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The question is: you want to calculate the living area of your house. However, part of your house is lower than 2 meters. This is because, for example, very thick load-bearing beams have been used or you live in a very old monument, for example. Can you count spaces lower than 2 meters in the living area then?

We’re going to tell you. But this does require really good explanations. Therefore, we are going to explain it to you using a real example from our practice.

We recently sold this house in the center of Amsterdam:

Dining kitchen lower than 2 meters
Rear living room higher than 2 meters
Front of house

If you look at the floor plan, you’ll see that you enter into the dining kitchen. Then if you look very closely at that floor plan, you will see on the floor plan that this dining kitchen is measured at 1.95 meters high. The height of the living room that is directly behind this is 2.19 meters high. There is no wall between the dining kitchen and the living room. So it is 1 open space.

The question is: does the dining kitchen with a height of 1.95 meters high count as living space or not? The NEN2580 measurement instruction is not clear about this and also the questionnaire with exceptions does not answer this (at the time of writing this blog). We therefore had to submit this question to the Valuation Chamber and they too had to hold internal deliberations on it.

The outcome is: yes, the space (dining kitchen) under 2 meters may WELL count as living space.

The reason is that this room together with the living room is 1 room. Here the rule applies that “if in 1 room at least 4m2 is at least 2 meters high, then everything in that room higher than 1.5 meters may count as living space”. So that’s the case here. There is 1 open space consisting of a kitchen (lower than 2 meters) and a living room (higher than 2 meters). Of these, the living room is more than 4m2 in size, so the kitchen may count as living space.

But note: suppose there were a dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room. In that case the kitchen may NOT count as living area. Because then the kitchen is a separate space lower than 2 meters and separate spaces lower than 2 meters (or of which not at least 4m2 in that space is higher than 2 meters) does NOT count as living area.

You can read the Valuation Chamber’s email with the ruling here.

You can find the complete measurement report here.

Then a word about beams versus living area:
When can you count the height to the ceiling if there are beams lower than 2 meters?
So in this case, the surveyor calculated the height of the kitchen from the bottom of the beams. When this is not necessary and counting to the ceiling is allowed is only when the beams are so far apart that if you put walls where the beams are, acceptable rooms will be created that way. In that case, you may measure up to the ceiling.

Want to know more about how you can simply determine the living area of your home? Then read this well-known blog.