How Many Bedrooms In Your Home Can You Legally Advertise?

Robin and her family were finally ready to buy their dream house: a four-bedroom colonial in a quaint Wisconsin town.

The showing was going great, with the first three bedrooms hitting everything on their checklist. A glance at bedroom number four was all they needed to know that they were touring their future home — and there were just two doors left to go.

Behind door number one: a closet. Door number two: another closet! Where in the world was bedroom number four?

Down in the basement, they found it. A small, windowless room that happened to have a built-in closet. This was a bedroom?

That was no fourth bedroom according to Robin and her family. But to the home sellers and their listing agent, the space qualified.

So who was right? Let’s find out as we answer the top seven questions when it comes to counting the bedrooms in your home.

What is the legal definition of a bedroom for real estate listings?

The legal definition of a bedroom depends on where you live. This is because building codes vary state by state, and it’s these building codes that determine what elements a room must have in order to be legally called a bedroom.

Some states have square footage requirements. In Texas, there is no single definition of a bedroom. In 2021, they adopted The International Residential Code (IRC) published by the International Code Council, which defines a bedroom to have the following:

A floor area of not less than 70 square feet and not less than 7 feet in any horizontal dimension
A minimum ceiling height of 7 feet, and if there is a sloped ceiling, then a minimum of 50% of the ceiling must be a minimum of 7 feet high
At least one operable emergency escape and rescue opening with a clear opening of not less than 5.7 square feet, and a required egress window that must have a minimum width of 20 inches, a minimum height of 24 inches, and a maximum window sill height of 44 inches.

Colder northern states, like Connecticut, require bedrooms to have a heat source.

Other states have requirements that you’d probably never even think to ask when settling on the bedroom count for your MLS listing. Take Massachusetts, which says that you cannot claim to have more bedrooms than your septic system is designed to handle.

In some areas, bedroom requirements differ depending on where the room is located in the house. For example, Robin’s sellers were out of luck with their basement “bedroom,” because according to Wisconsin’s Department of Commerce, basement bedrooms must have at least 2 means of exiting that provide unobstructed egress to the outside or grade level. Windows in the basement shall not be considered exits.

Stil, other states are much less stringent on a room’s must-haves in order to qualify as a bedroom:

“In Alabama, all it has to have is a closet and a window,” says Huntsville, Alabama agent Susan Chipman.

Where can you find local bedroom zoning codes?

The best place to find the bedroom zoning codes is by taking a look through the building codes for your state.

However, it’s not always the state that’s in charge of defining what constitutes a bedroom. At the state level (as is the case in Alabama), there may be relatively few requirements, but most local municipalities have their own zoning regulations.

This means that, while one city or county may only require that a bedroom have a window and a closet, another county in the same state may regulate bedrooms by square footage, or even distance to the nearest bathroom.

Find the local zoning laws that apply to your house by doing an easy internet search using the keyword zoning, plus your county and/or town name. Then it’s just a matter of searching through all the zoning laws for the ones that apply to bedrooms.

You can also ask your real estate agent whether or not a particular room qualifies as a bedroom. They might already know, and if they’re not sure, they can tell you who to contact to get the right information in your area:

“When sellers ask about verifying whether or not a space qualifies as a bedroom, I give them the number to call our local real estate board,” advises Chipman.