American Reacts to 15 Differences Between British and American Homes!
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The hall is to be greeted and divest yourself of your coat,and avoid walking snow into the living room. Also to stop a 70mph wind blowing straight into your living room! Also for privacy so that any Tom,Dick or Harry who comes to the door cant see your private living space,dinner,children etc.
Absolutely. I live in a one-bedroom bungalow; the kitchen is so small, I haven't got room for a dishwasher, and I even have my freezer in the living room, cleverly disguised as a cabinet! BUT. . . . I have a hallway!
It also works as a fire break.
Most house fires would start in a room, rather than the hall, doors can be closed to allow people to get out via the hallway.
But the main issues are privacy and heat loss/draughts.
It can work to reduce noise between living room and bedrooms.
We once rented a house with no hallway - the door opened into the lounge and the staircase to the upstairs was also in the lounge.
We found it very inconvenient - nowhere to take muddy shoes off, heat was lost every time the door was opened, and, the thing that annoyed us the most - all noise from downstairs travelled to the bedrooms - music, TV, even talking, kept the kids awake. It just never felt like a private space. Was glad when we moved to somewhere with a hallway.
Also, one of those walls is often a 'supporting' wall which should not be removed unless new support can be incorporated.
Halls were a good idea 150 years ago with the then poorly insulated and drafty houses, still required today with the very latest poorly insulated and drafty houses, such a waste of space
Hi Joel, when you were in the UK and saw all the houses together, imagine they are made of wood.
Now imagine that the bakery has a fire.
The UK has laws on what a house is to be made of after the great fire of London in 1666
I should have read the comments! I said the same.
I'm in the UK and my house (and all houses in my street) is made of wood. It's allowed. Just not traditional, it's down to resources like they said. Brick may well still have advantages over wood, but that's not the reason they're used.
@@christinerigden1403 I am sure you are right. I live in Somerset where there are exemptions, but after the great fire they brought in this law.
"It proposed that all new buildings had to be constructed of brick or stone against the future perils of fire. It also imposed a maximum number of storeys per house for a fixed number of abodes to eliminate overcrowding."
I love the fact that you live in a wood building. It shows that there must have been clauses
British houses are are built of brick ! They do not blow down etc. and collapse like american houses
do in really bad weather !
Most British towns have what you have described as "town houses" !
I grew up in a wooden house. It was new build in 1970. Wooden houses was never suppose to be permament though @@christinerigden1403
In the UK people judge the size of a house by how many rooms it has and generally how big the rooms are - not the total size of the house as we consider it makes a much bigger difference how it is laid out rather than just raw space. This is also due to the fact that most houses in the UK are NOT open plan but have separate rooms, this makes it easier / cheaper to heat the house by only heating the rooms you need to.
Yeah like number of bedrooms normally, also I agree as I want to build my own house, houses I looked at have terrible layouts for what I want
I know the exact size of each of the rooms in my house, the entire house and the land, but it’s only about 10 years old. I also have the complete, detailed drawings. Older houses weren’t always built according to precise drawings and they were often discarded of once the build was complete, to the extent that there even were any to begin with. Thus - size not know. But it’s easy to find out. There are companies that can measure the sizes very precisely using small laser instruments. I once sold an old flat abroad, where price is in relation to size. I always had a feel that the size was slightly larger than the stated size when I bought it, so before selling I brought in one of those specialists. As it happened, it was 10% larger than stated, which increased the selling price by 10%. Money well spent.
@@RobertClaeson you get a rough idea in UK as each location has a price per square foot or metre but also depends on how place looks like if it is in trend of the current time too
Do you could the 1m thick stone walls?
My previous house was part of a row of five houses, probably built as starter homes. They had each had the same footprint and garden size, but where the others were three bed roomed, mine had two. It meant I had two decent sized bedrooms where my neighbours had more cramped rooms, but also meant the value of my house was less. When I sold it the purchaser was going to let it to students, so the number of rooms was more important to him, than a comfortable space had been to me.
There was no hallway, but I bought the house from its first owner who told me that she paid extra to have internal porch - the others just opened into the sitting room.
I had the best way of buying this house - I rented it from the owner for a couple of years (my previous property wouldn't sell easily, so I rented it out) - which meant I knew what I liked an disliked before buying it.
I like having a hallway - closing the living room door keeps it warmer.
Yes, plus the hallway is a great place to hang any of those family pictures that you don't really like. 😁
Yeah it’s definitely because of heat.
Hallway. Originally meant to keep cold air away from the main living areas. If the main door is opening and closing to allow passage, then you are allowing cold air in and more importantly, warm air out. So the idea is to isolate the other rooms. Some houses have a smaller area around the front door called a vestibule, this gives the same cold /warm air protection, but allows the room where the door is opening into to have more space.
Also most " front rooms" were heated by coal fires, giving off soot into the room. Having a door stopped these fumes and dust from entering other parts of the house. Most brick walls back in the day were load bearing so cannot be removes without steel work and acro Jack's etc.
Also if the UK house is an old and small one (e.g. an old terraced house), it might pre-date the times when there were purpose-built bathrooms - even though they all now have them. In such times, it might have been the case in bygone years where one might bathe in a tin tub in front of the fire. Now imagine doing that, and having visitors walk right into the room from outside without a hallway...
It's not the primary reason of course (as others have said, it's for heat conservation, load-bearing and so on), but something to consider.
Well said that man, I also didn't like their spin on we have dungeons. They lived in 9/13 British accommodations probably could only afford a hovel I didn't like their narrative comparisons.
Also the smaller the ‘lounge’ or front room the cheaper it is to heat the room to stay warm, if you don’t have that ‘corridor’ or hallway the warm air goes straight up stairs x
I have lived in two one-bedroom cluster houses where there is no definition of what is a hall, bedroom or kitchen, because it is all one space, but its a small space, which is why some of the houses on my estate were built this way. I have no doorways or doors downstairs, you just walk through the front door into a narrow strip of hallway and immediately behind my door is an area rug which is how we fashioned a very small living room zone for both me and my Labrador dog whose bed is right behind the door with the rug in front of it. The hallway to the left blends into the kitchen, separated only by a breakfast bar counter with a big cupboard where I keep all cupboard foods under it. It is also where I would have a tv if it hadn't just fallen over and died. I have no internal doors, but there are french doors off the living area into the back and front garden which wraps around the house. I didn't really have a proper garden in the old house, so this is better for the summer and for when my dog wants his own space outside.
When the front door is opened, the hall takes the brunt of the cold draught leaving the living room warmer. Essential in a colder climate. It also provides a space for taking off muddy shoes and wet jackets. In older homes, the hall wall is often a brick supporting wall.
Also circulation space. If there's more than two people in a home, i.e. a family, it might be a lot better than having everyone walking through the room you're using just to get to another room.
Heat retention is the reason open plan is not so prevalent in UK.
and wish for privacy,; lifestyle. separate areas for confidential talk, tv, homework.
Tumble driers are a killer on the electric bill, never used one for that reason.
You have to remember the story of the 3 little pigs - the wolf couldn't blow down the house built out of bricks. That's why we have houses built of bricks or stone 😂
Is that why there are no longer wolves in England?
They all starved to death?
🐖🛖 🐖🪵 🐖🧱 🐺🔥🥵
Haha there's plenty of wolves human kind (wolves fans) in Wolverhampton lol
@@gillcawthorn7572 😂
A cultural difference... British people usually avoid being boastful, talk about how big, how much etc are considered vulgar, in the States it is quite normal to say how much you earn and how big your houses are even your credit rating... British houses are sold by what they offer, the number of rooms, bathrooms etc. not how big those things are.
Though UK listings will almost always these days give you the individual room dimensions so that you can evaluate what will fit & where.
We look indulgently at Americans constantly boasting about sizes ! Look at quality ! How many houses in
the US have stood for at least a couple of hunrdred years for private homes, and THOUSANDS of years
for historic building and houses
I laughed when you said “does a dryer really take up that much space”…I don’t think you realise just how small a lot of our houses actually are lol for example, if you can fit a single bed in a room and have just enough room to open the door, it’s a bedroom. Forget having a dresser or a wardrobe 😆
A lot of terrace houses, like mine, the front door opens straight out onto the pavement. having an entrance hall and sometimes
a vestibule, allows you to open the door without showing the world your living room everytime you open the front door.
At 17:50, talking about that "useless" wall. Usually its a load bearing wall, as the entire house is made out of heavier materials, it needs more structure to the foundations. I remember about 20 years ago my dad was renovating his house, and he wanted to get rid of that wall but couldn't. Im not saying all houses will be the same, but i believe his house was built in the 60s as a lot of our houses here were built in the aftermath of WW2, i would guess at a figure of 75% would be load bearing. But it is just a guess.
Yeh it's not just that. Internal walls upstairs that might be something like low density blockwork that aren't hugely strong but are still an important structural component as the roof timbers will use them to brace/transfer load. Knock them out and expect the roof to fall in on you.
Yeah, my idiot ex-neighbours took down a supporting wall so that they walked straight into their living room...they had no idea what they were doing and clearly hadn't got permission to do it. My next neighbours luckily got it sorted out/reinforced.
17:54 if those walls were knocked down, where would one put their coat, keys, and shoes? To the best of my knowledge, there are often coat hooks and shoe racks by the front door, as well as hooks for keys and other miscellaneous items.
Yes or like in my friends house as a kid, they had two doors under the hall stairs one was a cupboard for coats shoes etc and the other a door down to the cellar.
UK property listings usually have a floorplan where the sq ft or m is listed room by room, so you can add it all up yourself to get the total. Individual room sizes are probably more relevant than the total size. You want to make sure all your stuff is going to fit in your living room, bedrooms or kitchens. Seeing as properties are smaller, this is probably a more accurate way of estimating if a property is going to be suitable.
Tumble dryers are very common in the UK but it’s true that not everyone has one and out of the people who do (myself included) we tend to only use it if the weather is bad and you can’t dry outside or you need to dry something in a hurry.
Many kitchens only have one space for a washing machine and nothing else. I now have a washer drier but prefer line drying in the garden
Couldn't live without my dryer, have never hung washing outside,it ends up with spiders and bugs on it 😝
Statistics reveal that 49% of UK households have a tumble dryer whilst in the USA its 75%.
So, nearly half of homes in the UK have a dryer - and only 3 quarters of Americans have them, not everyone then!
I wish people would stop making vast generalisations about either country.
After watching a few series of 600lb Life on TLC, I am very well aware that many of the poorer people in the US live in houses that are no more than glorified sheds, no bigger than the smallest of British homes.
@@gillianrimmer7733 I agree. To many videos make generalisations which while not untrue give totally the wrong impression of a country.
@@Cjbx11, Yes, until recently ( we've downsized into a retirement apartment) apart from when we first married and lived in a tiny terrace house, I've always lived in a house with a utility room for the washer and tumble dryer - and had a dishwasher - and mixer taps in the kitchen and bathroom. Yet, according to tons of You Tube videos, we don't have these things over here.
A reason for the hallway is because we have brick houses and the walls are load bearing. You generally find the layout of downstairs to be the same as upstairs.
Well, I'm sixty, from the UK, and have never had a dishwasher. In fact, I'VE always been the dishwasher!
Most new build houses these days have dishwashers built in, the young ones just don't know what they are missing do
they Josef. 😁
@@martinwebb1681 Heh! Dishpan hands anyone? Remember the slogan "Hands that do dishes . . ?"
@@josefschiltz2192 ... "Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green fairy liquid." ...... I remember it well.
@@martinwebb1681 Nanette Newman!
I’m American and never use mine I don’t trust them lol
Watch any video of US homes on fire, there's a good reason not to build mainly from wood, the main reason they do it in the USA is because it's cheaper than brick construction and quicker to throw up a house.
Why would you need to know the square footage of a house?
Estate agent descriptions of houses in the UK include each room and the measurements of them. You can tell what size it will be by the estate agent details.
So that you know how big the house is as a whole
@@RochellBarbara4690 but you know how big it is by the number of rooms and their sizes.
Joel, my perspective of the structures in the U.S.A. is that most of them are made of wood, cardboard and plastic cladding and whenever any of them get destroyed through natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires etc then the owners are daft enough to rebuild them in the same places using the exact same materials again....until the next time of course.
Personally speaking I stayed in San Francisco for a couple of months some years ago and I was astonished at the number of homes that were built on the sides of very steep hills on wooden stilts despite that particular city being so close to earthquake fault lines....it made me feel that if ever the 'big one' hit that the entire city would slide into the Pacific Ocean. You can't mess about with Mother Nature because she has a tendency to really mess things up at the most unexpected of times, doesn't she?
I think when he talks about hall and knocking them down it depends if its a stud wall or not as some will be and the hole house would be unstable, plus we don't like our staircase in the living room 😂
Visited the town of Accrington in Lancashire today. Famous for making the strongest, hardest bricks that were exported worldwide, in particular they were used to build the Empire State Building.
My Victorian semi in Southport built in 1899 is fronted with Accrington brick.
In the sequence towards the end, where the basic floor plan of a British house is being sketched out, the comment was made that going up the stairs would bring you to the “2nd floor“. Well, I suppose it would eventually, but the next floor that you would come to would be the “first floor”, because the level that you would be walking on after entering the hall through the front door would be the ground floor. My 1876 house has a hall, and I sleep at the top of the house on the second floor which in the US would be the third floor.
"town house" has a different meaning in the UK. It is a narrow terraced house, with three or more storeys
When I used to live in London we lived in a three story end of terraced house, it was massive with three hallways and six flights of stairs two between each floor, it had the biggest kitchen I have ever seen. Getting to the top floor certainly kept you fit. 😁
yes, except the estate agents in York are all now calling any house in the town a 'town house'. Does my nut in. You are supposed to be property experts and you don't know the basics.
Most UK properties DO show the square metres (not "meter") - it's usually on the floorplan. This pair just didn't know where to look. As for drying machines ("tumble dryers") - we have one, but we only use it when we need something dried immediately. We hang our clothes on a stand in the spare bedroom, where it dries in 24 hours with zero effect on the environment. As for reheating coffee in the microwave - they're savages!
Yes, I always look at the floorplans on Rightmove and all the measurements can be found there.
When looking for a house in the UK what we prioritise is the number of rooms (particularly bedrooms). It's of no use to know what the oveall square footage is if the space is all in the wrong place. Actually the property listings do give the dimensions of each individual room, usually listed on the floor plan, but sometimes in the description of an individual room - which is much more useful when working out of there is room for your furniture in there.
Drying machines- a lot of British homes really don't have room for a drying machine. Plus they are costly to run. It's always been the norm here to dry clothes outdoors when the weather allows, whereas I understand in some suburbs in the US this is banned by the homeowners associations. We definitely are more environmentally aware than many in the US, which does feed into our choice not to buy or use a dryer, but it's one of several reasons. I have one but rarely use it.
Microwaves- most British households have one- we don't use it for boiling water as we have the kettle for that- but most homes have one to heat up or cook food.
Hallways- it helps to keep the heat from the living room from spilling out when the front door is open, it forms a passageway to carry shopping etc through from the front of the house to the kitchen (which is what is typically at the back end of the hallway) without carting it through the living space, and also it provided privacy- when a random person calls at your house they don't get to see right into your private living space, but just the hallway.
Caroline Skipper: It may be worth pointing out that combined washer/driers are fairly commonplace in the UK. I have one but I rarely use the drier bit - it uses a lot of electricity!
The thing I always find striking about American houses is they often lack of a fence or wall to separate houses from each other or from the road. It's all left open. I guess it's because houses are closer together in the UK and people prefer to protect their privacy
I always think of a porch as a little room between the actual front door and the hallway that gives a bit of extra insulation and where you put your muddy shoes. An open balcony style platform like that shown I would call a varander.
I am from the U.K. and I think that most of us know what size a house is by the name as in semi detached ,this is usually a three bedroom house ,I say usually because you might get a four bedroom . A detached house is usually bigger ,a terraced house can be two or more bedrooms but they are usually cheaper in price . We are not bothered by the square footage it’s about the area the house is in ,and we always go and view the house in person to see if it’s suitable
yes, and school catchment areas.
As far as I’m aware, most people buy a house on the number of bedrooms they require! The square footage is normally listed in the house deeds, well mine is! Most UK houses don’t have utility rooms and kitchens are not all that big, so, like my own house there is only room for a washing machine and a upright fridge/freezer. Some larger houses might have space for a tumble dryer and dishwasher! Another reason a lot of Brits don’t have tumble dryers is because of the running cost, electricity is really expensive here.
Tumble dryers are not at all environmentally friendly either. In the summer we hang laundry outside on the washing line to dry and in winter or in wet weather we use a heated airer, combined with a dehumidifier; it gets washing dry very quickly and uses far, far less energy than a tumble dryer. Added to that, a very high proportion of clothing cannot be tumbled dried anyway due to the fibre content.
@@zosemabubble7825 That is so true. Shrinkage occurs.
In Britain, when buying a house, we tend to be more interested in the dimensions of each room rather than the overall square footage. Most people tend to know the measurements of each room, in order to gauge the amount and siting of furniture. As regards pantries, prior to the almost universal installation of fridges, most middle-sized houses and certainly all large houses would have had some kind of pantry or larder for storage of dry goods but also perishables. Kitchens were often built on the north side of the house and there would be a walk in larder sometimes with quite wide tops to lower cupboards and with a small, preferably north facing window, unglazed, covered by a perforated metal panel. Larger terrace houses would have had a kitchen, scullery where washing up was done and vegetables prepared plus a small breakfast room, as well
as a dining room, living room and sometimes a small study. Families, before central heating, which really only started to be regarded as the norm in the late 1950-60s, tended to live in one room for warmth. Families only started to spread out as a consequence of central heating, TV, and better insulation. Up to this time, our brick built houses were only single skin, not cavity built. One of the things which I think we regard as unnerving about American construction is the fact that they seem to have rather insubstantial footings with the whole house sometimes lurching sideways. To return to the matter of food storage, another solution to the storage of perishable items would be to be apply a sturdy metal meat safe to the north facing outside wall of the house, easily accessible from the kitchen, where meat and dairy produce could be kept away from the heat of the kitchen. As for laundry, even the humblest, would often have a small row of outhouses comprising WC, wash house and little tool shed, where food items like strings of onions and sacks of potatoes could be kept. The wash house would have a big sink and built in coal or wood
fired copper. The outside WC would have been the only lavatory in a little terrace house in a working class area or in a country cottage or in the latter case might well be an earth closet some distance from the house. As you may gather from the above, I am in my 90s and lived in many different types of dwelling, from timber-framed farmhouse to modern flat and seen many lifestyle changes.
@@maryandrews4097 A larder is what my parents' house had, exactly as you describe - on the north outside wall of the kitchen. The house was built in the 1950s and had no double-glazing or central heating. We used to wake up to ice on the inside of the bedroom windows in the winter, and yet we somehow managed to survive! 😆
@@zosemabubble7825 Thank you for responding to my post - I think all the responses to the video have been well expressed and very much to the point. In my teens I slept in a very large timber framed farmhouse in chilly Bedfordshire ( nothing much between us and the Urals!) and have woken up in my feather filled sleeping bag, inserted into the usual bedding, with frost on the blankets but still quite snug in my "downy nest"! My response to the cold is still just wear thermal longjohns and add another jumper.
The hallway is there in British houses to prevent the heat from escaping on cold days when the front door is opened
If you didn't have a hallway then all the heat from your living room would rise up the stairs. Hot air rises. In a traditional house, the main fireplace used to be in the living room. Which is why my mother was always telling us kids to shut the doors. Down stairs would originally have the lounge at the front, and a kitchen and a dining room at the back. Most people would later knock down the wall between the front room and the back room. However, not through into the hall. If you did that, then your front door would also open straight into your lounge. Another bad idea during a cold winter.
Yeah, also remove the hall wall and you just might end up with your bedroom collapsing into your living room. 😁
To this day, in my 50's, if I eat dinner with my mother, she washes, and I dry, just like she trained me as a child. We have Never had a dishwasher.
nor do you need one.
that's lovely. and lucky you. cherish her. reminds me of a seamus heaney poem
These 2 are way out, in the UK homes are built out of brick because of the weather constant rain, wind, snow, would make wood rot, alot of homes have dryers but we dry washing outside during the summer so they smell fresh, alot of homes have a porch but it's different to your sit on porch we have a porch that surround"s the front door to put shoes, & parcels into, the walls support the house and is there for a reason it also keeps draughts out of other rooms, we also have garages but most cars don't fit in them, so there used for storage, I would say our homes are built differently because of the weather, and space depending where you are in the UK and what you can afford there are large homes available in the country or small homes in London for the same price
Yes they obviously didn't look much in the countryside, because many homes in the country have laundry rooms, also a garage or double garage, and most new build houses come with dishwashers at least in the country/rural areas.
One thing not mentioned about hallways was that, historically, when houses only had a single landline handset in the house, that handset was most commonly sited in the hallway. Hence, anyone making or answering a phone call could do so without disturbing the rest of the family in the living room and the contents of the call could be kept more private (if a lookout was kept for passing traffic!).
yes, but to be fair that's not the reason. very few houses had phones when they were built.
@@acommentator4452 No, I never said it was but it was one of the advantages of having a hallway in those decades in the 20th century over the custom in the USA of not having one.
One other possible reason the hallway became standard in the UK might be in imitation of the country houses, stately homes and town houses of the upper echelons which almost, without exception had imposing front doors leading into a hallway. No doubt the middle classes wanted something in imitation of that idea and, eventually everybody wanted one even in the least prestigious dwellings. In fact, many middle class people of modest means had staff to answer the front door or the phone often in the hallway and filter callers to guard their employers' privacy when necessary.
Flashback to my teenage years, sitting on the stairs chatting with my friends on the phone with my dad shouting every 5 minutes "Get off the phone!"
There are also bungalows which are single story houses with no upstairs. Also Maysonets which are multi storey properties built on top of each other so 2 2 storey houses on top each other totaling 4 stories this can be made up of both flats and house staked.
Maisonettes!
St David's Day greetings, Joel 🏴 Cyfarchiadau Gwyl Dewi Sant. In the 1950s in Britain, a policy decision was made at national level to limit urban sprawl and protect agricultural and wilder natural land. So Green Belts were established around major urban centres, incl London. Hence, in the most part, cities don't just gradually meld into the hinderland via unending suburbs, as in the US, but there is a distinct and often abrupt division between city and countryside. This is why urban population increase has resulted in greater concentration rather than unlimited area creep.
It is a terrible thing, meaning more and more people, the house number are stagnant and house prices are sky rocketing due to, people from other countries with money buy houses and they are unused, that 100,000 at least are coming mostly Illegally into the country,
Watch Clarkson's farm, I watched clips which shows you why red tape and Curruption is destroying the UK,
With the current energy situation a house with original smaller rooms ( many have been opened up as they suggested ) and a hallway and passage is cheaper to heat as the unoccupied ones don't have to be so warm . Most of our houses in towns and cities were built at the turn of the last century as more people moved to get work . Privacy is valued as we are pretty densely populated , hence the back gardens being so important . It's a pretty good video with some interesting points .
Unless you have a large family or throw lots of dinner parties why would you need a dishwasher? Just fill a washing up bowl with some water and washing up liquid... and Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt....job done 😉
Betsy lovelie: Surprisingly dishwashers use less water than hand washing! Dishwashers also come in different sizes to cater for family size etc. Applying your logic I suppose you could argue why have a washing machine when you could take your bundle of dirty washing to the river and scrub them there! LOL.
@Nicky L : Well said. I have a slim sized one, perfect for my needs. Wouldn’t want to go back to washing dirty dishes in the kitchen sink!
Always tickles me when they say on instruction to rincevprior tonputying on dishwasher, of you are doing thst you may as well just wash it, I ended up using mine as a cupboard to hide anything nice from the kids !
They are crap though, lol!!
The hallway is not only a place to greet people but is needed practically because the UK gets so cold in winter.
The idea is you arrive home, walk through your front door, close the door behind you, and you've only made one room cold. You take off your coat, hang it up on a hook in your hallway and then open the living room door and go inside the living room which is much warmer and close that door behind you. You are dividing the house into compartments so you don't make the whole house cold just by opening your front door to let somebody in. My partner would go crazy in a UK winter if I came home from work and walked through the front door straight into a living room. She would shoot at me "get that door closed your letting all the heat out" and "I was warm until you got home" even if the door was only open a couple of seconds. Then you would have to spend the rest of the night heating the house back up again which would cost a fortune as gas and electricity are so expensive.
British houses are not only older but colder and more poorly insulated than in most other countries and that combined with ever more expensive heating costs means more British people are getting use to rationing the heating and other energy they use to an amount they can afford.
That's also a reason why clothes tumble dryers and dishwashers are both less common in UK homes. I don't have either because A, I don't have the space for them and B, because they both use too much energy to run which is very expensive and many people can't afford to use electricity whenever and as much as they like.
It is common for UK washing machines to have a drying facility too. One machine for both tasks saves space.
Yes you're right, a washer dryer, which is basically two in one.
I wouldn't say it was common, people often buy them to save space but they take forever to dry your clothes .
Hallways are partly to greet your visitors, to store shoes and coats. But they are also there to stop cold air rushing into your house via draughts in the front door or just when you open the door. Remember it’s cold her in the winters.
The cupboards over the beds aren’t tasteless but I think they look quite old fashioned. You don’t really see them in modern houses anymore. I also don’t want to sleep with a cupboard hanging over my face!
The ‘it’s cold here’ argument doesn’t really stack up. From the 40th parallel northwards (apart from the Pacific fringe) North American winters are absolutely frigid compared to the UK. In a city like Chicago (I’ve been several times) -20 Celsius in JAN/Feb is nothing noteworthy yet their homes almost invariably have no buffer between the entrance and the living space.
@@gerardmackay8909 so in those houses when you open the front door the whole living room gets a massive rush of cold air, and possibly rain or snow?
@@avmavm777 yes crazy isn’t it. In fairness many homes do have an external porch which offers at least some protection but my aunt’s home did not and she definitely liked our hallway when she visited the UK.
Ooh it would be much warmer for them and cheaper on their bills if they gave themselfs an hallway then @@gerardmackay8909
And I’ve never heard anyone call the fitted wardrobes tacky?? Typically they’re way more expensive especially top brands.
I think it's specifically the sort that go up and over the bed they were referring to. I personally _do_ find those tacky, but normal fitted wardrobes are fine.
@@sweeperboyWhy are they tacky? They're ideal for a small room.
@@jillhobson6128 I don't doubt that they are practical. It's just the look is very much of its time.
Of course, that's just my opinion, tastes vary naturally and there's nothing wrong with that. Especially if space is a problem.
@@sweeperboy ... Yes very 1980s and into the 90s. Today viewed as a tad old fashioned, at least among the middle and upper classes.
In afraid not everyone can have huge spaces to have individual wardrobes.
Everything is BIGGER in the US! Doesn’t necessarily make it better. A bigger house means more cleaning and maintenance; not to mention heating!
Granite counter tops are very heavy and very expensive, but they are good and they look great.
Granite counter tops tend to destroy crockery not carefully placed down. Personally I prefer wood as it is both warm and gentle to crock's, it's also easy to resurface or repair if damaged.
@@garystroud6153 Yep. I won’t disagree with that.
Your face on air drying clothes indoors was like oh crap!!!
Most poor people in uk and that's a lot, have no choice until weather warms up .
The drying machine in my terrace house takes a lot of space. And I use the dryer very sparingly, it’s a last resort, if it was urgent 🚨 I didn’t know dishwasher were so rare, and I think it’s weird without the hallway, it’s like the foyer for the house. When my parents were buying their first house she wasn’t interested in a house without a hallway, it feels a bit abrupt to open a front door and walk straight into a living room. Even most flats have hallways. 😅
I don't think dishwashers are that rare, most newly built houses these days have dishwashers built in especially in the countryside. I don't personally have one as my house is not new, but every one else I know locally has one in their newish houses.
Not only a hallway is the heart of the house that has doors/stairs leading to other area's, but like many have said, it's a closed space for thermal reasons, one, it's a buffer when the front door is open and the cold air gets in, and two, it's where we generally put our heating thermostat for the boiler, if the hallway is warm, then so is the rest of the house.
Also, it's our little buffer when he get in from the manky weather, wet coats are off in there and hung up, footwear is off in there so no wet dirty muck is trailed to other area's... A hallway really does take some hammer, which makes looking after other area's a lot easier.
Laundry rooms are very common in Britain. A lot of people do not like drying machines,including me. Drying outside is much fresher. In modern houses a room for office use is quite common also it is fairly common to have two or three bathrooms in fairly modern larger houses.
Granite kitchen tops are quite common in England. They are advertised all the time.
My elderly neighbour who has a tiny tumbledown (yes) cottage just had a granite top fitted. never mind the roof leaks, lets just do what matters!
Granite worktops are very common in the UK. Everyone I know has them. I don't think they look tacky personally.
We don't all live in large houses with laundry rooms or offices!
Some of us live in terrace houses or small bungalows.
I am in my late '60s and I have known very few people who have a laundry room and I myself have never had one. Laundry done in the kitchen, in my past and present experience, is far, far more common among the population, I would venture.
@@jillhobson6128 ... or flats, many with just two or even one bedroom (or none, in the case of studio flats).
Jps is broadcasting from his dungeon, haha! 🙃
Maybe there's whips and chains in his cupboard , or a dragon
I am British. We do have a tumble dryer in the utlity room but hardly ever use it. They are so energy inefficient. We do have a dishwasher in the kitchen but I do know that none of us has ever used it in the two years we have been here. I like halls and avoid houses that do not have one. Halls privatise rooms so other people in the house are not wandering through the room when you are working or watching TV.
The fact you can fit the whole of the UK in the state of Texas, I don’t think we do too badly in terms of size 🤗
In the UK each individual room has the measurements listed. I think we're more interested in the size of individual rooms than the overall size of the building. Also the price of a UK house isn't really based on size. An enormous executive home could be half the price of a grade 2 listed cottage.
Estate agent property details sheets or online pages usually tell you the dimensions of all the rooms in the property for sale rather than the floor area. That's probably of more use to the housebuyer here, to compare with what they have presently or to see if their furniture will fit, for example. Bedrooms often need wardrobes and chests here, as fitted cupboards are less common. In larger properties such as in the USA, fitting the furniture into rooms is probably not going to be an issue.
Honey coloured stone in the Cotswolds is Cotswold stone.
Dishwashers use less water than hand washing but a lot of Uk homes don’t have the room for one.
Also (please correct me if I'm wrong) a hallway is also for fire safety, for example, if an electrical fire started in the living room, the living room door is shut & cannot spread so easily to other parts of the house/flat allowing you more time to escape. If it was an open plan it would be more difficult to escape the house/flat as the fire would engulf the entire area & the main escape route
Regarding drying clothes, many homes do have tumble dryers. However, most people still dry clothes outdoors when they can to make the clothes feel fresher. If the weather is bad, you can use a clothes horse. Many homes until recently are gas heated and have a large insulated copper tank to hold hot water for instant on-demand hot water (which is why we have two taps/faucets.....). The copper tank is usually in a cupboard fitted with shelves. Nearly dry clothes are then put in there to finally dry off....
Of course the big difference is Americans build their houses of cardboard and British houses are built of brick or stone.
As a retired firefighter houses made from wood burn faster with more destruction.
The Three Little Pigs and the Wise Man and the Foolish Man were my teachers.
Brits learned their lesson after the great fire of London
Usually square footage is mentioned on house listing its usually with the floor plan but it's not a major selling point. Most people will want a house with a certain number of bedrooms or reception rooms, and you'd almost always go and view it before buying so you'd see if it was suitable.
so a lot of the design and features of the UK home is based on tradition and practicality many of which were built to house workers in a limited space. Hallways are designed to prevent heat loss to the living room as the uk climate can be less warm but also a place to remove outdoor shoes so not to muddy the floor (very important in houses where you had pitt workers or farmers. Traditionally the front room (parlour/ living room) was used for special occasions (like funerals, courting, and sundays, it was common for people who wanted to just hang out to go down the pub) and the kitchen /dining area was used for everyday. some this is no longer the case but the houses are built that way. the size of the house is usually listed in the advert somewhere usually with the floor plan, however houses in a perticular area are often a similar size and shape (when you are house hunting you commonly look an no of bedrooms to help guess the size). as they are built by the same company and part of the fun is to view a house. UK houses are highly regulated and companies that build them have to follow many restrictions.
there are other types of houses not listed here like bungalows and dorma bungalows,
Us Brits simply do not care we go by how many rooms are available and if we like the look of said house or we get the feels , in other words the house just feels right 🥰
Microwaves - pretty much most UK homes have a microwave, mostly used for re-heating food / drinks and the occasional ready meal (pre-made). For boiling water for coffee, tea, hot chocolate or porridge almost every house in the UK will have a kettle. Tea just does not taste the same unless you use freshly boiled water straight from the kettle as soon as it's boiled. Boiling water in a microwave can be a bit messy, cleaner with a kettle.
and you know the water has boiled properly - essential for a decent cuppa.
Due to the climate in the UK hallways are there to make heating the living space easier and cheaper. Hallways tend to be colder due to the front door being located there.
I also prefer a hallway as I'm not comfortable answering the door to people I don't know and having them free to look into my living space.
My house did have a pantry in its original layout but most folk remove them to extend the kitchen space in the absence of a dining room. My previous flat had a utility room which would have been used for either gardening stuff or washing clothes. My house has a porch, also known as a "front lobby" and it's usually more of a airspace between the core of the house and the outside world. Porches are popular in Scotland but not along the lines of American porches.
The hallway wall is a supporting wall for the upper floors. The common design for decades has remained, a hallway with stairs to the side, living room to the other side and kitchen to the back corner.
My flat used to have a pantry. In the warmest side of it.
Luxury is a heated towel rail, America has mostly missed out on this pleasure.
The internal walls are often for supporting walls for the 1st floor(uk) 2nd floor (USA)
Speaking of UK homes, you might want to check out the channel called "The Luxury Home Show". Those guys started off by touring average British homes, so you might want to go back to their older videos to see what the average British home would look like.
I have to admit I have no idea of the size of my house, after living there 65 years. I can get a decent estimate of size from number of bedrooms, always assuming one is a small bedroom.
I've owned many microwaves here in the UK and got my 1st 1 probably before those 2 were born but if they have been living in rented accommodation they're most likely not supplied but are easily bought from any supermarket. I also own a small tumble dryer but not a dishwasher, it's honestly quicker for me, living on my own, to hand wash my dishes.
17:57 Maybe Open Plan wasn’t much of a thing or maybe Living Rooms were as much a private space as any other room.
I'm with you on granite worktops Joel, I have granite work tops in my house, love them and it's hard wearing, durable with no marks or staining. A quick wash and dry off and it looks brand new. Have to avoid red wine spillages though as it can mark the granite.
Sometimes, the wall between the hallway and the living room is useful in preventing the upper floors from collapsing into the living room. The weight of the bath tub for example. Often the bathroom is right above the front door.
The idea of the hallway is to keep heat inside the rooms. Every time you open the front door, cold air comes in, sometimes rain, so keeping the door closed to the rooms maintains the temperature in there. Very few houses have a porch (small room inside the front door).
When we were buying a home, having a room off the front door was a big turn off for me.
In the UK you only lease or rent flats, there is no real ownership. They pretend you do with a lease, but you buy a lease for a given period of time. Effectively long-term rental with prepayment. This can apply to any property type not just flats...
To own the property you own the freehold, the property and land it resides upon...
Houses in the UK are not necessarily measured with sq footage or metres because the room sizes are what bother the UK market so each room is measured and listed to give people an idea of the size of the house
The argument about property size I think could be to do with age of a property, which can mean size doesn't necessarily mean price, when you have houses like thatch roof stone cottages and Victorian terraces.
Closets - nope, not a thing in the UK again partly due to lack of space but I don't think generally people in the UK have that many clothes that you need another room in which to keep them! We just put wardrobes in our bedrooms!
We normally search houses by bedroom size. 3 bed, 4 bed etc.
But also I’d assume square footage wouldn’t give you an accurate answer to the value for money question because area and especially streets can strongly determine the property value.
I believe the hallway thing has 2 main factors, 1) the hallway walls keep the cold air from outside away from the heated rooms and vice versa, 2) the walls are load bearing, so for a lot of homes you cant removes those walks as they're keeping your house up
Yes, we have wooden houses over 1000 years old. But they're oak, not pine. Oak doesn't burn down or get blown down in a hurricane.
“Wood is cheap strong and last forever”
A slight breeze come and your house is gone 😂
Yep, watch out for those tornados if you're in your wooden house. 😂
And woodworm could be an issue...
I don't think we care too much about size. We can judge via pictures and viewings. And it doesnt feel important. Most have floorplans anyway so we can work out size of the individual rooms.. overall size is irrelevant
The UK also doesn't suffer from tornadoes, hurricanes and other destructive weather events, stone/brick may be stronger but its also more expensive than wood, so its cheaper and quicker to replace after you have been hit.
When I was a teenager, I was given two pieces of advice for when buying a house. Never buy a leasehold property and never buy a house where the front door opened into the living room.
In the US indeed there is space to spread out, however, that does mean you have to get the car out just to get a pint of milk, or to go anywhere other than to the next few neighbours.
I'd add a third - don't buy a conversion (i.e. a flat in a house converted into flats.)
@@chrisamies2141 I've rented a number of flats inside houses, but I would never buy one.
dryers are more of a rich people and middle class with lots of kids thing. most people in europe don't have them, and that's the norm pretty much across the whole continent, we just hang out clothes to dry. there's laundromats where you can go and dry your clothes, but in general, people just hang them. and unless you have a lot of kids, a dryer isn't really justifiable of an expense. because appliances don't often come with the place, you'll have to buy it yourself, if you even have room in the kitchen to put it. and so you need the income to buy one and also the income for the increase in the power bill from using it.
the same kinda applies to the dishwasher. still more of a middle class and rich people thing. you need to buy it yourself if you have the room for it in the kitchen, and also you're gonna see an increase in the water bill. washing dishes by hand is annoying, but it's not really much, just some plates and cutlery, a pan or a pot. and if you have a lot of stuff to wash, you scrub them first, put them on one side of the sink(some people tend to have a bucket on there) and then turn on the water to rinse it off, so the water won't be running the whole time.
and because most people don't live in big enough houses/apartments, it just doesn't make much sense to own those things either. your washer already goes in the kitchen, you're not gonna be able to fit both a dryer and a dishwasher in there as well.
some people do have washers that are also dryers, but idk how common those are. but i guess it'd save space
Integral washer/ driers means when one breaks down, you lose two appliances.
I don't know anybody that lives in uk that doesn't have a dryer, people often prefer to dry washing outside rather than waste electricity and shrink their clothes.
house division/partition etc are bricks here not just the wall. Check the 1666 The Great Fire of London that is how bricks houses started.
Houses are marketed by number of bedrooms and bathrooms, good schools, bus and train access and broadband speed, individual rooms sizes are listed or shown on a floor plan, imperial and metric dimensions used.
Actually, I think most people would weigh up the cost of operating a tumble drier in the UK, especially at the moment. We do have a tumble drier, but try to be fairly frugal with it. Also, it is true that our damp climate can be a bit of a pain, where drying is concerned but remember that most homes in the Uk have central heating and therefore radiators and you can always dry things on the radiators themselves or on an airer next to one! People love granite worktops over here, if you've got the money, you get granite worktops!
In my whole life I have NEVER dried clothes on a radiator. It is not what they were designed for. It is bad for the clothes, the atmosphere and the paintwork. You should never, ever do it.
You have to be careful doing this. The water doesn't disappear when it dries, it evaporates then find a nice cold spot to condense on and often make mould. You should either ventilate (and make the house cold again) or use a dehumidifier.
I have a separate tumble drier (mainly because I had the space for it and needed the gap filling), but I don't use it much. I don't like how it seems to remove density from clothing, as if the fibres are being stripped away - especially judging by the amount of lint you have to clear up after each dry. At the same time, I don't generally find external washing line drying to be that effective in a not-very-sunny country, plus I have hayfever which means it's best avoided. No, we air-dry at my place.
Where do you think the moisture goes ? Should never dry on radiators if any other choice. It must be very hard in a flat with no balcony or outside drying space.
After the great fire of London in 1666, people were not allowed to rebuild their homes out of wood. The house would be pulled down if you did.
This originally only applied in London. FUN FACT: Prior to the 'Great Fire', the very narrow streets, and the way the houses on each side jettied towards each other (bent over at the top), meant that there was only a narrow 'line of sky' above to light the dim street. The two top floors (of opposite houses), were so close together that one could hear conversations in the next house. This is the origin of the verb 'to eavesdrop' - to hear secrets in the eaves of the house. If you heard something about a neighbour in general conversation, you could repeat it, but repeating something you heard by eavesdropping was against the law. This was regarded a private conversation and therefore confidential...
I could probably take on 6-7 people braking into my house with having a hallway. It limits space for home intruders to rush into a property also restricts movement in that area to fight for example. Without the hallway 100 people could instantly be in my living room a large square area with more room. Halllways we’re introduced for this reason alone.
In previous times, the wealthy and upper classes had a butler/servant/footman/maid that greeted visitors, they were shown into the large hall, coats, hats & gloves taken, the master or mistress arrived to take them into the parlour/drawing room/breakfast room
I have no idea where they stayed or who they rented from, but all the houses I've lived in had a utility room porch and a garage. UK washing machines are usually 2 in one. They are washing machines and dryer at the same time. We have heated clothes horse to dry clothes if raining outside and heated towel rails
Terraced houses are dreadful unless you have very quiet neighbours. I've lived in a few over the years and they've all been the same. Noisy!!!
I live in a detached bungalow now and it's bliss.
I don't get the whole dishwasher thing, unless you have a large family. If there's only a couple just wash up.
Granite counter tops - these are considered luxury in the UK which is why most UK homes don't have them. If I could have a granite top then I would as they are stronger and will last better than wood but can be not good if you pick the wrong style / colour!
I love it when we get vids like this. It makes me appreciate the British way of life even more. Safety, durability, cost efficient and privacy are important in house building.
Interesting, you are spot on we dont even consider square footage, we look for houses based on number of bedrooms bathrooms and livingrooms with bedrooms being the most important factor 90% of the time, then we look at room sizes as a secondary factor. You also find it very hard to get a mortgage on a non-standard ie not brick house
We judge a a house on how many rooms and their size rather than than the size of the house, as we don't have many open plan.
Also one thing that wasn't mentioned was the we have bungalows, which in California are called single storey houses.
If you have the space then a utility room is fairly common here. It just depends on the house size and how it was designed. Don't forget a 100 years ago bathrooms with outdoors.
ALL British homes have a Dishwasher.
Mostly it's the Missus !!
She's never broken down or needed replacing but she does get cranky now & then !
😁