Single Storey

We have all heard the old chestnut about how the bungalow came into existence: a builder had run out of bricks when building a house, so the foreman just told him to ‘bung a low roof’ on it. 

While that rather week pun may be the stuff of the music hall, bungalow living is now being taken very seriously, with one-storey dwellings becoming increasingly popular. 

The British love affair with bungalows started in India, where colonial officials loved the single-storey thatched houses common in Bengal.  In fact, the word bungalow is a corruption of bangla, which simply means Bengali; many also had verandahs, another Hindi word. 

They started to be built in England in the 1860s, and from there their popularity spread across the western world, especially in the US, where there was a plentiful supply of building land. 

Despite a perception that bungalows are not popular, a recent poll found that they are the housing type which most people would choose, with 30 per cent of those questioned saying a bungalow would be their number one choice. 

There are, of course two very simple advantages to living in a bungalow.  The first is very obvious: there are no stairs.  We are finding that people are buying homes in middle age which they want to stay in – and live independently in – as long as possible into old age.  So accessibility might not be an issue at the time of purchase, but buyers are increasingly looking to the future. 

The other big advantage of a bungalow is that it will necessarily be built on a large plot, because you need more space to fit all the living area into.  That can mean greater privacy, more outside space, and a feeling of not living on top of neighbours. 

Because building one storey dwellings is not the most efficient use of space, many house builders shy away from doing so, instead attempting to cram as many units as possible into every acre of land.   

And yet as we have seen at our Swaffham site, where we have a number of bungalows amongst the mix, they are extremely popular with buyers – and not just the stereotypical older buyers you might expect. 

One of the reasons for this is that modern bungalows are quite unlike the bland, boxy homes which some people might associate with the word.  Instead, they are often carefully designed to make full use of the space, and energy efficient, with no heat-absorbing stairwell, and no need to heat an entire upper floor when it will probably only be used for sleeping. 

Bungalows won’t be for everyone, but it is worth setting aside your pre-conceptions and considering this type of property.  It is probably the most future-proof type of home of them all.