
Meanwhile, a postcard from EE - my family is currently living in a 2bedroom 47m2 apartment (505sqf or smth according to Google). You definitely can fit 2 adults 2 preteen children and a dog round here VERY comfortably. And many a guest! 😂 Although ofc, as the 90s book sounds to imply, it's more about a sensible room plan than anything.
If the space was arranged differently, it could probably work much better (I wouldn't say no to a bigger kitchen or bathroom in exchange for a smaller living room area. But we need the load-bearing walls _somewhere_ I guess) or much worse (our bedroom is barely enough for me now, if you took half a sqm out of it, I would riot). 🤷♀️
excellent video! Have watched a few of yours already and you structure, communication of information, and sources are great. Thank you
Entertaining as always, Kendra.