Not necessarily. The most extreme example being the Central Park Tower penthouse which is 3 stories. But in terms of ones that don’t cost 250 million, even pretty small ones can have lofts, and there are multi-level ones that don’t actually span the entirety of any of the stories they’re on and end up being normal sized for a single family.
That is, unless the British “flat” has a different definition from the American “apartment” or, say, the Estonian “korter”, which is “one unit in a building containing multiple units of housing”
It’s kind of funny how multiple story apartments are either really big or really small. The waste of space for stairs doesn’t make much sense for anything in between.
I started browsing the Wikipedia for Apartment, and came across this
One dwelling with two storeys
The vast majority of apartments are on one level, hence “flat”. Some, however, have two storeys joined internally by stairs, just like many houses. One term for this is “maisonette”, as above. Some housing in the United Kingdom, both public and private, was designed as scissor section flats. On a grander level, penthouses may have more than one storey to emphasise the idea of space and luxury. Two-storey units in new construction are sometimes referred to as “townhouses” in some countries (though not usually in Britain).
and
Maisonette … has no strict definition, but the OED suggests “a part of a residential building which is occupied separately, usually on more than one floor and having its own outside entrance.” It differs from a flat in having usually more than one floor
So it seems that flat implies one floor, and most exceptions have an alternative name like “penthouse”
Not necessarily. The most extreme example being the Central Park Tower penthouse which is 3 stories. But in terms of ones that don’t cost 250 million, even pretty small ones can have lofts, and there are multi-level ones that don’t actually span the entirety of any of the stories they’re on and end up being normal sized for a single family.
That is, unless the British “flat” has a different definition from the American “apartment” or, say, the Estonian “korter”, which is “one unit in a building containing multiple units of housing”
It’s kind of funny how multiple story apartments are either really big or really small. The waste of space for stairs doesn’t make much sense for anything in between.
I started browsing the Wikipedia for Apartment, and came across this
and
So it seems that flat implies one floor, and most exceptions have an alternative name like “penthouse”