Kids' Bedrooms and Flex Rooms in a Burnaby Custom Home: Planning for 20 Years

A family in Sperling-Burnaby Lake came to us last spring with two kids, 4 and 7, and a sketch of the upstairs: two small bedrooms off the hall, one bathroom, and a playroom over the garage.

We asked one question before we touched the sketch. What does this floor look like in 2040?

The 4-year-old is 18. The 7-year-old is 21 and might still be home, or back home, or gone. A grandparent may be living with them. One parent may be working from the house most days. The playroom has held no toys for ten years. A custom home in Burnaby is a 50-year building, and the family that moves in on day one is the least representative family that will ever live in it.

So we plan the kids' floor for the whole 20 years, and the rest of this post is how.

Size the bedrooms for a teenager, and the toddler will be fine

A crib fits anywhere. A 16-year-old needs a double bed, a desk, a dresser and a door that closes, and a room that cannot hold those four things becomes the room nobody wants and the reason the family starts talking about an addition.

The test we run on every kids' bedroom on the plan is simple. Draw a double bed with a night table on each side against one wall. Draw a desk against a second wall. If the window, the closet or the door interrupts either of those walls, the room fails, and we move something. The most common fix is the window. Architects like to centre a window on the wall facing the street, which puts it exactly where the bed wants to go. Shift it toward the corner and the bed wall comes back.

Closets: a reach-in closet the full width of one wall, with double doors and adjustable shelving, holds as much as a small walk-in and gives the floor area back to the room. We keep walk-ins for the primary suite and for the flex room described below, where the closet has a second job as a sound buffer.

Ceiling height matters more than people expect in a small room. A bedroom that is tight on floor area feels fine with a 9-foot ceiling and cramped with an 8-foot one, and the framing difference at the second floor is small.

One shared bathroom, split so two people can use it at once

Two kids sharing one bathroom is fine at 5 and 8. It is a daily fight at 13 and 16, and it is the second reason families call us about additions.

The layout that fixes it is a compartment bathroom. The first zone, off the hall, holds a vanity with two sinks and enough drawer storage for two people. A second door leads to the toilet and the shower. One person brushes their teeth while another showers, and nobody is locked out of the sink because someone is in the tub.

Three details make it work. The door into the bathroom comes from the hall, so the room stays neutral when one child moves out and the other stays. The exhaust fan goes on a timer or a humidity sensor, because teenagers take long showers and the fan is what keeps the paint on the ceiling. And the vanity gets outlets for two people at once, on the wall rather than under the counter where the cords pool. We covered the plumbing side of this, including where the rough-in has to be before the drywall goes on, in our post on multigenerational home design in Burnaby, because the same bathroom serves visiting grandparents later.

The flex room: playroom now, study later, suite eventually

The room over the garage in that Sperling-Burnaby Lake sketch was labelled "playroom". We relabelled it "bedroom 4" on the plans, and then let the family use it as a playroom.

The difference is what gets built into the walls on day one. A bedroom needs a closet, a door, and an egress window (more on that below). A future study needs data, power on every wall and daylight on a desk. A future suite for a grandparent or an adult child needs a bathroom next door and a place for a small kitchen, which means a capped water line and a drain inside a wall, and a dedicated electrical circuit, all sitting behind drywall until someone needs them.

All of that is cheap while the walls are open, and expensive and messy for weeks once the house is finished.

Location decides what the room can become. A flex room upstairs with the bedrooms can be a fourth bedroom or a study. A flex room on the ground floor or a walkout lower level, which is common on Burnaby's sloped lots in Capitol Hill and Burnaby Heights, can also become a suite with its own entrance and a level path from the street. If a grandparent might ever live in the house, the flex room goes downstairs.

Draw the upstairs for the kids at 19, then check that it still works for them at 4. The reverse never holds.

Icon Projects Team

Sound separation from the main living area

Parents ask for a quiet house and then approve a plan with the kids' bedrooms stacked directly over the great room, where the television and the kitchen live. The fix is position, decided before framing.

We place bedrooms above quiet rooms: the primary suite, the home office, the mudroom, and never above the great room or the garage. Where the floor plan forces a bedroom over a living space, the floor assembly gets insulation, resilient channel and a thicker ceiling layer, which is a framing-stage decision with a line item in the contract. The hall between the bedrooms and the stair is lined with closets and the bathroom, so the rooms where people sleep are buffered from the rooms where people move.

Then the small things. Insulated interior walls on every bedroom, which cost little at framing. Solid-core doors, which stop far more sound than hollow ones and close with a different weight in the hand. A door sweep on the flex room, in case it ever becomes a suite. Our acoustic design post covers the assemblies in detail, including the mechanical noise from a heat pump or an HRV that owners rarely think about until the first night.

This is also where a teenager's room and a home office collide. A work-from-home parent on video calls and a 15-year-old with a guitar should not share a wall. When the plan puts them next to each other, a closet between them solves most of it. We wrote about the office side of that pairing in our post on home office design in a Burnaby custom home.

Egress windows in every bedroom, and every room that might become one

The 2024 BC Building Code governs new houses in Burnaby and across the province outside Vancouver, and its Section 9.9 sets the egress rules for bedrooms: each bedroom in a house needs a window or an exterior door that can be opened from inside without keys, tools or special knowledge, with a minimum unobstructed opening size that the code specifies, and additional rules where the window opens into a window well. We confirm the exact dimensions against the current edition on every permit set, because they are checked at inspection and a window that misses by a few millimetres gets replaced at the builder's cost.

The practical point for a family: every room that might ever be a bedroom gets an egress-sized window from the day it is framed. That includes the flex room, the lower-level room labelled "gym", and the den off the entry that becomes a grandparent's room in fifteen years. Adding an egress window to a finished lower level later means cutting concrete, building a window well and re-doing the drainage. Adding it at framing means choosing a different window from the schedule.

We also keep the sill low enough that a child can climb out, and we do not put a bed under it. An egress window behind a headboard is a code-compliant window that nobody can reach.

Wiring for needs nobody has yet

In 2006 nobody wired a child's bedroom for a computer. In 2026 every teenager has three devices and a monitor, and the parent in the next room is on a call. In 2040 we do not know what they will need, so we run capacity instead of guessing.

Every bedroom and the flex room gets a data cable back to a central panel, even if wireless carries most of the traffic today, because a wired connection is the one that still works when the house has three video calls running. Outlets go on every wall, so the bed and the desk can swap sides when the child decides they want the window on the other side. A low-voltage box at desk height and another at screen height on the wall opposite the bed cost a few dollars each at rough-in and save a drywall repair later. A spare conduit runs from the electrical panel to the attic and a second one to the flex room, so a future circuit for a suite kitchenette, a heat pump head or something not invented yet can be pulled without opening walls.

All of this is done under the BC Electrical Code, which the Province adopted as the 26th edition of the Canadian Electrical Code effective March 4, 2025, with permits and inspections through Technical Safety BC. The point of naming that is timing: the future capacity has to be on the electrical drawings at permit, so the inspector sees it and signs it off. Adding a circuit after the inspection is a second permit and a hole in the drywall.

What we ask families before we draw

On every family build, in Burnaby, Coquitlam or the Fraser Valley, we ask the same questions before the architect draws a line. How old will each child be when you expect the house to be paid off? Is there a grandparent who might move in? Does anyone work from home now, and who might in ten years? Which child is the musician? Where does the laundry go so that teenagers can do their own?

The answers change the plan more than any material choice does. A kids' floor drawn for the family at 4 and 7 works for three or four years. A kids' floor drawn for the same family at 19 and 22 works for the life of the house, and it works for the family at 4 and 7 too.

Frequently asked questions

How big should a child's bedroom be in a Burnaby custom home?

Plan it for the teenager, and the toddler will be fine. In practice that means one uninterrupted wall long enough for a double bed with a night table on each side, a second wall for a desk or dresser, and a closet that does not eat either of those walls. At Icon Projects we test every kids' bedroom on the plan with a double bed and a desk drawn in before we approve the framing layout.

Should kids' bedrooms have walk-in closets?

Usually no. A reach-in closet the full width of one wall, with double doors and adjustable shelving, stores as much as a small walk-in and gives the floor area back to the room. We reserve walk-in closets for the primary suite and for a flex room that may later become a suite, where the closet doubles as a sound buffer against the hall.

What is the best layout for a shared kids' bathroom?

Split it into compartments. A vanity with two sinks in the first zone, and the toilet and shower behind a second door, so one person can brush their teeth while another showers. Add a fan on a timer, a door from the hall rather than through a bedroom, and enough outlets at the vanity for two people. This layout serves two young children, two teenagers and two visiting adults equally well.

What should a flex room have so it can become a bedroom later in Burnaby?

A closet, a door, and a window that meets the BC Building Code's egress requirement for bedrooms from the day it is framed. Add a capped plumbing rough-in inside a nearby wall, a dedicated electrical circuit, and a location near a bathroom, and the room can go from playroom to study to a self-contained suite for a grandparent or an adult child. At Icon Projects the flex room is designed as a bedroom first and used as a playroom second.

How do you keep noise from the living room out of kids' bedrooms in a new house?

Position first, then assembly. We stack bedrooms above quiet rooms rather than above the great room or the garage, put closets and the bathroom between bedrooms and the hall, and specify insulated interior walls and solid-core doors on every bedroom. Sound separation is a framing decision, so it has to be on the drawings before the walls go up.

Do kids' bedrooms need egress windows in BC?

Yes. Section 9.9 of the BC Building Code requires each bedroom in a house to have a window or exterior door that can be opened from inside without keys, tools or special knowledge, with a minimum unobstructed opening size set by the code. The specific dimensions and the rules for window wells are confirmed against the current 2024 edition on every Icon Projects permit set, and we keep the sill height low enough that a child can use it.

What wiring should a family home in Coquitlam or Burnaby include for the future?

Data cable to every bedroom and the flex room, outlets on every wall, a spare conduit from the electrical panel to the attic and to the flex room, and low-voltage boxes where a wall-mounted screen or a work-from-home desk may end up. In BC the work is done under the BC Electrical Code, with permits and inspections through Technical Safety BC, so the future capacity has to be on the electrical plan at permit rather than added by drilling through finished drywall.

Should the flex room be upstairs with the bedrooms or downstairs?

Downstairs if it may ever become a suite for a grandparent or a tenant, because a ground-floor room can have its own entrance, a level path from the street and a bathroom next door. Upstairs if its long-term job is a study or a fourth bedroom for the family. On a Burnaby lot with a walkout lower level, the flex room usually goes on that level and gets planned as a future suite from the start.