How Big Is 1,000 Sq Ft? Dimensions, Rooms and Real Plans

1,000 sq ft is a square about 31 ft 7½ in on each side, or a rectangle of 25 × 40 ft or 20 × 50 ft. In metric it is 92.9 m². As a home it holds two bedrooms, one or two bathrooms and an open kitchen and living room, a little smaller than the average two-bedroom apartment in the US and less than half the median new house.

Below are the shapes 1,000 sq ft can take, comparisons that make it easier to picture, what fits inside once walls are counted, and a measured plan you can stretch to exactly 1,000 sq ft in the studio. For floor plans at this size, see small house plans under 1,000 sq ft.

1,000 sq ft in feet and metres

Shape matters as much as area. A 25 × 40 ft house divides easily into a living end and a bedroom end; a 20 ft wide one works as a single row of rooms off a hall; at 16 ft wide the rooms get narrow and the hall eats a larger share of the floor.

What 1,000 sq ft compares with

So 1,000 sq ft is a generous apartment or a small house. It is about two two-car garages side by side, or a tennis court's doubles area cut into thirds. For how much space people need, see how many square feet per person.

Gross vs net: how much floor you really get

House sizes are quoted to the outside of the walls: the ANSI Z765 standard measures finished area from the exterior faces, and listings follow it (how to calculate square footage). The walls themselves take a share of that. In FloorGen's 800 sq ft ADU, for example:

Exterior walls of 2 × 6 studs take about 8% and interior walls a few percent more, so a 1,000 sq ft house has roughly 875 sq ft of floor to put furniture on. FloorGen's 1,500 sq ft starter house comes out the same way: 1,500 sq ft outside, 1,339.3 sq ft of room floor, 89%.

What fits in 1,000 sq ft

The 800 sq ft 2-bed ADU template is a 40 × 20 ft unit that already holds two bedrooms, a bath with a laundry alcove, a kitchen, a dining area and a living room. Lengthen it to 40 × 25 ft and it is exactly 1,000 sq ft outside, with about 200 sq ft more to spend: a second bathroom, a bigger primary bedroom with a walk-in closet, or a third bedroom of about 10 × 10 ft.

A three-bedroom house at 1,000 sq ft is possible but tight: the bedrooms drop toward 100 sq ft each, and there is room for only one full bath. For comparison, FloorGen's 1,500 sq ft starter house fits three bedrooms and two baths with a 208 sq ft living room. More two-bedroom layouts are in 2-bedroom house plans, and what makes a small plan feel bigger is in open floor plans for small houses.

Picturing 1,000 sq ft in a real space

• Pace it out. Mark a 25 × 40 ft rectangle in a yard or a parking lot with four objects. Most people find it bigger than they expected.
• Use your own home. Add up the rooms on your floor plan, or draw it in FloorGen, which prints each room's net area, and compare.
• Use a garage. A typical two-car garage is 20 to 24 ft on a side, about half of 1,000 sq ft; see garage dimensions.

At 1,000 sq ft a house also fits under many cities' caps for a backyard unit: Washington requires its cities to allow ADUs of at least 1,000 sq ft, and California cannot cap a two-bedroom ADU below that, as described in what is an ADU.