Bungalow vs a Two-Story Home: Which Is Better to Own?

People often find themselves in a dilemma when choosing between a bungalow (single story) and a double story home. This article will address the benefits and challenges of going with either the bungalow or storied home.

There are a variety of ways to compare the advantages of a bungalow vs a storied home. Your choice will depend on your taste, the cost of the plot (status of the neighborhood), the size of the plot as well as your budget. But you will be likely to also consider the distinct benefits of each. Here’s a list of the benefits most often mentioned by my customers.

Many people believe that storied homes are cheaper to construct since they require less foundation and roofing materials. The rooms on the ground floor don’t require a roof and the rooms on the upper floor don’t require a foundation. There are also some savings on plumbing and electrical wiring because of the closer proximity of all the rooms in the house. However, storied homes require structural elements (beams and columns) to support the upper floor as well as stairs which can be expensive and consume space inside the home.

As it turns out, the difference in cost of a bungalow Vs a storied home is not enough to make a decision based solely on cost. So what are the important differences that might affect your family?

Bungalow/ One-Story/ Single Story Benefits

• There is more living space; you will not be installing a staircase that will swallow up at least 12sq.m of space on both the ground and upper floors.

You might need fewer bathrooms since inhabitants will not be required to move from one floor to another to access the facilities.

• More convenient; you don’t need to run up and down stairs to cook, clean, keep an eye on your children, do the laundry, or get a snack.

• Stairs can be dangerous, cumbersome, or inconvenient making bungalows safer for families with young children and better for the elderly, mobility-challenged people and/or pets.

You can grow old more easily and affordably in the same home you have always loved and lived in.

• Easier during an emergency; When evacuating for medical emergencies on a stretcher or during a fire, bungalows make every window and door a safe escape route.

• Less noise and more privacy; Less noise transmission, since sound does not travel through the walls of multiple rooms on the same floor as well as it travels between floors. This noise is from the TV or radio and foot traffic from the upper floor and stairs.

• Easier and cheaper to mechanically cool; For those who wish to add an air-conditioning system to keep the house cool during the hot months of the year, a bungalow will be cheaper and easier to cool since all rooms flow into each other.

Trees can provide more shade

• Easier and cheaper to do repairs and cleaning; This is especially true for external works such as cleaning the gutters, repairing the roof, or simply painting the external walls.

• Less expensive to extend/ add onto the house; For any future additions to the building, it is cheaper when done to a bungalow and much less time is required for the planning and construction works.

Storied/ Doubled storied/ Two-Story Benefits

• Require less foundation, roof, plumbing, and wiring which can lower the total cost

• Greater separation of public and private spaces; More privacy for upper floor bedrooms, which is especially valued by parents and older children.

Available Home Floor Plans In Our Online Shop

DPRO.design Arch & Eng offers a great selection of bungalow/ single-story, two-story and multi-story floor plans. Many of our floor plans are adapted to the 50×100 and 100×100 plot size standards. View our bungalow/single-story home floor plans. If you are more interested in storied home/two-story home floor plans, please visit the storied home plans page.