What Qualifies a Room as a Legal Bedroom
Because it is a highly charged term, local municipalities are very careful in setting out their rules for what makes a legal bedroom. In matters of building codes, the term provokes strong concerns about life safety and public health. In matters of real estate appraisal, assessment and marketing, the number of bedrooms ranks meaningfully in determining the value of a property. In all situations, it is crucial that everyone is clear on what makes a bedroom a bedroom – particularly the compliance that must be satisfied if it is to qualify as “legal”.
While most municipalities have their own specific rules for what makes a bedroom, they tend to define it as having all of three qualities: it meets code habitability requirements, it provides escape directly to the outdoors in an emergency and it has privacy. A closet is useful, but is not required.
These three attributes come together like the elements of a Venn diagram or the legs of that proverbial stool to create a legally qualified bedroom. Any room having just one or even two of these qualities is just a room and will not hold up to the scrutiny of an appraiser, building official or sanitarian if it is simply declared a bedroom.
Viewed another way, bedrooms must be habitable spaces, but not all habitable spaces are bedrooms. Bedrooms must have at least one rigorously defined opening (a door or window) that provides access to and from the outside, but not all spaces with such openings are bedrooms. A bedroom must provide privacy to the occupant(s) of the room, but not all private rooms are bedrooms.
In circumstances where all these attributes are present together, THAT is where you have the makings of a bedroom and a very strong argument for counting it as such in a bedroom tally. Are you arguing against that room being classified as a bedroom? Then remove one or more of the three attributes and a case likely can be made.
The Three Things that Make a Legal Bedroom
1. Meeting habitable space requirements
Habitable space is a defined term in the International Residential Code, or IRC, which is a model code forming the basis of building codes for single family and two-family dwellings in most states. The IRC defines habitable space as: “A space in a building for living, sleeping, eating or cooking. Bathrooms, toilet rooms closets, halls, storage or utility spaces and similar areas are not considered habitable spaces.”
The IRC further dedicates multiple paragraphs to the provisions required for a space to qualify as habitable, including requirements for light, heat, ventilation, minimum square footage and spatial dimensions of the room. There are exceptions and “if this then that” scenarios and individual circumstances ought to be analyzed against the fullness of the code, but generally speaking the following should give a sense of what’s involved:
- Required area and dimensions: provide a minimum of 70 square feet no horizontal dimension less than 7 feet and a minimum ceiling height of 7 feet (with exceptions for sloped ceilings and various conditions of ceilings in basements)
- Required light: provide glazing equal or greater than 8% of the subject room’s area (with exceptions for artificial light).
- Required ventilation: provide an openable area to the outdoors not less than 4 percent of the floor area being ventilated (with exceptions for artificial ventilation).
- Required heat: provide heating sufficient to maintain a room temperature of not less than 68°F (20°C) at a point 3 feet (914 mm) above the floor and 2 feet (610 mm) from exterior walls. Portable heaters are explicitly excluded as means of providing the required heating.
Again, these are general descriptions of requirements and may vary depending on the unique particulars of the situation.
2. Providing an emergency escape and rescue opening
So why does the IRC code not use the term “means of egress” when discussing the way out of a bedroom? I believe it is to emphasize that the one egress opening to the exterior that is explicitly required is also meant to serve as a way in.
It is called an emergency escape (way out) and rescue (way in) opening.
The opening of the room is required to be large enough and configured such that firefighters wearing full gear can get INTO the bedroom to perform a rescue during an emergency. Furthermore, the opening doesn’t have to be a window. Technically speaking, It is possible to have a windowless bedroom if all of certain factors are satisfied just right, though the misfortunes of a windowless bedroom abound in so many other regards!
As with habitability requirements, the requirements for an emergency escape and rescue opening can vary depending on the unique circumstances of the space, but following are some of the basic criteria that should give a sense of what’s involved in the context of a single family dwelling:
- Direct to outside: the opening must open directly to a yard or public way.
- Operability: the opening must be operational from the inside of the room without the use of keys, tools or special knowledge.
- Minimum size: provide a minimum net clear opening of 5.7 square feet with a minimum net clear height of 24 inches and a minimum net clear width of 20 inches.
- If a window: the sill height of the window must be no more than 44 inches above the floor.
There is other criteria related to emergency escape and rescue openings in habitable space (that includes bedrooms), that occur below grade, such as in basements. The criteria relate to the specific requirements for and of wells that must be provided if the room is below grade. There are also exceptions to and modifications of the criteria bulleted above that relate to replacement windows in existing spaces, spaces in basements, attics and former non-habitable space that is being converted to habitable space. These exceptions are beyond the scope of this article and warrant research into the particulars of the building code if they apply to your circumstance.
3. Establishing privacy for the occupants
A room without privacy is not a bedroom. But what is privacy? It is a state of dwelling that is subjective to say the least and so it’s difficult to define. The IRC doesn’t even try. However, the concern of the building code is the quality and safety of life, and with regard to bedrooms its concerns are covered in the first two things explained above, so there is no need there for a definition.
The question of privacy arises more broadly when considering the control of entry into a room along with the nature of the space from which entry is gained.
In other words, the occupant of a bedroom must be able to restrict entry to the room with the use of a door, and must be able to access the room without it’s sole entry gained by passing through another bedroom. Likewise, it also must not serve to provide the sole entry to another bedroom.
A separate room can be located through a doorway from a bedroom (a dressing room for instance), it just cannot be qualified as a separate bedroom.
While these are the basic tenets of bedroom privacy, there may be a host of qualities that an individual jurisdiction has in place to clarify its terms of accepting whether privacy has been established. That said, if a room has the qualities identified above it will likely be deemed to have privacy.
The Value Context of a Legal Bedroom in Real Estate
The financial value of a bedroom is a relative thing depending on many factors, all of which an appraiser or assessor is trained to evaluate. Generally speaking, the higher the bedroom count of a house, the greater its value. Some homeowners seek strategies for a house to appraise at a high value and assess for a low value. Given the care that municipalities take to define a bedroom, that would be a trick to pull off and if successful would likely constitute fraud.
Often the presence of a closet in a room is thought to determine whether it is considered to be a bedroom. This is true only from the perspective of a real estate agent, appraiser or perhaps an assessor and only because the market place of home buyers expects a bedroom to have a closet.
However, older homes built in the very early twentieth century or before may not have bedrooms with closets because furniture was used for the storage of clothing, linens and such. Those bedrooms are not disqualified as bedrooms simply because they lack closets, but their value in the real estate analysis may surely be impacted (if not balanced by the charm of antiquity).
The Health and Safety Context of Legal Bedrooms
As noted above, the concern of the building code is the quality and safety of life and this concerns is demonstrated in bedrooms by the assurance of suitable habitation and rescue from life threatening situations. Bedrooms relate to public health and the well-being of a community, as well.
Where private septic tanks are used to dispose sewage, the tank and system is sized to accommodate flow based on the number of dwelling occupants, not the number of plumbing fixtures as some may suspect.
The number of occupants is determined by the element of a house that best suggests long-term occupation of the house – bedrooms. Local health codes and ordinances therefore use bedroom count as a practical and uniform variable in the calculation of septic system sizes assuring a basic protection of public health for the communities they serve.
When it walks and quacks like a duck
It bears mentioning that the authorities having jurisdiction in your locality enjoy the privelege of their code and regulation interpretations carrying more weight than yours, with you having little or no course to appeal, outside of a courtroom.
If you are seeking a permit to build a new addition with no bedroom, be prepared for the health official to form an interpretation that the small room off your kitchen can be used as a bedroom, even if you call it “office” or “den” on your floor plan.
If it has the three components of bedroom, and in some instances even when it does not, a health official may suspect it will be used as a bedroom and decide that your septic system must be enlarged. There’s little you can do except present a compelling counter argument. Have confidence, though, because by reading this article you’ve taken a great step forward in that direction!
Related Questions
- If a bedroom in a house does not comply with habitable space requirements or does not have a properly sized emergency escape or rescue opening, is the house illegal? Can it be transacted?
If a house was compliant with the codes in force at the time of construction, then there is no need to upgrade – it can transact as-is. If construction was performed without a permit, and/or was performed in a way that was not compliant, then there is a problem. Read a related article about that topic: Do code violations in a house require correction?