![Etage1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Etage1.png)
A storey (
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
)
or story (
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
)
is any level part of a
building
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and fun ...
with a
floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US).
The terms ''floor'', ''level'', or ''deck'' are used in similar ways, except that it is usual to speak of a "16-''storey'' building", but "the 16th ''floor''". The floor at ground or street level is called the "ground floor" (i.e. it needs no number; the floor below it is called "basement", and the floor above it is called "first") in many regions. However, in some regions, like the U.S., ''ground floor'' is synonymous with ''first floor'', leading to differing numberings of floors, depending on region – even between different national varieties of English.
The words ''storey'' and ''floor'' normally exclude levels of the building that are not covered by a
roof
A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of te ...
, such as the
terrace
Terrace may refer to:
Landforms and construction
* Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river
* Terrace, a street suffix
* Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk an ...
on the rooftops of many buildings. Nevertheless, a flat roof on a building ''is'' counted as a floor in other languages, for instance
''dakvloer'' in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, literally "roof-floor", simply counted one level up from the floor number that it covers.
A two-storey house or
home extension is sometimes referred to as double storey in the UK, while one storey is referred to as single storey.
Overview
Houses commonly have only one or two floors, although three and four storey houses also exist. Buildings are often classified as
low-rise
A low-rise is a building that is only a few stories tall or any building that is shorter than a high-rise, though others include the classification of mid-rise.
Definition
Emporis defines a low-rise as "an enclosed structure below 35 metres 15 ...
, mid-rise and
high-rise according to how many levels they contain, but these categories are not well-defined. A single-storey house is often referred to, particularly in the United Kingdom, as a
bungalow. The tallest
skyscraper in the world,
Burj Khalifa, has 163 floors.
The height of each storey is based on the
ceiling height of the
room
In a building or large vehicle, like a ship, a room is any enclosed space within a number of walls to which entry is possible only via a door or other dividing structure that connects it to either a passageway, another room, or the outdoors, that ...
s plus the thickness of the floors between each pane. Generally this is around total; however, it varies widely from just under this figure to well over it. Storeys within a building need not be all the same height—often the
lobby
Lobby may refer to:
* Lobby (room), an entranceway or foyer in a building
* Lobbying, the action or the group used to influence a viewpoint to politicians
:* Lobbying in the United States, specific to the United States
* Lobby (food), a thick stew ...
is taller, for example. One review of tall buildings suggests that residential towers may have 3.1 m (10 ft 2 in) floor height for apartments, while a commercial building may have floor height of 3.9 m (12 ft 9.5 in) for the storeys leased to tenants. In such tall buildings (60 or more storeys), there may be utility floors of greater height.
Additionally, higher levels may have
less floor area than the ones beneath them (e.g., the
Willis Tower
The Willis Tower (originally the Sears Tower) is a 108-story, skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), ...
).
In English, the principal floor or main floor of a house is the floor that contains the chief
apartments; it is usually the ground floor, or the floor above. In Italy, the main floor of a home is usually above the ground level, and may be called the ''
piano nobile'' ("noble floor").
The
attic or
loft is a storey just below the building's roof; its ceiling is often pitched and/or at a different height than that of other floors. A
penthouse
Penthouse most often refers to:
*Penthouse apartment, a special apartment on the top floor of a building
*Penthouse (magazine), ''Penthouse'' (magazine), a British-founded men's magazine
*Mechanical penthouse, a floor, typically located directly u ...
is a luxury apartment on the topmost storey of a building. A
basement is a storey below the main or ground floor; the first (or only) basement of a home is also called the lower ground floor.
Split-level
A split-level home (also called a bi-level home or tri-level home) is a style of house in which the floor levels are staggered. There are typically two short sets of stairs, one running upward to a bedroom level, and one going downward toward ...
homes have floors that offset from each other by less than the height of a full storey. A
mezzanine, in particular, is typically a floor halfway between.
Numbering
![Countries numbering floors](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Countries_numbering_floors.svg)
Floor numbering is the
numbering scheme used for a building's floors. There are two major schemes in use across the world. In one system, used in the majority of European countries, the ground floor is the floor literally at ground level, frequently having no number, and identified by a word or letter, varying by language (e.g. "G" for 'Ground' in English), or "0" (zero) in an elevator that has strictly numbered buttons. The next floor up is assigned the number 1 and is the first floor (first ''elevation''), the first basement level gets '−1', and so on. The other system, used in such countries as the United States, Canada, China, Japan, Russia, Norway, and other ex-Soviet states, counts the bottom floor as the first floor, the next floor up as the second floor, and so on. In both systems, the numbering of higher floors continues sequentially as one goes up, as shown in the following table:
Consecutive number floor designations
Each scheme has further variations depending on how one refers to the ground floor and the subterranean levels. The existence of two incompatible conventions is a common source of confusion in international communication.
In all English-speaking countries the storeys in a building are ''counted'' in the same way: a "seven-storey building" is unambiguous, although the top floor would be called "6th floor" in Britain and "7th floor" in America. This contrasts, for example, with French usage, where a 7-storey building is called ''une maison à 6 (six) étages''. Mezzanines may or may not be counted as storeys.
European scheme
;Floor at ground level
This convention can be traced back to Medieval European usage. In countries that use this system, the floor at ground level is usually referred to by a special name, usually translating as "ground floor" or equivalent. For example, ''Erdgeschoss'' ("ground floor") in Germany (sometimes, however, also "Parterre", taken over from French), ''piano terra'' or ''pianterreno'' (lit. "ground floor") in Italy, ''begane grond'' (lit. "trodden ground") in the Netherlands, ''planta baja'' (Castilian) or ''planta baixa'' (Catalan) in Spain (both meaning "bottom floor"), ''beheko solairua'' in Basque, ''andar térreo'' ("ground floor") in Brazil, ''rés-do-chão'' ("adjacent to the ground") in Portugal, ''földszint'' ("ground level") in Hungary (although in Budapest the "félemelet" ("half floor", i.e.
mezzanine) is an extra level between the ground and first floors, apparently a circumevention of construction regulations of the 19th and early 20th centuries), ' (from French ''street level'', where "rez" is the old French of "ras", meaning "scraped", "chaussée", meaning "street".) in France, ''parter'' in Poland and Romania, ''prízemie'' ("by the ground") in Slovakia, and ''pritličje'' ("close to the ground") in Slovenia. In some countries that use this scheme, the higher floors may be explicitly qualified as being above the ground level, such as in Slovenian "''prvo nadstropje'' (literally "first floor above ceiling (of the ground storey)").
;First elevation, Europe, Latin America
In many countries in Europe, the second storey is called the "first floor", for being the first elevation. Besides Europe, this scheme is mostly used in some large Latin American countries (including Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), and British
Commonwealth nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...
(except
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
)
;First elevation, Spain
In Spain, the level above ground level (the
mezzanine) is sometimes called ''entresuelo'' (''entresòl'' in Catalan, etc., which literally means "interfloor"), and elevators may skip it. When the next level is different than the others, usually with higher ceiling and better decorations, then it is called ''principal'' (main floor)''.'' This is because before elevators the apartments in the floor that required less stairs to reach was the most expensive and usually also the most luxurious one. In those cases the "first floor" can therefore be two or three levels above ground level.
;First elevation, Italy
In Italy, in the ancient palaces the first floor is called ''piano nobile'' ("noble floor"), since the noble owners of the palace lived there.
;First elevation, France
In France, there are two distinct names for storeys in buildings which have two "ground floors" at different levels (on two opposite faces, usually). The lower one is called ', the upper one is '.
;First elevation, Croatia
The same differentiation is used as well in some buildings in Croatia. The lower level is called ''razizemlje'' (abbr. RA), and the upper ''prizemlje'' (PR). If there is only one ground floor, it is called ''prizemlje''. The latter usage is standard for smaller buildings, such as single-family homes.
North American schemes
In the United States, the first floor and ground floor are usually equivalent, being at ground level, and may also be called the "lobby" or "main floor" to indicate the entrance to the building. The story just above it is the second floor, and so on. The English-speaking parts of Canada generally follow the American convention, although Canada has kept the Commonwealth spelling "storey". In
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, the European scheme was formerly used (as in France), but by now it has been mostly replaced by the US system, so that ''rez-de-chaussée'' and ''premier étage'' ("first stage") are now generally equivalent in Quebec. Mexico, on the other hand, uses the European system.
Latin America
European scheme: In many Latin American countries (including Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela) the ground floor is called ''planta baja'' and the next floor is ''primer piso''. In Brazil the ground floor is called ''térreo'' and the next floor is ''primeiro andar''.
In other countries, including Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, the ground floor is called ''primer piso'' (first floor). If ''planta baja'' is ever used it means the ground-level floor (although ''primer piso'' is used mainly for indoor areas, while ''planta baja'' is also used for areas outside the building).
East Asian schemes
Most parts of eastern Asia—including China (except for
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
), Japan, Korea, and Singapore—follow the American system. Indonesia uses both the American and European systems. In the grammar of the respective languages, the numbers precede the word "floor", and are
cardinals
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...
rather than
ordinals, so they would translate literally as "1 floor, 2 floor" (etc.), rather than "1st floor, 2nd floor", or "floor 1, floor 2".
Singapore
In Singapore, the British system of numbering originally prevailed. This was replaced in the 1980s with the North American scheme for compatibility with other Asian countries. To emphasise the difference from the original scheme, reference is frequently made to storeys rather than floors, where the third (3rd) floor becomes either the fourth (4th) storey (or storey 4) or fourth (4th) level (or level 4). Many buildings continue to label storeys or levels rather than floors. However, in the absence of clear official distinction between the terms, the meaning of "floors" and "levels" have become interchangeable with "storey"; this is reflected in newer buildings. Some buildings in Singapore do use SL (Street Level) for ground level. Some buildings in Singapore, such as
Nex and
West Coast Plaza
West Coast Plaza, formerly known as Ginza Plaza ( ja, 銀座プラザ) is a mixed retail and residential development in West Coast, Singapore. The retail building is a 3-storey development totaling approximately of retail space.
History
N ...
uses the European scheme, albeit using "Basement 1" for ground level storey.
Japan and Korea
In Japan and Korea, "Floor 1" (1F) is usually assigned to the lowest floor that is at least partially above the ground level, so occasionally, 1F in these countries corresponds to the "lower ground floor" in the UK. 2F then corresponds to the "ground floor", 3F to the "first floor", and so on. However, some buildings in Japan do adopt the semi-European scheme of floor numbering, with G or GL (Ground Floor/Level) as the lowest floor partially above ground level and its 1F/1L is the lowest floor ''completely'' above ground level and so on.
Philippines
In the Philippines, the word "storey" itself is spelled in the British manner and is used to describe the total number of floors in a certain building, while the word "floor" is more commonly used when referring to a certain level. The American system is widely used but some buildings (such as Ayala Malls and older government offices) adopt the European system. Therefore, the words "ground floor" and "first floor" are interchangeable. The "Lower" and "Upper Ground Floor" tagging may also be used by malls and some office buildings that have one partially-lowered and another partially-raised ground level, both of which are accessible to the actual ground level by stairs or escalators. Under this system, the "third floor" officially becomes the "second floor" because of the two "ground floors", although people would generally call the upper ground level the "second floor" and the new second level to still be called the "third floor" out of convenience. In the
Filipino language
Filipino (; , ) is an Austronesian language. It is the national language ( / ) of the Philippines, and one of the two official languages of the country, with English. It is a standardized variety of Tagalog based on the native dialect, spoke ...
, both "floor" and "storey" are called ''"palapag".'' Ground floor and first floor are both referred to as "unang palapag", followed by "ikalawang palapag" (second floor), "ikatlong palapag" (third floor) and so on''.''
Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
uses both the North American and European schemes, generally depending on the region. In northern and central Vietnam, including the capital
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
, refers to any floor, including the ground floor, which is called . Meanwhile, in southern Vietnam, refers to the ground floor and refers to any floor above it, starting at directly above the ground floor.
A national standard,
TCVN 6003-1:2012 (
ISO 4157-1:1998), requires architectural drawings to follow the northern scheme. It also refers to a
crawl space
A crawl space is an unoccupied, unfinished, narrow space within a building, between the ground and the first (or ground) floor. The crawl space is so named because there is typically only enough room to crawl rather than stand; anything larger t ...
as . However, a given building's floor designations are unregulated. Thus, some apartment buildings in the largest city,
Ho Chi Minh City
, population_density_km2 = 4,292
, population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2
, population_demonym = Saigonese
, blank_name = GRP (Nominal)
, blank_info = 2019
, blank1_name = – Total
, blank1_ ...
, have posted floor numbers according to the northern scheme, while others label the ground floor as "G" or the
thirteenth floor
The thirteenth floor is a designation of a level of a multi-level building that is often omitted in countries where the number is considered unlucky. Omitting the 13th floor may take a variety of forms; the most common include denoting what wo ...
as "12
bis".
Idiosyncrasies
![Odd lift buttons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Odd_lift_buttons.jpg)
Some American
high-rise buildings follow the British/European system, often out of a desire on the part of the building's
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
or owners.
An arrangement often found in high rise
public housing blocks, particularly those built in the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, is that elevators would only call at half the total number of floors, or at an intermediate level between a pair of floors; for example a lift of a 24-storey building would only stop at 12 levels, with staircases used to access the "upper" or "lower" level from each intermediate landing. This halves any building costs associated with elevator shaft doors. Where the total traffic necessitates a second lift the alternate floors strategy is sometimes still applied, not only for the doorway reduction but also, provisionally upon the passengers preferring no particular floor beyond capacity, it tends toward halving the total delay imposed by the stops en-route. Sometimes, two elevators are divided so that all floors are served, but one elevator only serves odd floors and the other even, which would often be less efficient for passengers, but cheaper to install because the group control of elevators was more complex than single control.
A few buildings in the United States and Canada have both a "first floor" (usually the main floor of the building) and a "ground floor" below it. This typically happens when both floors have street-level entrances, as is often the case for hillside buildings. In the UK, the lower of these floors would be called the "lower ground floor", while the upper would be called either the "upper ground floor" or simply the "ground floor".
Multi-storey car park
A multistorey car park ( British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a bui ...
s which have a staggered arrangement of parking levels sometimes use a convention where there may be an "upper" and "lower" level of the same floor number, (e.g.: "1U/U1" = Upper 1st, "L2/2L" = "Lower 2nd" and so on), although the elevators will typically only serve one of the two levels, or the elevator lobby for each floor pair may be between the two levels.
In 19th-century London, many buildings were built with the main entrance floor a metre above ground, and the floor below that being two metres below ground. This was done partly for aesthetics, and partly to allow access between the lower level and the street without going through the main floor. In this situation, the lower level is called Lower Ground, the main floor is called Upper Ground, and floors above it are numbered serially from 1. There may also be a storage floor called "Cellar" below Lower Ground.
Sometimes, floor number 1 may be the lowest basement level; in that case the ground floor may be numbered 2 or higher. Sometimes two connected buildings (such as a store and its car park) have incongruent floor numberings, due to sloping terrain or different ceiling heights. To avoid this, shopping centres may call the main floors by names such as Upper Mall, Lower Mall & Toilet Mezzanine, with the parking floors being numbered P''n''
There are some cases of odd floor numbering systems in shopping malls in the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
, that the floor numbering in the elevator does not align with the floor numbering created by the management. However, in order to avoid confusion from mall visitors, the usage of the management's floor numbering in advertising is more prevalent than the one posted in the elevators. For example, in
The Podium
The Podium is a mixed-use development located along ADB Avenue in the Ortigas Center, a major business and commercial district in Mandaluyong, Philippines. It was developed in December 2001 and officially opened in August 2002 as a joint project ...
, the first basement of the expansion wing is called Lower Ground Floor, since the mall has a supermarket (shared with parking); however, its next basement is Basement 2 which serves the mall's carpark, instead of Basement 1 to continue its floor numbering. In
City of Dreams Manila
City of Dreams Manila is a luxury integrated resort and casino complex located on the Entertainment City gaming strip at Asean Avenue and Roxas Boulevard in Parañaque, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Overview
It is owned by Melco Resorts and Enter ...
Carpark Building, the carpark's 4th floor is called Upper Ground Floor although the first three parking levels are from Ground to 3rd level. The parking floor actually serves the Upper Ground Floor of the resort. Its next level is 5th level to continue with its floor numbering.
In some instances, buildings may omit the
thirteenth floor
The thirteenth floor is a designation of a level of a multi-level building that is often omitted in countries where the number is considered unlucky. Omitting the 13th floor may take a variety of forms; the most common include denoting what wo ...
in their floor numbering because of common
superstition
A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and ...
surrounding this number. The floor numbering may either go straight from 12 to 14, or the floor may be given an alternative name such as "Skyline" or "14A". Due to a similar superstition in east Asia, some mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, and Indonesian buildings (typically high-rises) omit or skip the 4th floor along with other floor numbers ending in 4 such as 14 and 24. The floor above the third would be numbered as the fifth, and so on. This is because of
tetraphobia
Tetraphobia () is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit . It is a superstition most common in East Asian nations.
__TOC__
Rationale
The Chinese word for "four" (, pinyin: sì, jyutping: sei3), sounds quite similar to the word for "de ...
: in many varieties of Chinese, the pronunciation of the word for "four" is very similar to the pronunciation of the word for "die". By Chinese cultural and linguistic influence, tetraphobia is common in many countries of East Asia. For this reason, apartments on the 4th floor in Asian countries such as Taiwan have traditionally been cheaper to rent.
In Hong Kong, the British numbering system is now generally used, in English and Chinese alike. In some older residential buildings, however, the floors are identified by signs in
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
s that say "" ("2 floor") at the floor just above ground, as in the North American system. For those buildings, the Chinese phrase "" or its English equivalent "3rd floor" may refer either to the storey three levels above ground (as in the modern numbering), which is actually labelled "" ("4 floor"), or to the storey with the sign "" ("3 floor"), which is only two levels above ground. This confusing state of affairs has led, for example, to numerous errors in utility billing. To avoid ambiguity, business forms often ask that storey numbers in address fields be written ''as accessed from a lift''. In colloquial speeches, the character "" maybe added before the number to emphasize it refers to the Chinese style of numbering, e.g. "" (literally "Chinese 3 floor"), or the character "" added after the number to refer to the British style of numbering as shown in a lift, e.g. 2 (literally "2 digit floor", floor with number 2), while in writing in Chinese,
Chinese numeral
Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote numbers in Chinese.
Today, speakers of Chinese use three written numeral systems: the system of Arabic numerals used worldwide, and two indigenous systems. The more familiar indigenous ...
s are used for Chinese style numbering, and
Arabic numeral
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as ...
s are used for British style numbering.
In Hawaii, the Hawaiian-language floor label uses the British System, but the English-language floor label uses the American system. For example, ''Papa akolu'' (P3) is equivalent to Level 4 (4 or L4).
Lift/elevator buttons
![Dover Custom Impulse elevator control panel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Dover_Custom_Impulse_elevator_control_panel.jpg)
In most of the world, elevator buttons for storeys above the ground level are usually marked with the corresponding numbers. In many countries, modern elevators also have
Braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are Blindness, blind, Deafblindness, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on Paper embossing, embossed paper ...
numbers—often mandated by law.
European scheme
In countries that use the European system, the ground floor is either marked 0, or with the initial letter of the local word for ground floor (G, E, etc.), successive floors are then marked 1, 2, etc. However, even when the ground floor button is marked with a letter, some digital position indicators may show 0 when the lift / elevator is on that floor. If the building also contains floors below ground, negative numbers are common. This then gives a conventional numbering sequence –2, –1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ... In Spain and other countries whose official language is Spanish or Portuguese, the ground floor is usually marked PB (''planta baja'', ''planta baixa'', etc.), and in buildings where these exist, the ''entresuelo'' or ''entresòl'' and ''principal'' are marked E and P, respectively. In France, floors are usually marked the same way as in Spain; however, the letters for the ground floor are RDC (''rez-de-chaussée''), seldom simplified to RC. Where these exist, there are high ground RCH (''rez-de-chaussée haut'') and lower ground RCB (''rez-de-chaussée bas''), or garden ground RJ (''rez-de-jardin'') and former ground RC. In Portugal, the letters corresponding to the ground floor are R/C (''rés-do-chão'') or simply R.
For example, in the
Polish language
Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...
there is a clear distinction: the word ''parter'' means ground floor and ''piętro'' means a floor above the ''parter'', usually with an ordinal: 1st ''piętro'', 2nd ''piętro'' etc. Therefore, a ''parter'' is the zeroth ''piętro''. Older elevators in
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
have button marked P for the ground floor (''parter'') and S for basement (''suterena''). Elevators installed since 1990 have 0 for ''parter'' and -1, -2 etc. for underground floors.
In Hawaiian language, the labels, from the ground floor to the sixth (UK) / seventh (US) floor are, in order: LP, P1, P2, P3, P4, P5 and P6.
North American scheme
In countries that use the North American system, where "floor 1" is the same as "ground floor", the corresponding button may be marked either with 1 or with a letter, as in the European scheme. In either case, the next button will be labelled 2. In buildings that have both a "1st floor" and a "ground floor", they may be labelled 1 and G (as in Russian scheme) or M (for "Main") and LM (for "Lower Main"). M or MZ may also be used to designate a
mezzanine level, when it is not counted as a separate floor in the building's numbering scheme.
In modern signage, at least in North America, a
five-pointed star
A five-pointed star (☆), geometrically an equilateral concave decagon, is a common ideogram in modern culture.
Comparatively rare in classical heraldry, it was notably introduced for the flag of the United States in the Flag Act of 1777 and s ...
(★) additionally appears beside the button for the ''main entry'' floor. In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, the five-pointed-star marking is mandated by Title III of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as described in Section 4.10.12(2) of the ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities (ADAAG). However this may be used to simply indicate a way out, such as to indicate a
sky lobby. As an example, the residential elevators at the
John Hancock Center
The John Hancock Center is a 100- story, 1,128-foot supertall skyscraper located in Chicago, Illinois. Located in the Magnificent Mile district, the building was officially renamed 875 North Michigan Avenue in 2018.
The skyscraper was designed ...
all have their main floors labeled as the 44th as in order to get from a residential floor to the ground one would need to take two elevators: one from the residences to the sky lobby, and the other from the sky lobby to the ground. In the event more than one floor could be considered main floor, such as when a building has exits on more than one floor, a relatively common solution is to simply have no star and have other indications to indicate a main floor. A less commonly used solution has more than one star.
Subterranean floors
There is no particular standard convention for the numbering of levels below ground. In English-speaking countries, the first level below ground may be labelled B for "Basement", LL for "Lower Level" or "Lower Lobby", C for "Cellar" or U for "Underground". In British buildings, LG for "Lower Ground" is commonly encountered.
If there is more than one basement, the next level down may be marked SB for "Sub-Basement". The lower levels may also be numbered B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9, B10, etc.. Negative numbers are sometimes used: −1 for the first level below ground, −2 for the second one, and so on. Letters are sometimes used: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, etc.
In Hawaii these levels are numbered I1, I2, I3, ...; "I" stands for "ilelo", basement.
Half-height/split-level parking garages
In malls, one may find half-height parking garages, in which the floors are named after the mall, but the floors that between the mall's floors may have suffixes like "A" or "M" added. For example, "1", "1A/1M", "2", "2A/2M", etc. The floors may be numbered as ''1'', ''1'', ''2'', ''2'', etc. Elevators in half-height parking garages in malls usually stop only at the mall levels and not the parking levels between the mall levels.
In split-level parking garages, the lower level may have the suffix "A" and the upper level have the suffix "B", like "1A", "1B", "2A", "2B", etc. Elevators in split-level parking garages normally stop at either the lower or upper level, and the levels in elevators may be named just "1", "2", etc.
Other labels
Elevator buttons may also be labelled according to their main function. In English-speaking countries, besides the common L for "Lobby", one may find P for "
Platform
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system or ...
" (in train stations), "Pool" or "
Parking
Parking is the act of stopping and disengaging a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied. Parking on one or both sides of a road is often permitted, though sometimes with restrictions. Some buildings have parking facilities for use of the buildings' ...
"
[''P'' may also stand for Parterre in some countries: http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/parterre.] (and P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, P9, P10, etc. for multiple parking floors), S for "Skyway" or "Street" (ST is also often used to indicate Street), C for "Casino" or "Concourse", R for "Restaurant" or Roof, PH for "Penthouse", OD for "
observation deck
An observation deck, observation platform, or viewing platform is an elevated sightseeing platform usually situated upon a tall architectural structure, such as a skyscraper or observation tower. Observation decks are sometimes enclos ...
", W for Walkway, T for Tunnel, Ticketing or Trains, etc. In some US buildings, the label G on the elevator may stand for the building's "Garage", which need not be located on the "Ground" floor. Sometimes GR might be used instead.
Fairmont Royal York
The Fairmont Royal York, formerly and still commonly known as the Royal York, is a large historic luxury hotel in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located along Front Street West, the hotel is situated at the southern end of the Financial District, in ...
Hotel in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
marks the first six floors as A, L, MM, C, H and 1 (for "Arcade", "Lobby", "Main Mezzanine", "Convention", "Health Club" and "1st floor"). The
North Carolina Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. It opened in 1956 as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding. Since the initial 1947 appropriation that e ...
, whose entrance is on the third floor up, has the floors lettered C, B, A (the main floor) and O (for "Office"). The
Festival Walk
Festival Walk is a shopping centre in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong developed jointly by Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific between 1993 and 1998. At the time of its opening in November 1998, it was the biggest shopping mall in Hong Kong. Festiv ...
mall in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
has floors labelled LG2 and LG1 ("Lower Ground 2" and "1"), G ("Ground") and UG ("Upper Ground"). In
The Landmark Annex of
TriNoma, DSn (n=floor) denotes the floor label of the department store area.
Room numbering
In modern buildings, especially large ones, room or apartment numbers are usually tied to the floor numbers, so that one can figure out the latter from the former. Typically one uses the floor number with one or two extra digits appended to identify the room within the floor. For example, room 215 could be the 15th room of floor 2 (or 5th room of floor 21), but to avoid this confusion one dot is sometimes used to separate the floor from the room (2.15 refers to 2nd floor, 15th room and 21.5 refers to 21st floor, 5th room) or a leading zero is placed before a single-digit room number (i.e. the 5th room of floor 21 would be 2105). Letters may be used, instead of digits, to identify the room within the floor—such as 21E instead of 215. Often
odd number
In mathematics, parity is the property of an integer of whether it is even or odd. An integer is even if it is a multiple of two, and odd if it is not.. For example, −4, 0, 82 are even because
\begin
-2 \cdot 2 &= -4 \\
0 \cdot 2 &= 0 \\
41 ...
s are used for rooms on one side of a hallway, even numbers for rooms on the other side.
An offset may be used to accommodate unnumbered floors. For example, in a building with floors labelled G, M, 1, 2, ..., 11 and 12, the fourth room in each of those floors could be numbered 104, 114, 124, 134, ..., 224 and 234, respectively—with an offset of 110 in the floor numbers. This trick is sometimes used to make the floor number slightly less obvious, e.g. for security or marketing reasons.
In some buildings with numbered rooms, as i
this Eastern European example UK-like G, 1, ... floor numbering is used, but with rooms numbered from 200 on the "first floor" (above the ground floor), 300 on the 2nd floor, and so on (which actually resembles US-like floor numbering).
Spain, Portugal and Andorra
In
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
,
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and
Andorra
, image_flag = Flag of Andorra.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Andorra.svg
, symbol_type = Coat of arms
, national_motto = la, Virtus Unita Fortior, label=none (Latin)"United virtue is stro ...
the rule (official standard) is:
# In buildings with only two corridors, all the apartments are marked as ''Izq.'' or ''Esq.'' (''Izquerdo'', ''Esquerdo'' or ''Esquerre'' = Left) or ''Dcho.'' or ''Dto.'' (''Derecho'', ''Direito'' or ''Dret'' = Right). So we have Sótano Izq., C/V Esq. or Soterrani Esq. (Underground Floor Left), Bajo Izq., R/C Esq. or Baix Esq. (Ground Floor Left), 1º. Izq., 1º. Esq. or 1er Esq. (1st Floor Left), etc.; and Sótano Dcho., C/V Dto. or Soterrani Dret (Underground Floor Right), Bajo Dcho., R/C Dto. or Baix Dret (Ground Floor Right) 1º. Dcho., 1º. Dto. or 1er Dret (1st Floor Right), etc.
# Buildings with more than two apartments per floor, are marked with letters, clockwise within each deck. So apartment 8º-D (not 8D) means the 8th floor (hence the character "º" meaning ordinal number), apartment D (counting in clockwise direction, for those who are in the floor entrance). But a very common form for buildings with three apartments per floor is, ''Esq.-Frt./Fte.'' (''Frente'', en: Front - for the apartment located between left and right)-Dto.
These universal rules simplify finding an apartment in a building, particularly for blind people, who do not need to ask where a given apartment is.
See also
*
Deck
*
Floor
*
Mechanical floor
A mechanical floor, mechanical penthouse, mechanical layer or mechanical level is a story of a high-rise building that is dedicated to mechanical and electronics equipment. "Mechanical" is the most commonly used term, but words such as ''utilit ...
*
Thirteenth floor
The thirteenth floor is a designation of a level of a multi-level building that is often omitted in countries where the number is considered unlucky. Omitting the 13th floor may take a variety of forms; the most common include denoting what wo ...
*
List of buildings with 100 floors or more
This is a list of buildings with 100 floors or more above ground. Dubai and Chicago have three buildings with at least 100 floors.
Completed buildings
This list includes buildings whose construction is complete, or are topped-out.
Building ...
Explanatory notes
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Building
Identifiers
Floors