In praise of the bungalow: Why I love living in a low-rise

One-storey homes are in decline, just when an ageing population needs them most. Rebecca Armstrong says we will be sorry if we let the bungalow be grounded for good

Low life: Bungalows are falling out of favour even with elderly people, many of whom prefer living in flats (Getty)

I didn't realise when I rented it that the property I had my eye on was the residential equivalent of an endangered species. All I knew was that it was in the area I wanted, had the right number of bedrooms, boasted a lovely garden with an apple tree and an even lovelier garage (almost as important as location, location, location for me was storage, storage, storage).

The most important thing about it, though, was what it didn't have – stairs. After years of living in a London flat, I was hankering after a bungalow. But my single-storey dwelling is, it seems, a dying breed.

This week, the National House-Building Council warned that only one in 50 new home-builds is a bungalow, down from one in six in the mid-1980s. It comes after the Papworth Trust, a charity devoted to helping people with disabilities to live independently, sounded alarm bells last year when it claimed that the current emphasis on building flats and houses would result in no new bungalows being constructed by 2020.

I have to confess that, until a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have given a stair rod either way. My nan had a very pleasant bungalow, and I had no beef with anyone who thought that life on one level was preferable to having their head in the clouds (or at least a loft conversion). I lived similarly myself, in a basement flat with no cupboard under the stairs because the stairs that led down from my front door were only two feet high.

Then my husband was hit by a car, suffering life-changing injuries. Nearly two years on, he lives in residential care and is in a wheelchair. Even if our flat were big enough for him to get into, that two-foot drop means he is unlikely to ever call the place home again. And so began my interest in bungalows.

But while I was obsessing over potential rentals on Rightmove, it seems that house buyers and house builders were backing away from architect Sir Edwin Lutyens' choice of dwelling for New Delhi. Families, says the NHBC, prefer houses, while flats have become more popular with older people. Builders and developers get less bang for their buck with a bungalow because it takes up the same space as a house but offers less room inside.

And yet, as recently as 2013, the Policy Exchange think tank was banging the drum for bungalows. "It make no sense to prevent construction of bungalows if we are interested in increasing the housing supply and a more efficient use of the existing housing stock," said its Housing and Intergenerational Fairness report. "Older people currently living in large family homes might want to downsize to a bungalow, which is smaller and easier to maintain, as well as being on one floor and offering outside space."

The other factor that chills my heart, as the partner of someone disabled who will one day need a forever home (I've rented our current bungalow as a stop-gap while we try to figure out how to face a future that is very different from the one we planned) is that, if the supply of bungalows to an ageing population is reduced, demand will surge for the ones that exist, and prices will rise – just what pensioners and disabled people don't need.

What they need – what we all need – to do is to big-up the bungalow. In researching this article, I looked in vain for bungalow appreciation societies and single-storey-dwelling support groups. Having had the bungalow experience, I'm hooked. Wheelchair access aside, having no stairs means I can never forget something at the top of them, and I'll never need to crawl up them to vacuum. My rented home is funky (in a suburban kind of way), it's warm and, if I ever need to sort out the TV aerial, I'm a lot nearer the ground. What's not to like? Join me. We have to save the bungalow. The campaign starts here.