Do you favor manors and mansions or studios and bungalows? Whatever your preferred housing style is, this graphic will help you look in the right place. The map displays the median number of rooms in housing units for each county. The five highest and lowest medians are listed. For reference, the median for the entire U.S. is 5.5 rooms.

The darker areas tend to have roomier housing units. These include parts of the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, and Central Plains. The latter may be due to large farmhouses. There are also specific hotspots in some states (e.g., Utah, Georgia, and Tennessee) that have higher medians. Of the 25 counties with medians of at least seven rooms, eight are in Virginia, four are in Maryland, and three are in Utah. No other state has more than two.

On the other end of the spectrum, smaller housing units with fewer rooms are primarily found in Alaska. There are 15 counties with medians of less than four; ten are in Alaska, two in New York, and one each in Texas, Arizona, and Hawaii.

The violin plot shows the distribution of numbers of rooms using percentages of housing units in each county with one, two, three…all the way up to nine or more rooms. The dots in the bars are the medians. So in a typical U.S. county, approximately 2.5% of housing units have only one or two rooms. Close to a quarter (22.8%) have five rooms, and just under a fifth (19.7%) have six rooms. The roomiest housing units (with at least nine rooms) account for 9.2% of homes.

Keep in mind that bathrooms are not counted in these data. For those interested in the definition of a room (from https://ask.census.gov/faq.php?id=5000&faqId=7433):

“When counting the number of rooms in a home for the American Community Survey (ACS), please count rooms separated by built-in archways or walls that extend out at least 6 inches and go from floor to ceiling. Include only whole rooms used for living purposes, such as living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, finished recreation rooms, family rooms, enclosed porches suitable for year-round use, etc.

DO NOT count bathrooms, kitchenettes, strip or pullman kitchens, utility rooms, foyers, halls, open porches, balconies, unfinished attics, unfinished basements, or other unfinished space used for storage.”

Data source: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml (Table DP04)