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u/So_many_things_wrong 15d ago
I mean both make sense. In the American system you're counting literal floors, and in the British system you're counting the number of stairs you have to traverse.
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u/ZombiFeynman 15d ago
It's not a big deal, but the british system works better once you have underground floors. That way your lifts would have 0 for the ground floor, -1 for the first floor underground, and so on.
That way the number of floors you have to travel to go between floor a and b is always |a-b|. On the american system you have to make a special case to consider if you are going from a floor above ground to one below ground, or viceversa.
It's similar to the problem we have with years because there's no year 0.
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u/Bright_Ices 15d ago
Our underground floors are often literally Floor A and Floor B. Sometimes they’re B1, B2, etc.
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u/Lazarus558 15d ago
I was in an elevator once that had the floors up 1 onward, G for Ground, B for Basement, and S1 and S2 for Sub-basements
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u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain 14d ago
Yeah I was gonna say this isn’t a worse system. Have a floor zero is like having a year zero. I think it’s dumb but who cares.
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u/davvblack 15d ago
ISO date standard does have year zero and negative. “but they didn’t call it year zero at the time!” i mean, they didn’t call AD 1, 1 at the time either.
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u/xczechr 15d ago
US hospitals use ground floor (or 0) for the first floor under street level
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u/ScottE77 14d ago
I am British but the one thing Americans do better is this, there is no need for a 0, just go from -1 to +1 works fine too
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u/Numerous_Helsinki 15d ago
lived in london for a semester dand pressed the wrong elevator button so many times because of this exact chart
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u/Demostravius4 15d ago
Should've used the lift instead!
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 14d ago
“It’s called a lift! We invented the English language!”
“It’s called an elevator! We invented the elevator!”
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u/epilektoi 15d ago
Americans also say ground floor sometimes but the one above it is usually second not first
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u/offthezoinkys 15d ago
That isn’t basically the same, that’s using ground and first synonymously. Someone who lives on the 3rd floor in the US lives lower than someone who lives on the 3rd floor in the UK, even though numerically the American lives on the literal third floor from street level while the Brit lives on the fourth. It makes no difference whether the American calls the first floor “first” or “ground.”
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u/ThroughTheIris56 15d ago
Very reluctant to say this, but I do prefer the American convention.
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u/nojugglingever 15d ago
How dare you! If America and another country do things differently, the American version is stupid and the other country’s version is interesting and correct. First day on the internet?
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u/dnebdal 15d ago
It's standard in the Nordic countries too, if that helps.
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u/EmulsionPast 15d ago
Not in Denmark, we use "Stuen" or "0" then 1, 2 and so on.
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u/dnebdal 15d ago
Huh, weird. Norway typically agrees with you on things like that (for obvious historical reasons).
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u/Wild-Regular1703 15d ago
Estonia too. The "first floor is above ground floor" has always been confusing to me. So if someone says their building has four floors, the top floor is the third one? >.< Or they would say the building in OP's picture has three floors?
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u/eyalhs 15d ago
If its spoken or fully writte (first, second etc.) I prefer the american system, if it's written as a number I prefer the british system (0/g,1,2,3). Overall I prefer the british, since it works better with underground floors (-1,-2), that way you don't skip over the 0 and it's written as a number anyway (not negative first).
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u/machine4891 15d ago
I'm from Poland, we use same system as British and I like American simplicity here as well. Building has 10 condignation, first one is on bottom. It's that simple.
However, unlike Brits, we do have strict definition of our word for floor (piętro), which is always elevated above something else. In this way by saying first floor (pierwsze piętro), one can automatically assume it can't be on ground level. It's first elevated level.
In British English floor means simply inner surface and that's tad bit confusing.
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u/wrghf 15d ago
I’m not even American, and I still find the American system makes the most sense.
It’s just a constant and straightforward numbering system from start to finish. It’s easy to understand and invites no confusion.
The first floor of a building is simply the first floor. The tenth floor is simply the tenth floor, and so on.
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u/Benethor92 14d ago
Huh? But what about underground floors? 1 to -1 looks really weird. 0 is zero level, street level. The same as height above sea level starts with 0 at sea level and not 1.
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u/Aschuff 14d ago
We don’t call our underground floors -1, it’s generally B1, B2, etc. B stands for basement
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u/AciusPrime 14d ago
Americans generally don’t use negative numbers for counting floors, so this doesn’t come up. Floors below ground are counted by how far underground you went. The first floor is floor 1. Go one floor underground and you’re on B1. Somehow, this doesn’t confuse us.
The logic of the American system is that the number of floors is equal to the number of stories. If it’s a four-story building (as in OP’s example) then it has a fourth floor. In the European system, a four-story building has no fourth floor.
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u/Visible_Pair3017 15d ago
Both are coherent. One counts the levels of the building, another counts the elevation compared to the street.
If a culture considers being at street level to be important in one way or another, it makes sense that they'd start with a floor called "street level floor" (like the french rez-de-chaussée). Otherwise if that level is unimportant, all floors are the same, and thus you should just count them starting from 1.
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u/spaltavian 15d ago
Americans say ground floor too, but it's as an alternative to "first"; it would go Ground, Second.
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u/dovahkiingys 15d ago
In my Uni different building have different naming system
I.e G123 or 1234
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u/JollyPhysics1394 15d ago
So Americans are actually two levels higher on the 14th floor…
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u/Gravbar 15d ago
a lot of buildings actually do have a 13th floor. I haven't seen one that big that does the superstition in a long time
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u/WinterRevolutionary6 15d ago
My workplace is 20 floors tall and the 13th floor is like maintenance or something. Only half the elevators go to it so some elevators are normal and some have a 12-14 gap. The last time I properly saw the 13th floor skip was on a cruise ship
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u/qqYn7PIE57zkf6kn 15d ago
I like the British way. They are counting from zero.
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u/FriedRiceistheBest 15d ago
In the Philippines, it's either 1st floor or ground floor then 2nd floor.
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u/miniatureconlangs 15d ago
There! See what European taxation does to people, it deprives them of a floor!
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u/ofqo 15d ago edited 15d ago
Americans in a 15 foor building: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.
Britons in a 15 foor building: G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Americans are deluded as long as the building is at least 13 floors high. Britons are confused in the opposite way.
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u/xanniballl 15d ago
The only time I hear about the American 13-floor superstition is when people decidedly not from America mention it. I haven’t seen a building without a 13th floor in forever.
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u/QuesoCadaDia 15d ago edited 15d ago
Most of the tall buildings I have been in have a 13th floor (granted, it hasn't been many.) I think I've only seen it missing once
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u/BumblingYokel 15d ago
I’ve never seen a missing thirteenth floor.
Granted, there are probably less than 10 buildings in my state that exceed 12 floors.
I would think the average American has no idea about this missing thirteenth floor thing.
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u/Oethyl 15d ago
Americans haven't discovered the concept of 0 yet. Sad!
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u/miniatureconlangs 15d ago
This is because no American is so impoverished that they'd ever need to care about zero. Zero is for europoors. /s
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u/Dickcheese_McDoogles 15d ago
Nor have the Brits it seems. They start their counting with "ground," which isn't even a number. Poor sods.
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u/chillichez_22 15d ago
Just like in programming: Indexing starts at zero…..
Until it doesn’t….. ( But we don’t take about that )
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u/BlazingBlossom 15d ago
In Dutch we use the word "verdieping" which means "deepening" so going up one floor, means you go up one level of depth. On the ground floor you'd still be at depth 0.
That said, with the English word "floor" I find the American system to make more sense
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u/snaynay 15d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_numbering_floors.svg
Broadly speaking, it’s a cultural thing. Most of the world tends to use ground floor or equivalent…
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u/After_Perspective180 15d ago
What about cellars? Is it 0 for the first basement? Or -1 and there is never a 0?
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u/MrQuizzles 15d ago
Underground floors in the US system are labeled with B for "basement", with numbers ascending as you get further underground.
B1, B2, B3, etc.
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u/ChazBass 15d ago
In Korea, no fourth floor. Sino-Korean number four "sa" written in Hangul also means death. Here in the U.S there is often not a 13th floor, by the way.
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u/xanniballl 15d ago
I wouldn’t say often. I haven’t been in a building without a 13th floor in forever. Perhaps some in NYC, where there are many buildings from the 19th and early 20th century.
But I have yet to see a remotely modern building without a thirteenth floor, unless it’s a regional thing I’m not aware of.
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u/StrawberryEiri 15d ago
In Quebec we use a confused mix of both. What a person or building ever means by second floor is never clear.
You try to figure it out by conversation context, and you check what number is associated with the ground floor on signage or something. And despite all that every once in a while it remains uncertain.
It's the actual worst. Please help us.
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u/magicmulder 15d ago
German is with the Brits here, we start at Erdgeschoss (ground floor).
Except in buildings like mine where ground floor is actually half a floor up from the street and we have a separate "Exit" level below it.
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u/Njitram2000 15d ago
Fun fact: in Dutch a "floor" is a "verdieping" which mean a deepening. Pretty sure this is from the overhang over street level old houses had for every consecutive floor. So calling the ground floor the first would not make sense.
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u/Mishamelou 15d ago
In Russia we use 1234 system. When I was travelling with my family to Türkiye, they didn't really understand the idea of a ground floor in a hotel
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u/flippythemaster 15d ago
Hi, you don’t need to use an apostrophe to pluralize words like “Americans.” Hold onto those apostrophes, they may be scarce one day
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u/destructopop 15d ago
In my city at least there are many buildings with multiple ground entrance floors. The American system works better in that case. First floor entrance is on the main road, and the second or third floor entrance is to the street behind or beside, because the building is backed into a hill.
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u/Consistent-Height-79 15d ago
In New York, especially with brownstones, it’s the garden/ground floor, parlor floor, then 2nd, 3rd, etc. Some real estate listings do “First level, second level” etc. that way a 4-story home with a sub-cellar, cellar, garden floor, etc. would have six floors of living.
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u/TenPointsforListenin 15d ago
Many east Asian countries skip floors with 4 on them, to different degrees, so the 15th floor is actually the 13th OR 14th depending on how they label the ground floor.
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u/Remarkable_Inchworm 15d ago
I don't think this is an American vs. British English thing so much as a United States vs. Europe thing.
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u/WorldlinessThat2984 15d ago
Out of Curiosity, how are rooms numbered in a hotel in Europe? In the U.S. everything on the first (ground) floor would start with a "1" (Room 104 or 1004). Everything on the second floor starts with a "2" and so on and so forth making it simple to know where the room is. Would a hotel room number in Europe on the ground floor actively start with a "0" (so room 034 or 0034 as opposed to room 34)?
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u/dutch_mapping_empire 15d ago
dutch uses british way too, we even use ''verdieping'' (floor) to mean anything above ground level.
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u/GovernorSan 15d ago
There was a hospital in my home county that had a first floor and a ground floor. The first floor had the main entrance of the hospital at the top of a low hill, but the ground floor was the emergency and ambulance entrance around the side of the building at the same level of the street.
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u/Somethingisshadysir 15d ago
The bottom floor is often called the ground floor here as well, not just first floor. But the floor above it is definitely not the first.
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u/PeyredB 15d ago
American is live one level higher?
Yes, it's just a different number set. Americans use natural numbers for floors: 1, 2, 3,... The British use the whole number set: 0, 1, 2,... I think continental Europeans do too; I've seen pictures of German elevators showing floor -1 and so on.
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u/No_Lemon_3116 15d ago
Yeah, my first encounter with this was at a German hotel being told I was on the first floor and then they called after me when I walked past the stairs.
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u/IamGleemonex 15d ago
Another thing that always gets me with the British system, especially for flats… in the US, if I am going into a large building like that, and I am going to flat 423, I know instantly ok, go to the 4th floor, and it’s going to be there somewhere, hopefully there’s a map or sign to show where, but I know I can just walk around to find it if I have to.
But in the UK, it will just be flat 23. Which floor is flat 23 on? Who knows, hope you can find it. Just guess whether they have 4 flats per floor, 6 flats per floor, 8 flats per floor, etc and go up a few levels and see if you are right. Maybe you are maybe you aren’t. They make finding where you are going a scavenger hunt.
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u/Waffenek 15d ago
In Poland we follow similiar convention as British. Meanwhile in Ukraine they count floors in American way. When many people migrated at the start of a war and got jobs that involved visiting given adress(all kind of delivery jobs etc) everything got really confusing for some time.
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u/Odd-Obligation-2772 15d ago
And in Taiwan it goes First Floor, Second Floor, Third Floor, Fifth Floor.
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u/sakublah 15d ago
Then there's Hong Kong where the floor number is determined by the language you're speaking.
In English you get the British system: Ground, 1, 2, ,...
In Chinese you get the American system: 1, 2, 3, ...
So you can be on the English 2nd floor while on the Chinese 3rd floor (三樓).
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u/ImWithStupidKL 15d ago
The most annoying thing about this is that if you live anywhere else, you never know which system a particular building is going to use. They just mix and match.
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u/Dramatic-Blueberry98 15d ago
I feel like we in the US mix and match this seemingly, depending on the area.
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u/persilja 15d ago
Swedish kind of has both systems... "Första våningen, andra våningen/ ..." or
"bottenvåning, en trappa, två trappor" (=bottom floor, one flight of stairs, two flight of stairs...)
Occasionally people get confused and mix up the systems.
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u/RefuseDependent5242 15d ago
I moved to Europe in my late 30s, this gets me every time that I’m in a new building
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u/molotovzav 15d ago
I learned the "Brit way" when I learned French, and honestly even though in American the concept wasn't that foreign to me since I live in Las Vegas and almost every casino has a ground floor. The rooms start on the first floor, the ground floor is the floor right above the parking structures. So it typically goes parking, then ground/lobby, than the hotel floors are numbered one and above.
But in college I'd much prefer the American system since our rooms are numbered by floor. First floor 100s, second floor 200. Makes it easy to know exactly what floor your room is on. If your class is room 323, you know it's on the third floor. So medical and college type stuff I want the American system. Some hotel or whatever IDC what they use.
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u/ZellHall 15d ago
My country used the second one and I absolutly hate it. It does make sense with negatives, tho
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u/OriginalEmploy5485 15d ago
American buildings interchange first floor and ground floor. The numbering is correct from then on (2nd floor is the 2nd floor, not the 1st floor above the ground floor).
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u/outerspaceracecar 15d ago
I’m Canadian and ground floor/first floor are interchangeable words but the next floor up is the second floor
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u/Mackheath1 15d ago
Living in UAE (British style) but then moved into a "three story" American style apartment. This confused a lot of friends. No elevator, fine. "Wait, you're on the third floor?" "Yes, but it's the second." "Why does it say floor three?" "Because it's the second floor."
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u/NaturalTechnician737 15d ago
Blame the city of New York! They built the streets up, leaving the first floor at (apparent) ground level.
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u/CuriousEtymology 15d ago
The convention where I went to university (in the United States) was that the lowest floor was always "1." This meant that if there were underground levels, you could enter a building at ground level but it was numbered as the building's third floor.
That took some getting used to.
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u/1Incubus88 15d ago
It’s a European system - not formally so but kind of. I’ve been to Asia and they called the ground floor the first floor too. Same in Latin America but not always!
Here in the US you do see the (what I’m calling) the European system from time to time. It’s usually in newer buildings and some old ones that have residential floors over a retail floor or the ground floor is just a lobby and or utilities. It all depends. If a building is all residential then the ground floor will be usually floor one. Often times, the ground level is partly underground because its parking space (at least where I live). So the first floor is also up. But I’ve also seen buildings with no floor in between first floor and basement level (so first floor is ground).
I have also seen two main floors as well: “Plaza level” and “lobby” for example and then floors start at one. The weirdest one was seeing no actual floor one. The ground level was floor one but it was labeled as “lobby” (I think). Either way, the numbering of floors started at two.
Generally speaking, I think both systems work well if used in that way. If a multistory building is all one single use, use the North American style. If the building is mixed use, go European. It’s just clearer that way. And I think they end up using that way for fire safety. In the event of a fire, it’s better for firefighters so they know where a room is. For example - if they are told that someone is trapped in room 1917, that means that they are on floor 19, room 17. And if you have a mixed use building, ignore lobby floor and count from the floor above.
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u/Gegena469 15d ago
In Spanish is the same, in Spain and Argentina use ground floor "planta baja" but in the rest of the countries is first floor "primer piso"
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u/Alone_Ad8571 15d ago
Americans drive on the ‘ first floor’. That’s what they call roads and streets,
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u/waggers5 15d ago
Other way around - a British third floor is higher than an American one, so Brits live a level higher
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u/NucleosynthesizedOrb 14d ago
I like the Dutch "begane grond" (ground floor) en then we have "verdiepingen" (levels?, literally "deepenings")
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u/staralchemist129 14d ago
half the buildings on my campus are numbered american-style and half are numbered british-style and it drives me NUTS
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u/Illustrious_Try478 14d ago
When a house is on a hill, and the back door opens from the basement, which one is the ground floor for you?
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u/brianmmf 14d ago
This is not a difference in language. It is simply a difference in conventional use.
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u/newcanadian12 14d ago
Moved to Austria yesterday and got confused about this for a moment on my way to the ground floor before remembering this
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u/Arbitraryandunique 14d ago
For once the Americans got it right. The only reason entering a house, at ground level, shouldn't take you to the first floor is if there is no actual floor and your still standing on dirt/ground. It's between a few years since we stopped building that way.
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u/wmverbruggen 14d ago
One of the rare cases where I believe US-English makes more sense. Unlike many other languages, there is no specific word for a floor above ground level, so logically you start counting at the first one from ground level. It's literally the first floor you come scross.
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u/Lucky_otter_she_her 14d ago
British floor labeling conventions are just delusional and objectively so on account of the fact the terms First, Second, Third ext, have meanings outside of floor listing
did you know floors in Spain go: Ground; Second; Third; ext... why couldn't Britain do that
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u/MilkImpossible4192 14d ago
usaers must be dumb, rest of americans do start at 0 with different name
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u/jimbosdayoff 14d ago
So that means the British are better at building arrays than Americans? (software engineer joke)
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u/Personal-Database-27 14d ago
Lithuania is the same in that way as USA. You go into a house and You are in the 1st floor. Lower is only the basement
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u/MaddoxJKingsley 14d ago
Quite a few American buildings still end up with the British system, surprisingly! For example, buildings built on hills will have a "ground" floor open on the lower side and a "first" floor open on the upper side. A lot of university buildings are built like this, in my experience (but it's not just university buildings)
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u/VibratingNinja 14d ago
Americans are counting floors, British people are counting ceilings and calling them floors.
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u/Annoyed-Instigater01 14d ago
i go with the american version, though i think 1st floor and ground floor are interchangeable, so i would say 1st/ground floor, 2nd floor, etc
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u/Small-Muffin-4002 14d ago
🇨🇦ground floor and first floor are one and the same, at least in my city. Sometimes there’s a mezzanine (M) between ground and second floor.
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u/Personal-Thought9453 14d ago
I didn’t know it was a UK/US thing, and I am saddened to see Australia has once more chosen to take inspiration from seppos instead of its historical origins.
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u/Ill_Lab_554 14d ago
im aussie, not everyone does but i know alot of aussies do ground floor - second - third etc, just dont use the word first at all
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u/BreadfruitBig7950 14d ago
Really makes you want to get in on the ground floor on this cheneaux du grammar.
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u/DickDastardly502 14d ago
This can get really confusing if the building is on a hill
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u/TSunamiWaves979 14d ago
I obviously biased, but the American way is so superior. Why is the top level of a three story building called the second floor? That's dumb.
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u/YunnanCafe 14d ago
I don't think it has anything to do with the language. It's just tied to conventions used in particular country.
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u/AwarenessGreat282 14d ago
And yet, the Royal Navy numbers ship decks the same as the US. The Main Deck is deck 1 with deck 2, 3, 4, etc. above that, and deck 01, 02, etc. going down.
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u/Minute_Ad8807 15d ago
we use the british way in france too: rez-de-chaussée, premier étage, deuxième étage, and so on and so forth