What are balconies like in your country?

19 comments

1. Depending on how large they are and much your fellow neighbors can see into: Parking your bicycle, for bbqs, clothes horse, enjoying the weather, …

2. I had a small one (1m2) in the kitchen for my empty beer crates. And the big one (4×1.5m) in the living room there was a BBQ and a table and two chairs.

3. Like everything it depends on the apartment. Some balconies are small and some are big. People often spend time on the balcony when the weather is nice. Most balconies at least have a table and chairs.

   I have a big balcony with a gas grill and a hammock. I spent a lot of time on it in the summer just enjoying the weather. I’ll eat there, cook there, lie in the sun with a book, etc. Most of the things I normally do indoors in the winter.

4. Half a year it’s a freezer another half its occupied by seedlings.

5. Balconies have a tough time in Russia (who doesn’t?). They are usually not small enough to be purely decorative, but not big enough to function as a useful space: for example, the one in my apartment is only 60 cm deep: big enough to smoke on, but not big enough to sit down in a char without scraping your knee.

   In addition to that, the weather is not really conducive to hanging around on the balcony most of the year, so people glaze them whenever they can with whatever they can afford, leading to most commieblocks having a very… artisanal look.

   And now that the balcony has become a tiny room that’s too small for any human activity, it’s almost inevitably turned into a storage space:

   – the bicycle? Put it on the balcony
   – the skis? The balcony
   – the stepladder? Where else are you going to put it?
   – the luggage? The balcony

   If the balcony is bigger (for example when it’s semi-recessed into the building), it usually becomes a DIY workshop rather than a place of leisure, that’s where your dad keeps his rusty Nescafe tin of rusty fasteners.

   Modern blocks of flats often dispense with balconies altogether. I guess this makes them look neater without the scabs of mismatched glazing, but I’d rather have a generously-sized balcony with factory-made removable glazing and a storage room than no balcony at all.

6. Very common, and the size is very variable. On the small ones where you might barely fit two people, maybe you could have a couple potted plants. But if it’s big enough to fit a table people will have dinner there all summer.

   Tourists also seem to like jumping from them for some reason, it’s so common we have a name for that, “balconing” :/

   Mine is ~2.5×9 m, and I pretty much spend the whole summer in there, drinking beer and playing on my Switch or reading, having dinner there, even playing D&D with some friends.

7. This is very different. Many apartments and houses have a balcony. Sometimes you can even see how balconies were added to a building later. An example: https://www.google.at/maps/@47.8275041,13.0377016,3a,24.7y,129.01h,98.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sy297OO63-sCZW_z5CQwKiw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

   The size varies a lot. Sometimes it is only enough for a chair and a folding table and sometimes they are 10 meters long.

8. Greek balconies are quite large compared to most countries. Most people put plants, a flag, chairs or couches and a table. People use them for multiple reasons but it’s mostly to sit and relax, especially during summer nights. And yes, they are common. There is no Greek house without a balcony.

9. Not very common, tend to be a small area and the weather is rarely good enough to make much use of them, as well as the small size. I am seeing more of the Romeo and Juliet style ones which are really more a way of having a full length window in an upstairs. Lack of balconies is why British tourists have a reputation of going on holiday and falling off them.

10. I have two but they are really small.

    The kitchen one is used to keep the trash bins, some plants i use to cook ( sage, rosemary, peppers, basil etc)

    The other one is very thin i ise mainly to put drying rack and to let friends smoke when they are at my house.

    My father have a much bigger one and he have no other houses over his, so he put a BBQ and eat there sometimes

11. Balconies are very common in apartment buildings. Sizes vary widely. Some are too tiny to use for whatever, others are big as a garden, and everything in between.

12. UK hardly has any, because flats are not considered aspriational in general so why would they have luxury features like balconies.

    Where they are included they are generally small. Juliet balconies (literally a guard next to an openable door) are common on new builds.

13. Apartment living here isn’t all that common. It probably should be a lot more so as we would get more sustainable densities of housing but, it’s a land of NIMBYs with a terrible and quite irrational fear of “flats” and a tendency to have hysterical protests about anyone building anything more then about 4 to 5 floors tall, as that might “destroy the skyline” (nor sue we actually have one of those) or “be like Manhattan.”

    So balconies for most of us aren’t really a feature of life. They are common enough on apartments but tend to be fairly small and seem like an after thought and because of the weather they’re not as useful as they might be on the continent.

    Also a lot of apartment complex management companies won’t allow anything to be out on balconies other than small items of garden furniture and plants. If you try drying clothes on one or anything like that, you’ll often get letters and complaints.

    I had one on a house rather than an apartment, and it was fairly spacious but I hardly ever used it. It just always felt very exposed both from a weather point of view and just visually, and there was a nice garden, which was a much better option for sitting outside.

    We get notions about outdoor living and opening up spaces into gardens and so on but 90% of the year we don’t have the weather for it.

    What tends to work here is conservatories / sunrooms (a glass room) that open our into the garden. It creates a usable a heat trap.

    I mean you can try outdoor dining here and it’s fine for a few minutes or an exceptional day, but most of the time you would be struggling to keep hold of anything that might blow over on the table. I had lunch out during the peak of the lockdown in a restaurant in Cork one sunny autumn day and my sandwich literally blew off my plate!!

14. They are growing increasingly common here in Sweden. For upper middle class families like mine they are definitely seen as something of a status symbol.

    I am moving in June, so I have been checking out the market and it is definitely something the family sees as a necessity. The apartment we are buying has two balconies with a combined 19 square metre area. That is in an 88 square metre apartment, balcony excluded. That is in a newly constructed building.

    Edit to add: I am not some sort of expert on the topic, so to any other swedes, feel free to add your, most likely more interesting, thoughts.

15. They’re used for British people to defenestarte themselfs

16. How common are they? Very common, all sizes, from the Alps to the Mediterranean coasts.

    What are they used for? Almost everything you can think of, but mostly to dry laundry and to check out the neighborhood lidar-style.

17. High-rises usually have small balconies. In two-floor buildings they aren’t very common. A lot of people living in high-rises also put windows in so they win a room. Same as in Russia.

    In traditional building styles, small balconies as [these](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Neuleiningen_Fachwerkhaus.JPG/1200px-Neuleiningen_Fachwerkhaus.JPG) are typical 19th century additions for city houses. [This style](https://www.guardi.de/fileadmin/_processed_/d/5/csm_GUARDI_Kitzbuehel_Balkon_holzoptik_5_63b90cb3c8.jpg) is common only in the south.

18. depends on building. Pre war buildings usually don’t have any or some very small (think about one or two square meters) and usually not to the street but courtyard. Street side might have one or two for whole building. Post war buildings are more generous, prefabricated panel buildings usually have at least 2/3 if not all apartments with balconies often in a width of whole room or two. (exceptions exists obviously)

    and usage really depends but usually clothes drying, vegies herbs or just decorative plants place, grilling or just storage of seasonal items, bike parking….

19. Very common. Most flats have them. Most houses have some sort of porch or even a balcony /veranda upstairs.

    They are used to sit on in the summer, sunbathing, drinking beer or wine or coffee. Many have barbecue / gas grills on the balcony. Many put their babies outside for naps (well tucked in with warm clothes).

    Some have plants. Some sleep there in the summer or even all year. Some use it for storage.