American Couple Reacts: British & American Houses: IN DEPTH DIFFERENCES!! This covers A LOT!!
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- American Couple Reacts: British & American Houses: IN DEPTH DIFFERENCES!! This covers A LOT!!
Join us on a journey of a TON of differences between British and American homes! This episode really breaks down almost everything you could think of on the differences between our living quarters. From size, to building materials and everything in between! This is very cool and really gave us a strong sense of the homes in the United Kingdom! Let us know if you learned anything about American homes. Please drop us a Like and consider subscribing to our channel. Check out our other links below.
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We hope you enjoy our latest offering. Lots of info in this one!! Let us know if you learned anything, we sure did! Please hit the Like button and check out our other links in the description of the video. Thanks everyone!
Most of the UK it build to keep in heat, because its usually wet and cold or at least cool.. so bricks are the best material, plus the building industry uses wood more often as its cheaper to build with
I enjoyed that Ladies:)
In the next few days, you should watch one of the many CZcams videos that will show well over 150,000 fans invading Seville in Spain for tonight's second most important European competition from Scotland and Germany even though the two teams' supporters have only been allocated 30,000 tickets for the match:)
about the hallways I'm pretty sure its to conserve heat, we're (usually (currently its getting very warm) a colder place and so having more rooms by having walls to you can conserve heat. I remember constantly being told to close the door leading to the hallway to keep our living room warm.
@@pipercharms7374 Absolutely. I would not dream of leaving my living room door open that leads to my 5 Foot(lol) passage/hallway.
Basically, you enter the house and go straight upstairs or turn immediately right into the living room which leads to the kitchen straight ahead or the bathroom to the right. If you continue straight ahead from my kitchen you have the garden,:)
Since you watched this with such interest, i urge you to watch a comparison to german housing... ;)
In the UK an advertised house would list each rooms dimensions with a full floorplan, but no one cares about the overall size... My front room (living room) is a 12ftx12ft room I know that because of carpeting. You don't need to know the entire house, apart from bragging or comparing with other people - why do you need to know?
I totally agree. Size is no help at all as it gives no indication of the number or type of rooms
As I've told my wife many a time, size doesn't matter. 🤔
I was going to make a remark something similar as I notice while house hunting here in Virginia you don't get the dimensions of the rooms so if you like a house and buy its a case of finding out if your furniture will fit
A large part of this is because so much housing is standard
For example a 3 bedroom council house isn't going to vary much if they are from the same period
Agreed. I just looked my house up and it’s 650 sq ft. I have no concept of what that means.
Fascinating. They seem to have completely missed the fact that a lot of UK houses were built a long time ago. My house dates from the 1830s and was built as a two room dwelling (one up, one down). At the time I don’t think there was much call for a “laundry room” or a “den”.
Yeah my flat is over 100 years old
Yes, another reason why we dont randomly knock walls down, also load bearing, so havn't really considered it.
Don't forget the original outhouse
@@richardbaker7084 Yes! Still got the building in the garden.
my Maisonette in wandsworth, London, UK is large, 3 bedroomed but is made of concrete and bricks. the only wood is the roof. which is the slated.
I've never thought od sq ft for homes. it's bedrooms.
I have living room 22ft by 12 feet.
kitchen 15ft by 8ft
bedroom 18ft x 12ft
bedroom 13ft x 11ft.
bedroom 11ft x 7.6ft
then bathroom , loo, hallway , stairs 15 of them in the property. so quite large for maisonette in London. , especially wandsworth.
UK favours brick housing over wooden houses because of fire risk.
A number of urban fires with high death tolls in the jacobean era led to brick and stone houses being perceived as being safer
And the 'big bad wolf' can't blow a brick house down!! 😆👍🇬🇧
You’d probably struggle to get Buildings insurance and even possibly a mortgage.
Plus makes them stronger surly as in the part of America where a hurricane or tornado goes through your house is gone.
Great Fire of London, and the infamous 1675 fire of Northampton come to mind.
Hallways. It makes temperature control better in your house. When it's cold and wet outside you need to open the front door without horizontal rain and winds driving into your living room. And somewhere to get out of wet coats and boots.
When I was growing up, in the 80s, only the very well off had central heating. The living room had a fire or heater of some kind, and the kitchen obviously had the oven when cooking, but no other rooms were heated, unless you put a portable heater in. Doors were needed to keep rooms at a reasonable temperature, opening the living room straight onto the street would definitely be counterproductive to that.
When I was young, one piece of advice was never to buy a house where the front door opened into the living room.
Before central heating, each room was independently heated, usually by an open fire (pre-electricity), even bedrooms in large houses had fireplaces... The door kept the heat in, and it was far more efficient to heat one room than the entire house.
I still use all the fires in my Victorian house, albeit they’re gas but look real; in the winter nothing beats having a cosy fire when you’re sitting up in bed with a hot drink and a good book.
Not just large houses. I grew up in two-up two-down which had fireplaces in every room. There was no hall, but the front door was vestibuled to conserve heat, though that was a 1950s addition.
We still have the fireplace in one of our bedrooms but it doesn't get used any more.
@@suexxx981 We may be bringing them back into use if Gas and Electricity keeps on rising, wood will be cheaper and if properly seasoned greener than Gas. All those people who removed chimneys will be kicking themselves.
Generally too, wasn't the living room (or the 'drawing room') the most well decorated room in the house so guests were always taken to that room and kept away from the rest of the house which was likely a lesser standard of decor? So the hallway was a way of preparing the guests prior to entering that room. There's also something about the way the doors are hung, in that they 'reveal' the room... I forget exactly what it is... So basically a lot of the design of British homes is a bunch of Victorian hang-ups 🤣🤣
Another reason that we don't tend to have houses made of wood is that historically wood was banned for the construction of houses was to prevent fires breaking out, especially as houses in the UK tend to be closer together. The most famous of these fires was the great fire of London in 1666 which caused a huge amount of destruction as all the houses were made of wood at the time.
Most of the trees, mostly oak were commandeered by the Royal Navy, who probably deforested more of England than all the farmers or house builders ever did.
@@tonys1636 Very true and look where that got Great Britain !
Owning or influencing a large part of the world. With the Royal Navy blockading slave ships and freeing enslaved people.
Well worth deforestation ,in my view ,better than just using the trees for house building
On a side-note: I found out the other day that my local pub, is over 400 years older than the USA 🤣
Yeah it’s sometimes hilarious to find out that your local pub’s ceiling or even the bar front is older than an entire nation. Lmao
The oldest pub in my home town, Ye Olde Man and Scythe" dates back to circa 1297.
@@wendypowell6795 where's that Wendy.. sounds brilliant.👍
@@alex-E7WHU It's on Churchgate in Bolton Lancashire, England.
@@alex-E7WHU en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Man_%26_Scythe
Imagine the population of Ohio was 70 million and that 80% of the land couldn't be built on.
All that preserved history, the national parks and AONBs like The Cotswolds ( AONB is an area of outstanding natural beauty ) come at a cost, the cost is a lack of land for housing.
Eric and Grace: The British live in very old shoe-boxes with nowhere to hang their clothes and nowhere to wash their dishes. And they don’t know what a granite counter top is.
WOW! It’s like they toured England on a really tight budget and made some pretty way-out assumptions on how we live. Not cool
I don't have a dishwasher, a wardrobe or a granite worktop and my dwelling is the size is of a shoe box, I actually call it the hot box of doom . , because I hate it. So some people live like it., especially poorer people
I think Eric & Grace left their manners as well as their brains at home.
The hallway keeps a buffer between the world outside and the family inside. An Englishman's home is his castle and letting people into the hall feels safer than letting them past the portcullis and into the living room. A front door that opened into a living room would make us feel invaded every time we answered it. I have lived in some tiny houses, but every one of them had a hallway.
Yeah I think it’s strange having a door open straight to ur living room. I’ve always had long wide hallways as soon as I open my door thank god lol
Same in Japan, the entranceway is almost sacred in its role as the bridge between outdoor and the private rooms, even in some of the smallest houses.
The hallway also provides a buffer against draughts and cold from the outside. This was especially important in the days before central heating.
My house had a hallway but the previous owners knocked down the wall to make a bigger living room. It’s really awkward in the winter if a salesman or charity worker comes to the door, you have freezing draughts straight into the living room.
One they missed out was a bungalow, a one storey home that can be terraced, detached, or semi detached, sometimes with an addition in the roof space, known as a dormer bungalow or chalet bungalow.
The amazing thing is that there is a quarterly publication in the US called "American Bungalow" full of the most beautifully appointed two storey houses...
Almost none are bungalows - single-storey houses in the Bengali manner.
My house was built in the 1920s so it would have been on a cart track at that time. Most of our houses were built long before modern roads and central heating and they had to fit where they could, hence the smaller footprint of them. Hallways are often for leaving umbrellas, wet coats and shoes etc as you come in from the rain and cold and they keep the rest of the house from losing heat as the front door opens. Also separating rooms with doors does attempt to keep the heating under control in Winter as then it's far less draughty. Those two young presenters were spectacularly irritating and had no real understanding of so many things here in the UK and giving so much wrong information.
House prices in the UK vary greatly depending on the area. That includes in the same town. So overall size is not that important. We are more interested in individual room size. You also have to look at the size of our country and the number of people living in it. Also our history. We have been building in the UK for a lot longer than USA. Therefore we have to build on roads that have been established for hundreds of years.
Good point, my city is pretty close to London with good transport links, so naturally being attractive for London commuters has driven housing prices up massively. Even with all the new housing being built there's still high demand.
Hi lovely ladies ,a lot of washing machines are dryers as well ,2 in 1 . You got it spot on with the heating Natasha , goes back to the days of coal fires, the walls and doors prevent the cold air finding it's way to the living room or dining room as those were the only two rooms in the house with heat , not so bad these days with central heating . There are a lot of houses with granite countertops , so they got that wrong .🇬🇧
The hallway is to keep out the weather, a place to greet people before inviting them into your private places and a great area to place shes, coats, brollies etc
This all comes down to age, space, the climate and, naturally, cost.
There is a huge amount of old housing stock in the UK. The majority of these houses were tiny. A country cottage may sound a quaint way of living but the rooms are cramped and the ceilings are low. The town/city terrace, the old 2 up/2 downs were even smaller. A two-seater sofa may take up half the floor space of the living room, for example.
If you want to live in a town then you are most often limited by the roads and buildings that have been in place for hundreds of years. Space is at a premium so properties in towns are small. If you want to live out of town, suburban living, then the properties are often less than a hundred years old and tend to be larger but, given there is not much land free for building these are still crammed together so even an expensive house will be small by US standards. There was a golden period for builders in the 1920s and 1930s where houses were bigger and well spaced out but, nowadays, houses are being thrown up that are smaller and even more crammed together. There's just not the room for the population we have and we have a massive housing shortage, so there's a lot of competition for what there is.
Then there's the climate. Big spaces need heating and fuel is expensive so most people find smaller properties more cost effective. The modern trend towards knocking through or building one main living space that occupies much of downstairs has added greatly to the woes people are having now, with heating bills soaring. I just love these TV shows where they show soaring ceilings and glass walls but never show how these are cleaned. Clue: You need a ladder ... and that is stored where?
Consequently, housing is rare & expensive, even in the run down places no one wants to live in. A 6k sq ft country house in the UK is considered very large and in a good area would easily cost £2.5M. In the same area a modern 2 bed house with 750 sq ft would be £250k+. A two bed terrace (again 750 sq ft) in London can cost £550k easily. So cost ... most young people can no longer afford to buy a house, and renting is getting more and more expensive.
Everything else flows from this.
One of the two stipulations I have when I'm house hunting. 1. The front door mustn't open directly into a living room.
2. The stairs not coming down directly into the living room.
In other words I love hallways 😊
Imagine on a cold Winter's day with it blowing a Hooley outside, someone opens the front door and all the heat escapes from the open plan living room. That's why we have halls, separate rooms and doors between them. Britain can be a damp, cold and drafty place. And not all homes here are particularly modern or even well insulated.
My sister's stairs coming down into her living room. However, there's a door to access the downstairs. She has a vestibule too as her front door leads straight into the living room.
There is also a privacy aspect. I would never want to live in a house where the front door opens straight into the main room - imagine standing at the door taking a parcel in or something and people being able to see right into your house. The hallway is a bit of a neutral buffer zone. Its also more secure for pets. You can shut a dog in the lounge before going into the hallway to open the door without having to worry that they'll run straight out into the main road.
I’ve lived in 4 houses so far. All have had stairs in the living room. I absolutely hate it. All the heat travels up them so downstairs is freezing in the winter 😭😄 but all the houses in our area seem to have them in the lounge 🤦♀️😄 xx
When you eventually get over here, do NOT mention microwaves at all when you have to answer the tea making questions at customs. You'll be on a plane straight back home or maybe a penal colony where you'll be made to work in a kettle factory. Just FYI. :)
Hallways are usually preferred to open plan because it's economising re: heating and it's also easier to keep the living space clean as people coming in from outside won't be walking wet/muddy shoes straight into the living room. Most hallways often have a storage closet under the stairs where people are likely to keep their shoes and coats. Utility rooms are becoming more common in newer homes, and built-in wardrobes are a personal preference. Personally I don't like them as then it's decided for me where I have to hang my clothes instead of having flexibility over the room layout.
In UK we do have utility rooms in some houses . Not every house has utility room. . Some build extention on there house to fit one in. Yes we have wardrobes or some pepole will have fitted wardrobe on one wall. IKEA do have build ur own big wardrobes a lot of pepole have different parts of IKEA there are different sizes make it how you like it . Some of IKEA wardrobes have different types of draws they make it how they like .
As an IKEA employee, can confirm, the wardrobes are some of our best sellers, especially the modular ones where you can fit drawers or shelves in whatever order you want.
Some other businesses also do bespoke wardrobe units that cover an entire wall of someone's home, so often the house not being fitted from the start with closet space isn't a dealbreaker as it might be in the US.
A few years ago now, my partner and I booked a fun coach trip to Chatsworth House. As the coach left Nottingham we passed some allotment gardens, the American lady sat just in front said, "it's terrible how some people live". 😂😂
Whenever we drive pass the allotments now, my partner will say, "eye,eye, looks like Terry has had his soffit and fascia done". 🤣
Much love from the UK X
Houses in my English village are all shapes and sizes as they were built in the 11th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st Century. Older houses tend to have closests, cellars, pantries etc. 19th century houses onwards not so much. When looking for a house I think we Brits mostly just care about how many bedrooms there are how nice it is and if the area is good.
Thank you for another interesting take on UK/USA lives. I think the issue of the size of our homes, like our roads, our cars, even our fields is directly linked to space for approximately 60million of us live on this damp, little island we call Great Britain and we have to compromise. Our weather is..... 'variable' too so a hallway or a lobby have given an element of insulation to living rooms and somewhere to put the umbrella and hang wet clothes.
Really enjoy your vlogs, ladies. Keep 'em coming.
In the UK you are probably looking for how close you are to bus roiutes, schools, trainstations, if you have free parking, and other amenities, if you have land or a garden with it etc.
Natasha you’re right, hallways and doors to other rooms help with keeping the rooms heated
As someone from the UK, I find it funny that you were shocked about our hallways, I’ve never thought of it as being odd before. I’ve rarely walked into someone’s home and not been greeted with a hallway, it’s almost like a common area where people stand and chat if you’re having a party/gathering.
Whilst it's true many UK home owners may not know the square footage of their home, it is totally untrue that property listings don't include this, they absolutely do, these 2 people just haven't looked into the listings fully enough. They've also missed out 2 hugely popular house types here, which are maisonettes, that's a house which is split into a ground floor & first floor flat & bungalows which are single storey houses, not a fan of these 2 kids, it's all a bit generalised.
in the UK we changed a bedroom into a bathroom and immediately reduced the value of our house as it was now a 2-bed house, not a 3 bed. we also count the floors differently, you come into the ground floor hallway and upstairs to the first floor or just upstairs if there are only the two floors
Although I've never seen a house listing have the overall square-feet size of the property. They do tend to list each room's individual size. Like it'll say "the main bedroom is 15ft x 20ft", for example.
I think that, in most Europe, including the UK, the area of a house/flat is far less important that what it contains, where it is, the garden size, the condition of the property, and how it is built. Remember, most property in much of Europe is over 50 years old, and over 10 percent is over 150 years old. So construction quality and state of repair are more important that simply size. A well maintained, three-bedroom 100 sq m home is a better deal than a huge, detached place needing repair.
plus heating costs. if my house was the average usa size id dread to see size of bills., plus local tax (council tax)
Take a look at waterside estate agent. it shows houses for sale in norfolk along the broads, included is the property you paused at in the norfolk reaction video, its on sale for 3 mil it has 7 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, i will buy it one day lol. Theres also a video on youtube showing this house from the same estate agent.
Over 60 million people live in the UK which is smaller than some US states. Building land is very limited.
Nearly every house in Australia the front door opens to a hallway...this includes old and new houses.
Also the formal lounge room is usually the frontmost room to the street.
The kitchen and family room is nearly always at the rear of the house...this makes it convenient to open up the house to the backyard with the kitchen and family room for entertaining.
We called the formal lounge the "best room". It was only used for when family visited and contained the nice furniture and piano.
Interesting re the timber aspect. My house in the UK is Timber framed sometimes called "Tudor" though the house itself is much older. One end is c 1390 and another is c 1420. Its been a restoration project over 20 years. No idea the square footage but officially we have 6 bedrooms though 4 are used for other purposes (study, sewing room, storage, parrot room!).
The house has a very large living room (looks like we have found the "great hall" judging by what we managed to uncover, hidden for centuries), two reception rooms with one opening onto a courtyard garden, and a large kitchen. Carved ceiling beams and wooden studs in the walls with panelling have created a lovely old home for us.
We don't have a utility room per se but planning to add one to the detached garage.
Sounds lovely ❤
Remember the USA has a population density of about 45 people per square mile, where the UK has a population density of 240 people per square mile!
My take on the size listing thing is that a) in the UK there is quite a strong tendency towards "you get what you're given" and just accepting whatever size the house is, and b) we generally use number of bedrooms and/or bathrooms as a proxy for size
Yes, and the listings might just specify the length of the garden or the living room, so you'd see it listed as a 3-bed house with 1 bathroom, a 50ft garden, and a 20ft living room
Also the formula for cost. Number of bedroom & location = cost.
1bd flat in Chelsea same price as a 4bd house in Bradford
Well that was a unexpected bonus start to a Wednesday morning ! Eric and Grace on Uk vs Us homes ok(ish) but think give ...KYDE & ERIC A NIGHT IN A SCOTTISH CASTLE ..the "nod" on the
ours bigger than yours prize ...if it's stone walls ? Think Debbie be at home
@@monkee1969 That's a really cheap Chelsea flat😄
The square footage is normally on the floor plans rather than in the description
Hallways are great for helping keep your rooms cleaner and warmer. If you walk straight into your living room from the front door, any dirt, dust etc gets blown straight into that room, and you also loose more heat
The hallway thing is interesting. I have friends in Cos Cob CT. and their house is very American. I think you call it "Colonial" design. It's raised above ground with a basement and porch with steps up to the porch. It's of wood frame construction with shingles (we don't have those here) and is very pretty. They're not far from Greenwich which is an extremely affluent town. The front door opens into the lounge (living room) in which there is the staircase to upstairs.
In the UK the hallway gives us separation from the front door if we're in the lounge or kitchen or whatever. So, when people come into the house there is somewhere to just, you know, enter, and maybe hang up coats, say hello etc. also if somebody come to the door e.g. visitor, postman, delivery driver etc. you can deal with them without them entering your "private" area. I think it makes sense tbh.
Do Americans generally have people knocking on their front door whilst you're eating or watching TV etc? Perhaps it's a difference in attitudes towards privacy/personal space. We Brits, as you know, are generally much less extravert than our cousins across the pond.
Great video. I love this Anglo-American dialogue.
Some of the types of property/housing in the UK starting with Stately/Manor houses some are still lived in but some belong to the national trust. mansions which rich/celebrities/footballers live in, country/farm houses, barn conversions, detached and semi detached houses, mew houses, thatched cottages, town houses, terraced houses, bungalows, masionettes, studio, 1, 2 or 3 bed flats/appartments. you should take a look at a programme called escape to the country take a look inside some of the country houses and the layouts.
The people living in shoes thing is a reference to a nursery rhyme.
I have read that California alone is 1.7 times larger than the whole of the UK but the population of California is around 39 million where as the UK has a population of almost 68 million. We are quite a small island compared to a lot of countries but we still have houses of different shapes and sizes, we also have green belt land restrictions and some areas that are protected like the lake district, i recommend watching UK property tv shows such as escape to the country or location, location, location to get an idea of some of the properties in the UK.
Quite a few points to make with this one.
My first problem is they talk quite authoritatively about British homes because they've lived in 9. Sounds like all 9 were pretty similar, the "average" British family wouldn't dream, or even need to have their house "sat" by strangers!
Newer houses are often built with closet space but a lot of our houses were built in a time where that just wasn't important to their residents. Even stately homes weren't built with walk in closets! My house was built between the 2 world wars, it didn't even originally even have a bathroom!
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons our houses have a door on each room is for fire safety. A closed door slows the spread of fire! I know my Mum did, and still does, makes sure all doors are shut at night time and when leaving the house.
Most people I know have a clothes dryer, it's not always in the kitchen though. People literally have them where they have a space. You plug it in and put the big white tube from it out of a window. I actually have a machine* in my kitchen) that washs and drys, a washer dryer.
They missed a few things that are pretty different about our homes. We are not allowed to have electric sockets in our bathrooms, with the exception of a shaving point. A shaving point is not a normal British socket, it has two pin holes specifically for a razor power cord, or other appliances that use that sort of power cord. If we have electric showers in our bathroom it has to be able to be isolated either by a pull cord, from the ceiling in the bathroom, or a switch outside the bathroom. You are not allowed to have the switch in the bathroom.
I have NO idea what the square footage of my house is. We looked for how many bedrooms there where when we were house hunting.
I could go on and on but this comment is already too long lol.
British homes are generally compartmentalised for fire safety, the big open plan American homes combined with all the wood construction really burn very quickly, you only have to watch several videos on CZcams to see this, having worked in the UK hotel industry for over 30 years and dealt with fires in hotel I always close my doors at night in the house before going to bed. I have a separate utility room in my home so the washing machine and dryer are there along with an upright fridge/freezer, you can have electrical sockets in a bathroom but they must be 3 meters from any water source, a bathroom that big is just a waste of space. Which in general is the case with all those big US homes, it's a waste of space and takes a lot of energy to heat or cool.
When we decided to extend our (originally) 3 bedroom, kitchen, lounge, home, we considered a walk in closet, but the plans weren't approved so it wasn't included in the new plans. Now it's a 5 bedroom home with a study, utility room and a dining room, as well as one of the bedrooms having an en-suite.
I totally agree with the fire safety aspect, I'm a fire warden and closed doors, even ones that aren't fire rated dramatically slow the rate of fire, smoke is the biggest killer and doors stop the spread by a huge amount. And electrical safety has a lot more regulation than most other countries.
My home is 3500 sq ft. It was built in the 17th century, 4 bed 3 bath and 4 reception rooms. We don’t care about sq ft but we are more interested in the size of the garden.
spot on with the heat thing! I remember being told many times to close the door to keep the heat in!
UK has 20% of the US population in 2.5% of the US area. Hence we have to have small houses so we can all fit 🤣
Britain is incredibly populated for its size. The United Kingdom is comparable in land area to the state of Oregon, yet only four million people live in Oregon, whereas sixty-seven million people live in the UK. Which accounts for the compact size of accommodation and why most people don't live in detached houses.
House size is all about available land to build on
The UK having 66 million people on a island that is 40 times smaller than the USA is a major factor
Hi Girls! As far as I know most British houses having a thing called an Airing Cupboard. Mine for instance is situated at the top of the stairs and is next to the Chimney breast. It also houses the electric Immersion heater which heats the water for the whole house. I also, now, have gas fired Central Heating. Up until the 70's most houses still had open coal fires to heat rooms.
Yes a wardrobe takes up more space in the room, but in the overall sq.ft of the building a closet takes up way more space.
In the UK they just list the size of the rooms. You buy a house based on how many rooms it has, the size of them and on how much garden or land it has, also whether or not it has a garage. You do have granite/quartz worktops in the uk but laminate worktops are also common. Most new build houses have all the extras such as dishwashers, utility rooms with space for dryers, built in wardrobes etc as standard.
When he said ‘washing machines’ with his accent I couldn’t help but sing in my head ‘live longer with calgon’ 😂
As for the hall, each room would at one time be heated by a coal fire, so would be warmer, also if you are not using a room the fire would not be lit so saving coal and money.
Wardrobes really don't take up as much space as a closet! A closet's walls are usually a couple of inches thick as they are dividing wall, whereas an ikea (for example) wardrobe is a box made out of maybe 1/2" wooden frame, and will include drawers as well as hanging space. Bizarrely I did live in a UK home with closets once, didn't seem as good as just making the room bigger and sticking a wardrobe in it.
It is common in my experience to have a washer/dryer in your kitchen rather than simply a washing machine, we also have a built-in closet ina couple of the rooms so it does exist in the UK however rare.
Regarding hallways and doors to individual rooms, Many houses were built decades before central heating. Coal fires were the only way to heat the rooms, so having a door helped keep the heat in the room. Regarding the hallway, that could be the area to remove your coat and shoes/boots...remember, it rains a LOT. Our hallway had a cupboard underneath the stairs for hanging coats and an umbrella stand. It used to be that rooms were always carpeted, so you'd not want to trek through the house in wet shoes.
I should add that in many homes, especially terraced houses, the front door leads into a vestibule/foyer, another way to keep the cold out of the house.
I think when watching these reaction videos it's really clear to differentiate from those who have a genuine interest and those who just want to watch something for views. I can definitely see that you guys are the former and I appreciate that!
I decided to measure the footprint of my little (terraced) house here in the UK which is 30 ft x 14 ft. I guess that's tiny but I've honestly never really thought about it much! My garden is about the same size
I not sure why they said that closets weren't popular in the UK. Maybe older houses don't unless they have been added.
The hallway and multiple door thing thing is indeed about keeping heat in and,I think, about privacy when we have visitors who are staying just a few minutes or just going to briefly chat on the doorstep we can close the other rooms off.
I loved your rationalisation of what us Brits look for in a house listing since we don't pay attention to square footage/meterage (we're honestly just not bothered, we're more interested in the number of bedrooms and/or/ garden (yard) space - that to me shows that you both have a really excellent understanding and appreciation of British culture 😊 I'm looking forward to you visiting here some day, I can tell you're gonna have a fantastic trip.
It's all really simply explained. The UK is a country with one fifth of the population of the US - crowded onto an island 1 FIFTIETH the size of the US. In other words our population density is 10 times higher than yours, and so all our houses are smaller because we have less land than you do (and less extraneous unnecessary rooms, things in rooms etc).
Interesting, the place i lived in growing up was built in the 1950s, it had built in wardbrobes in the walls that you could walk into, so maybe similar to a closet just not as big as what i have seen in the US, the second place also had one so no need to take up space with a freestanding wardbrobe. i now live in a house that was built in the 1800s and i have to have a freestanding wardbrobe now which does take up space, i have a spare room though so i keep it in there, it also doesnt have a hallway it has a small porch (not the same as a US porch) you walk in the front door have a small space to hang coats etc then a second door into the living room or front room. There are roughly 67 million people living in the UK over 55 million of those in England, houses tend to be smaller in cities but obviously can be quite a bit larger in the country and some towns. Enjoyed the video interesting to know some of the differences.
I think this couple just has a whacky sense of humour. I’ve watched loads of their videos and they’re very cool.
the fad for open plan houses costs a lot of money. people were knocking out walls right left and centre and some, of, course fell down
Not really a house itself difference but talking of different household equipment- we always have a washing up bowl in the sink, we rarely wash the dishes (or pots as we call them in Nottingham) directly in the sink. This blew my American friend’s mind!
Check out the zoning laws in the US. You HAVE to have a car to go and buy a pint of milk as there are no shops allowed in the developments. Some people have to drive 40 minutes just to get the beverage! Also, do these two really want to stay in the UK? I'm thinking not. NOONE microwaves water for tea. wtf?
Where the Bleep are you getting your VERY false info from?? We can literally walk 3 blocks and be at our grocery store. Sorry but you are very misinformed here
We wouldn't cal it a den though, we (more often) would say study
As mentioned in the comments, you have to take in to account, that a lot of the terraced houses were built up to 100 years ago, albeit brought up to date. Another factor would be the relative size of the countries
Only up to 100, I'd say more than that, mines about 150yeara old and I'd say it's average
The hallway is where you keep your jackets and outdoor shoes in so you don't mess up the rest of the house, also in olden days it kept your living room warm when someone was going in and out of the house, also if you have guests, you can sneak past them to the kitchen without disturbing them and back upstairs again :)
My house was built in the 1830's where they weren't concerned with closets and laundry rooms. It most likely didn't have a bathroom as well.
I'm 30, I've lived in the UK all my life, I've had about 15 different addresses (moved around a lot) and a good amount of the bedrooms I've had have contained walk in closets. They're not that unusual.
10:49 Victorian (maybe Georgian) era flats in Edinburgh. Greyfriars Bobby lives at the top of the little road going up to the right behind the yellow truck.
12:30 Many UK buyers will consider location, amenities, views (good or bad), schools, distance to work and public transport before square footage when deciding on a house.
Hallways (lack thereof) - when you walk directly into a living room from the outside where do you hang up your wet-weather gear, where do you set down what you're carrying, where are the stairs, how do the wet dogs not mess up your carpets, how do you not disturb the people who are already in the room ?
It's not only a heat thing with hallways it's a privacy thing too.
To me the size doesn’t really matter. It’s more of how many bedrooms does it have (can it accommodate you/ your family) and the location is it near a school (if you have kids) easy to travel into town/ work, public transport, somewhere to park your car. You always visit the property before buying. I live i a flat and according to the council it is big enough for 5 people to live here but it’s a struggle with 2.
I've had a tumble dryer in my houses since the mid 80s firstly at my parents house and then in every place I've been in since. The same applies to a microwave although it doesn't get much use.
I have a 3 bedroom house and I have no idea what the square footage is.
If I didn't have wardrobes my clothes would be all over the floor as there's no space to have a closet.
You forced me to do math(s) - which I hate... but, here's my take on sizes of things:
My country has an area of 93,600 square miles, the USA is 2,959,000 square miles, or 31times larger.
The house thing was 818 square feet vs 2,300 square feet or 2.8 times larger. But logically, your houses should be 31 times larger - or 25,300 square feet....
Disclaimer - Non-serious comment! Keep up the good vibes!
Our homes are usually sold by bedrooms and garden size because we all need a lovely garden
Boiling water for tea in a microwave is punishable by death here in the UK.
Remission can be obtained if you just boil the water - no mercy is granted if you boil the water with the teabag in it.
in UK Architecture we have been using the metric system for at least 40 years but we choose to follow imperial for certain things like speed, our body height etc
When I was a student I lived five years in a 20 square meter student flat (215 square feet). My bedroom was my living room, I had a tiny kitchen with a sink, one counter top and a tiny stove (had to cut my frozen pizza in two to fit it in there, and it had two hot plates instead of four). My bathroom was a nice size actually. Plenty of room to move around and a spacious shower. No dishwasher, but I was lucky enough to live across the hall from the launderette.
A spacious shower, but no dishwasher...? What a shocking apostacy 😂
Where the hell did they dig this guy up from??
Every American knows we Brits all live in thatched roofed Castles, surrounded by private hunting deer grounds!!! 🤔 😆
🤣😂
It's really quite simple and if you remember from your previous clips. House's here are smaller because we live in a cooler climate so heating does not take so long and cost thousands of pounds. The hallway is there because can you imagine walking into your lounge dripping wet with rain. Moreover don't forget a lot of our houses were built when north America only had teepee's. When you see these beautiful villages in England that's where the founding fathers left from.
You’re spot on, the hallway is quite important to trap the heat in. We focus on insolation a lot for very obvious reasons. The smaller houses are also easier to heat.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that aerial photo around 7:00 is in London somewhere. The red brick 6 story building on the left looks a bit like a better quality Edwardian era block of flats not uncommon in London, as are the range of different building types in a small area. The cars drive on the left so that's most likely the UK.
Awww Grace and Eric - known as the Wandering Ravens - I love these two peeps ❤️ they lived in the UK for at least three years (also Paris and Germany) having a fab time and used to post funny vids every week - with poor old Eric seemingly having only the one shirt! 😆 I think they had to return to the USA for work and visa reasons, but in their last vlog - which was aeons ago 😫😥- they said they were desperate to return to the UK …. Really hope they can come back..ll miss them 🥺
Same here miss their witty take on where they were living, last thing I heard about a couple like them was they divorced and she moved near me in Wales with her new boyfriend and now she reports on life in Wales 😎
Yes, the Ravens seem to have dropped off the radar lately, which is a great shame because they were a brilliant double-act.
I think they even joined a local church bell ringing group at one place they lived in. Alston?
@@eanjamesmogg9488 You are mixing them up with another couple. They divorced when he came out as a trans woman.
@@wendypowell6795 And the women moved to Wales???
Not that surprising that uk houses are small on average, when you think about the size of our tiny island 😁
28.20 The plan with the hallway is common amongst many homes in Britain. My home originally had a hallway but the previous tenants knocked out the hallway, turned the stairs around so now we have 2 medium sized rooms that are used interchangebly to a living room or dining room or 1 communal room and 1 best room. So when people visit my house they walk straight into a room and not a corridor/hallway. The only problem I now have is there's too many door spaces which makes planning for seat space or tv space a nightmare. Lol
In the UK most prefer to have more closed plan houses compared to open planned ones. So where in US they have alot of home that are open planned so straight into living room and the kitchen maybe coming off it with no walls, we prefer them all separate and walled off
Omg love wandering ravens
in the UK we do have airing cupboards, clothes driers and radiators, plus tumble driers...
In UK we have flats, terrace houses, semi detached houses, detached houses, Bungalows,.
Yes we do have granite counter tops, they have become popular in recent years. A wardrobe is a place to hang clothes, a closet is derived from a water-closet or loo.
Location is a main factor when looking for a house in the UK to get a house in as nice an area as you can afford with good schools, shops etc, how many bedrooms does it have, parking, do you want to be overlooked ( most houses especially new are very overlooked by neighbours), size of garden. We are currently having building work to add two bedroom extensions and a bigger kitchen dining area, we have looked for four years for a bigger house couldn’t find one in our price bracket so finally took the plunge to make ours bigger, it seems most people are doing this now if they can. Our houses are too close together to have wood houses anymore, brick and stone last longer than wood structures, we have buildings that are over a thousand years old.
I have no idea the size of my house, nor does it matter to me. The only conditions I have when house hunting is a safe, quiet location. A nice mature garden doesn’t go amiss though 😄
7:17 - That looks very much like they are in London. I might be wrong but I'm British, been to most oft he major cities here and based on the houses to the right of the screen, I would say they are London homes. Probably would sell for millions each too lol. Just to add on that too, I can see why they made it a competition because we have much less large cities in the UK and because of that each one of them have their own very distinct styles and looks. For example, you would pretty easily be able to tell Birmingham from London based on the house near the city centre.
That city is London. We in the UK look at size of garden or grounds like in Acre. Yes it is bedrooms and rooms them selves. By the way stately homes have a smoking room a games room a tea room a drawing room think about the last one. By the way we have thatched cottages in the UK going back 500 years made of clay also the stones houses go back 800 years in certain places in the UK. Also very few castles are made of wood I wonder why? A walking closet is rear because no point to it. We change clothes our selves no help. Dish washer we afford people to do that Honest? Reason about dish washers is accessibility where pipes are as dishwashers can fit the smallest of kitchens but are they practical when only two people? Ok they go overboard with the Use of Hallway. Hallway is usually an narrow part of the house of the front door and it usually has a rough rug in it so wiping your feet or boots.
I have watched American renovation shows and two things amaze me. They seem knock down walls, without first checking to see if those walls are structural and they knock down walls with sledge hammers, rather than actually disassembling the walls, so that anything useful can be saved.
In the UK we often focus on room size and not house size i.e. we look at the size of each room. Planning restrictions/permission in the UK are/is very strict, so land that is able to be built on is hard to come by, so developers use the space to build as many homes as possible. Also it is common to extend your home in the UK. A large percentage of people build extra rooms into/onto their home. Many homes were originally built in the early 1900's and built for poorer people, factory workers and labourers, and so were smaller.
yeah opening a door too the outside makes the house drafty so having the hallway helps keep the other rooms warmer plus some of the walls will be load bearing walls.
It's true that we use the number of bedrooms as a proxy for the size of the house - you'll generally start your house search by looking for, say, a 3 bedroom property. But the dimensions of individual rooms are usually included in the estate agent's small print, and often, though not always, the total size.
As a child I always wondered why US TV programmes and films only showed 'rich' people's houses because they always looked so enormous. I live in a 3 bed 1920's end terrace and it measures 950 sq feet which is very, very typical of mid range, mid price UK housing stock. Its not considered small at all. A house of 2,000 square feet would be thought very large and likely to be very expensive.
And the cost of housing was one key difference the video didn't address. I live on the outskirts of SW London. The prices here are relatively cheap by London standards but even so, a 3 bedroom semi detached house of 900-1000 sq ft would cost £700-800,000 (ie 850,000 - 1m USD). A house of the US average size of 2,300 sq ft would probably be in the region if £1.5 - 2m, well out of the range of the ordinary person. I suspect US land values and house prices are quite a bit cheaper.
It depends on location in the USA too. My brother-in-law sold his average 3bed/2bath house about 15 years ago for $650,000 due to it being a property in Orange County, California. The same property in the Southeast, back then, probably would have sold for around $200,000 or $250,000.
In the UK when looking for houses we look at whether it is detached or not and then how many bedrooms it has. On an Estate Agents web page there is usually a floor plan showing the size of each room in feet and inches. A 2,300 sq ft house is no good to us if it is all one room!!! The internal layout, no. of rooms and room sizes are more important.