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Why 42% of Terrace Houses Don't Work

CARL Architect

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I looked at every terrace house for sale around here.
All 276 of them.

Not to find a perfect one—
but to see if there was a pattern.

There was.

A lot of these houses follow the same underlying structure, and once you see it, you start to notice the same problems again and again. The biggest one shows up in 42% of them.

In this video I break down:

• the original layout these houses were built with
• how that layout has been changed over time
• why so many of them don’t quite work
• and a simple system for rearranging them without immediately extending

This isn’t about one house.
It’s about how most of them work—and how they could work better.

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If you’re thinking about buying or redesigning a terrace house, this should help you see what to look for (and what to avoid).

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Sections
00:00 The wall of houses
01:00 What I analysed
02:10 The original terrace layout
03:10 The recurring problems
04:40 The terrace system
06:20 How it rearranges the house
07:20 Final thoughts

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Music

End tune download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tyra...
Tune during first drone shots by Casey Calhoun: https://soundcloud.com/caseycalhounbe...

20 Comments

@CARL-Architect Creator 1 month ago Pinned

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@clinteastwood39a 5 months ago

great video, thanks for uploading. Nice to see really high quality analysis being directed towards the types of houses most people live in

@dominicdavies2605 5 months ago

So refreshing to see a focus on the everyday architecture that most of us live or aspire to live in. The issue that seems very difficult to solve is the corridor in these houses , they can take up to a quater of the width and unless you have access to the side of the house really hard to reduce the space this occupies

@adrian49cc 5 months ago

Practical, problem-solving, superbly edited. Thank you.

@unheard128 3 months ago

I grew up on a street where many of the houses had bathrooms downstairs In the centre of the house just like this. Most people hated having their bathroom downstairs. It messes up the public private balance of the house.

@Michael-hs5ih 5 months ago

Here in Sydney Australia we also have an abundance of terrace houses in our Inner West. I work in construction, specifically renovations and additions and the layout you came up with in this video is exactly what a majority of the houses we renovate end up following. We also tend to hide the laundry under the stairs. Form follows function has led everyone, no matter the budget, to a very similar layout

@Lauren-r8e 5 months ago

Loads of houses like this in south wales and Bristol too. My budget doesn’t allow for any structural changes so I’m going to be embracing the historical downstairs bathroom. Let’s call it a period feature haha

@TheBrewjo 5 months ago

So now you've identified the opportunity, you just need to find a few good real estate agents and builders in the area... Like some kind of Justice League or Avenging team for quality living. As the architect you'd be The Planman.

@Shino88 3 months ago

I will never understand why anyone would think putting a bathroom at the otherside of a kitchen was a good idea. Having to walk through a kitchen, dining room and living room to go upstairs to a bedroom just blows my mind.

@LyraDavis 5 months ago

I do agree that the typical terrace floor plan doesn’t work for modern life, however I have a major criticism of the pm;y bathing facilities being on a separate floor to the bedrooms, not to mention on the public floor of the house. Guests and visitors don’t typically go upstairs. The upstairs is the private province of the residents. If mum/dad is having a guest over, teenage son/daughter isn’t going to want to have to risk being seen going from the bathroom to their bedroom dripping wet in a towel.

@philipbyrne3037 5 months ago

Thanks so much for this video. I’m from Australia where only a small fraction of our housing stock has this layout. Ironically the greatest density of row or terrace houses are in some of the most expensive, gentrified suburbs of Sydney. The houses that are end of row, have larger yards and/or rear lane access command an absolute premium because they are liberated from some of the constraints you highlight in this great video.

@hilosky 4 months ago

I prefer the kitchen/toilet right at the entrance. That way I can immediately offload shopping bags without walking all the way through the house. If it's grocery delivery, the deliveryman can bring the groceries in without needing to walk through my whole house to the kitchen in the back.

Similarly, any guest automatically knows where the toilet is if it's right near the entrance and I can use it if I feel the urge to pee last thing before heading out or I'm bursting after coming back in.

Living in the back for privacy and garden access.

Bedrooms on the ground floor is a matter of taste, but it is future proof for when people get to the point of not being able to climb stairs every night.

I love the combo of having laundry near/in the main bathroom since that's where dirty clothes get taken off. Next to the garden is also a bonus so you can hang it out straight away.

The place I grew was perfect in hindsight: front door, kitchen, toilet, living and garden all in a row and upstairs, main bath and 2.5 bedrooms.

@enrohtwac13 3 months ago

The thing you've forgotten in regards to your plan is the toilet sewage/soil stack: you've got it in the middle of the house, at ground level and far away from the existing sewer. If the sewer at the back isn't deep enough for that shallow run to the back of the property what are you going to do? Drop the sewer in the back garden even though it probably runs next door (so you'd have to dig up your neighbours garden and drop the sewer there too). Messing with the whole terrace sewage system wouldn't be fun.

@cycling_woman 5 months ago (edited)

I'm Canadian and when I was house hunting this layout drove me crazy and bored me to death. The three beds that were really a 2 bed and a storage room etc.

The house I bought in the end, a 1970s house, my husband and I both got the feels when we walked in (he's British and grew up in a victorian 4 bed terrace). It's bright and has a floor plan with good flow and a connection to the back garden from the living room. Been here 4 years and loving it.

@richw9394 5 months ago

Nice, although moving bathrooms can be tricky and expensive, soil pipe considerations etc. I would opt for s combined bathroom and utility, or if seperate walking through utility to bathroom, so both rooms can have windows.

@likelikelikelikelikelike3971 5 months ago

These Victorian homes were built on plots valued and sold by frontage to the street not always the size or the depth of the plot. This explains the long plot shapes as does economics of the build. The designs were often taken from pattern books used across the country. The decorative features such as fire surrounds, stonework, even the stone bay windows were often catalogue item s made off site.