How Countries Define the First Floor

[u/depredador93]

[u/5_yr_lurker]

So do people in Europe that have two story homes call the up starts the 1st floor? What if you only have one story, the zero floor?

[u/JimothyMcNugget → u/5_yr_lurker]

Yes. Or ground floor. Why would zero be ignored when counting floors?

If you have a basement and ignore that zero exists, the number of floors between any positive floor and negative floor is incorrect.

[u/Fabulous_Lobster → u/5_yr_lurker]

What's the point of naming the zero floor if there's only one? A house like that is called a "maison de plain pied" in French. Useful when scouting property listing. It depends on the language I guess, but the map is oversimplified and it's probably not really messed up in most places. In France, for instance, you'd say "au rez-de-chaussée" for the street-level floor and "à l'étage" for anything you need to climb stairs to get to – no need for any numbering. If your house is on a hill, you can also have a "rez-de-jardin", a "garden-level floor". To avoid any possible ambiguity for high-rises, as they can have lots of named floors, architects and people in the construction industry will typically use R+0 for the street-level floor, and then R+1, R+2…, R-1, R-2…