I can sleep almost anywhere. I think I would do just fine in a house without bedrooms.
On the MLS a room listed as a bedroom must have an egress window and a closet but sometimes a built-in wardrobe counts as a closet. I am not sure why it has to have a closet but those are the rules and I don’t make them.
We do see homes that are listed as three-bedroom homes that do not have three bedrooms.
A Loft – with no bedrooms
It is possible to have a room that is being used as a bedroom that does not have a closet or an egress window but that just makes it a room used as a bedroom, not a bedroom.
Then we have the term “legal bedroom” which doesn’t mean all that much. A legal bedroom in St. Paul has an egress window that is a window large enough for a firefighter to go through in full gear and a closet. A bedroom needs walls and if a person needs to walk through the space to get to another room it doesn’t qualify as a bedroom.
There isn’t such a thing as an illegal bedroom and it is legal to sleep in any place in your home that you want to. There is such a thing as a non-conforming bedroom which is a room that can be used as a bedroom but is missing the closet or the egress window or both. These rooms are often listed in the MLS as a den or sometimes they are listed as a bedroom but there is a note indicating that it is a non-conforming bedroom.
Many of the lofts downtown do not have conforming bedrooms but are rarely listed as “0” bedrooms because if they were no one would find them when searching the internet for a home to buy.
I recently saw a loft that does have two bedrooms but there was a third space that was a hallway with shelving and a pull-out bed. There were no windows in the space or doors. It makes a nice cozy sleeping space and could be called a den or a non-conforming bedroom.
The loft in the picture may show up on the MLS as having no bedrooms because it is one large room with one or more bathrooms in separate rooms. Some lofts have raised sleeping platforms. They end up being called bedrooms but most do not have closets or egress windows.
This loft has one conforming bedroom and a non-conforming sleeping space:
Real estate is local and locally regulated it is possible that the term bedroom means something different in other parts of the country. The definition of a loft is not universal either. A true loft is one large space with walled-off bathrooms and elevated sleeping spaces.
Safety should always be a concern. Do you want to put your children in spaces that do not have egress windows?
