I've been looking at houses to rent and I have noticed that quite a few of them have their living/family kitchen areas upstairs.... does anyone know the reason behind this?

Thanks

Houses with good/better views from upstairs tend to be upside down like that... So you can live with and make the most of the fabulous view...

Noticed this a lot with beach front properties... Or one/two rows back where you can get a bit of ocean from upstairs...

Ah har, makes sense, thanks

+1. We have kitchen and living room upstairs, can't get the ocean views from downstairs.

Another reason could be - well in Qld anyway - many traditional style houses are built raised off the ground but later raised further to add more rooms, typically bedrooms, underneath.

That is exactly the reason for it up here, originally the houses were just one floor so all rooms were upstairs. I dont know of many houses that were built as 2 storey having kitchens upstairs.

Makes it a bit harder for the cockroaches to reach.

You better tell ours that

Much cooler breeze

Dont find any issue with ours...

As others have said Queenslander houses were built on raised stumps to protect from termites, avoid flooding, cope with hilly terrain, catch breezes etc. traditionally under the house would contain the laundry tub, the car if high enough and a dry place for the kids to play in summer storms. Some of these house were then built in underneath in later years with extra bedrooms (though main bedrooms are still upstairs). Like this for example:



In the 1960's/70's the houses turned from timber to brick but the upstairs living (and bedrooms) was maintained with garage (and usually converted playroom/spare bedroom) downstairs :


Seventies suburban house, Brisbane by tanetahi, on Flickr

In the 80's it flipped so that double storey houses reverted to downstairs living, upstairs bedrooms, like this one:



And stayed that way for most houses in the outer suburbs:



In the inner suburbs if there is a new infill replica house built it will often have the living upstairs, bedrooms down, to match the queenslander style next door:




There you go, everything you didn't want to know about Brisbane house designs. Note other cities vary significantly.

I hope you aren't showing those photos as examples of where the average Queenslander lives ?

Thanks, most informative

Downstairs bedrooms are also cooler in Summer.

Average in my neighbourhood.

That seems to be why originally, but we built a house on acreage in WA and put bedrooms downstairs and living upstairs with a deck off the front and side where the kitchen, living and dining areas were because that's where we had the view.