Children's room and bedroom - What size is recommended?

My priority is not that the children leave the house quickly, but that they receive a good education.

Do you see a contradiction here? So no good education possible if they leave “early”? Although I wouldn’t consider 19 or 20 particularly early. Or did I misread the contradiction? Bedroom smaller than 15 sqm, if a wardrobe is to be inside, it really gets tight. I’m with you on that. We currently have 12 sqm, but apart from the bed (approx. 2.1x2) and a Kallax, there’s nothing else in there, which works fine. But it also depends a bit on the layout.

Our children's rooms are 10.5 and 11.5 m², the bedroom 17 m² in a 140 m² single-story house plus basement. But that’s also because we didn’t build the house ourselves; it’s been standing like this for 60 years, otherwise the bathroom and the children’s rooms would have each been 1-2 m² larger.

However, we have a 75 m² living-kitchen-dining area, of which 15 m² can be separated off with its own garden access. The children can use this later if they want a separate living area (unless there end up being 3 children, then the room will simply become a third children's room). Until then, it’s just a “playroom.”

I don’t think the children will appreciate 20 or 30 years from now how large their children’s rooms were, but rather remember the shared days and moments with their parents, no matter how big each room was.

I don't think that children will enjoy how big their bedroom was in 20 or 30 years, but rather remember shared days and moments with their parents regardless of the size of any room.

I shared a room with my sister until I was 9 years old. After that, I had just under 20m². Sharing the room did not emotionally damage me, and since I didn't know it any other way, I was definitely not unhappy. My Lego and Siku toys lived in the dining room back then, which was actually more of a children's playroom for me and my sisters. But in my own room, I would have sometimes liked 30m² as well. Until I moved out for university, I only had a 1m bed plus a sofa bed. Today, that’s apparently a no-go. Ten-year-olds have a 1.4m bed to accommodate their 735 stuffed animals.

If you go by what harms a child, then you actually hardly need anything. Children can grow up unharmed in 8m² rooms or shared rooms. That actually has nothing to do with being happy. Similarly, a child doesn't need a console, a smartphone, brand-name clothes, or 1000 toys. Still, today, very many children have those things without anyone thinking about it.

Personally, I find (living) spaces under 12m² quite restricting. I don't want to offend anyone with that, and it is purely a subjective opinion. We had both a 12m² bedroom and an 11m² office. In both, we managed well in terms of furnishing, but the rooms felt somewhat oppressive to me to really feel comfortable there. Therefore, it was important to me that all our living spaces have as close to 15m² as possible. But of course, that is also a matter of price. Personally, I would rather spend 3-4k€ more per child to give them 2m² more living space; in return, there won't be the newest iPhone every two years during their teen years.

I also don't see a huge difference between boys and girls. In my opinion, girls often don't need as much space under 10 years old, but when their friends come over for a "coffee gathering," a seating area, makeup corner, etc., become important. Moreover, my experience is that girls like to have a separate sleeping area, which can be pretty well solved in 15-20m² with a room divider or directly as an L-layout. Boys often have (at least that was the case for me) a lot of Lego, Playmobil, etc., which simply requires a lot of space. In my teen years, I also always had many friends at home. First for playing, then came the console time where we held real Mario Kart and FIFA tournaments, and later movie nights (with more or less alcohol). I never felt that I didn't need my room or that it was too big.

My sisters each had rooms that were also around 15m². One was later turned into my parents' office, the other is the bedroom of my nephew, who is at my parents' house one or two days a week, and my old room is now a guest room including an infrared cabin. My mother still "has to" iron in the storage room. So it's not like you later inevitably don't know what to do with all the rooms. More often, the case is that you build an extension (additional children's room, conservatory, hobby room, etc.).

So we also plan rather little space for ourselves, as many write: we basically only use it for sleeping and watching TV, the children probably spend much more time in their rooms. We have grown very tall, which will surely also apply to our children later, so we are planning space in the children's room for a 2.2m long bed right away. Even if the grown-up offspring later has a partner who likes to stay over frequently, a wider bed (at least 1.40m) should also fit in. In addition, the children should have at least a 1.5m wardrobe, a large desk for homework and computer, and cabinets for toys. Less than 14m² is certainly not enough. At some point, I myself stayed with my parents-in-law and it was a very nice time in my husband's "childhood room" (we built our current bed there ourselves back then). Maybe our bed in the future house will give way to a new one, because we are not sofa TV watchers, but bed watchers. I can imagine that on quiet Sundays, we lie together with the kids in bed in the bedroom, so the 1.8x2.2 bed will probably have to give way to a bigger one. But otherwise, there should be no frills in the bedroom. Of course, there should also be a dressing room, but this should also have enough space for the kids’ winter clothes and bed linens. So the dressing room is not only intended for us parents alone.

I follow the argumentation: (parents') bedroom only for sleeping and children's room for the entire life (sleeping, playing, learning, working, meeting friends...) and would therefore have wanted to build about 20 m² children’s room in a completely freely planned house.

Now for us location + centrality come BEFORE being freely planned and arbitrarily large. Therefore, we had the choice between two children’s rooms of about 15 m² each on the NE side without loggia versus children’s rooms of about 11-12 m² each on the SW side with a 10 m² loggia... The decision was for smaller children’s rooms with better orientation and loggia. For this, the bedroom is now quite large, in the NE, and without loggia access. Actually, a few square meters in the bedroom are wasted, but it was not possible to somehow shift the square meters over to the other side. However, there is also a separate children’s bathroom – which is nice.

I don't know if you really need a loggia in a house with a garden